For his album, Sarz assembled a who’s who of Nigeria’s music industry, but it really is just a contact list of the best and closest collaborators he has curated in his nearly two-decade-old career. ‘Protect Sarz At All Costs’ is technically his debut, but this tag says little of the richness of his discography, containing three collaborative projects with Afropop-alternative artists in WurlD, Lojay, and Obongjayar; two albums as the head of his academy for music talents; and an instrumental EP, ‘Sarz Is Not Your Mate.’ 

‘PSAAC’ is named as a third-person acknowledgement of the highly revered status with which he is spoken about in Nigerian music circles, while its guest list offers proof of his standing among the genre’s elite. It is the music itself that ends up justifying both of these. It’s bouncy and fun-filled, versatile yet somewhat cohesive, and when it can, it takes a moment to pass a message from Sarz and his collaborators’ lives. 

Being the anthem-creating producer he is, responsible for a deluge of hits across every Afropop era, Sarz’s debut album is understandably partial to the dance floor, but there is enough room for excellent lyricism as well, especially when its more seasoned songwriters take the wheel. Lojay is particularly adept on “Loved Me Then,” fitting into the same sad loverboy archetype he assumed for “Moto,” this time decrying a love that came too late and only after a change in his status: “O fimi se gara, shey you remember?/ But I no go take it personal o.” Qing Madi revisits some of the unreserved commitment of “American Love”—“Pounds and dollar dey for my Beamer/ All I need from you is love—on “In A Mustang,” one of the album’s finest moments in terms of writing and production.

A lot of what makes Sarz’s album tick is in each song finding the midway point between its artist’s individual tendencies and Sarz’s proclivity for danceable music. His earliest imprint as a producer was on a much faster, less measured era of Afropop, in which he was responsible for beats to Street-Pop luminaries like Reminisce’s “Kako Bi Chicken,” Jahbless’ “Jor Oh,” and DaGrin’s “Kondo” as well as for channeling Wizkid’s explosive Afropop ethos on legendary cuts like “Dance For Me,” “Jaiye Jaiye” and the co-owned “Beat Of Life.” 

Still, his versatility means he has been many things to many artists: for Niniola, a facilitator for her early House forays— “Maradona,” “Omo Rapala” and more—and thus arguably a key domino in Amapiano’s eventual takeover in the 2020s. For WurlD, Lojay, and then Obonjayar, the producer was a springboard and co-creator, crafting bespoke EPs with each artist that leaned on their individual strengths. 

‘Protect Sarz At All Costs’ expands on Sarz’s worldbuilding versatility, aiming to extract as much from its contributors as it can while maintaining a fairly streamlined vision for what it wants to sound like, and sometimes that can mean placing a few guests outside their creative niches. There’s no room for Shallipopi’s Benin-influenced Street-Pop or ODUMODUBLVCK’s signature “Okporoko Drill,” so both artists contort themselves to fit into the French-influenced “Mademoiselle,” where a nifty Shallipopi supplies a multilingual chorus and ODUMODUBLVCK, Theodora, and Zeina take on a verse each. 

Unlike what has come to be expected of DJ/Producer-led mega-projects like these, not every song is a direct cut from each artist’s discography, which means that a song’s direction can not merely be inferred from its featured artist. Often it works to excellent results, like when the Libianca and Teni-featuring “African Barbie” goes down an unfamiliar road for the pair as they take turns warding a man off the possibility of sex. “Don’t waste no time on this goodie-goodie-goodie,” Libianca croons on a delightfully catchy chorus, while her verses are more explicit: “I know you want me to give up punani/ Unfortunately, I do celibacy/ I cannot just give it to anybody.”

Sometimes, though, Sarz’s decision to fit its artists into his own template does underutilize them, affecting, if not the experience of the song itself, then the feeling of what it could be with a more artist-led direction. Asake is hardly used on the chorus of the “Getting Paid,” leaving Wizkid and Skillibeng to step up to convey the song’s snarly braggadocio. It’s a sharp contrast to how involved he is on the snappy “Happiness,” paired with a suave Gunna. The album seeks to move at a steady pace, so “Billions,” Sarz’s collaboration with Lojay from last year, appears here in a more percussive, danceable form and not the slow-burning version it originally was—Sarz hardly wants to slow the tempo of his debut album.

Sarz is not so keen to show off his production virtuoso that he loses sight of his primary goal of a well-curated album. He avoids complicated sets, beat switches, and jaunts into unfamiliar genres, choosing instead to consolidate on what he does best. It is a feature he has thankfully carried over from his previous collaborative projects, especially the recent ‘Memories That Last Forever 2,’ an album that is closest in spirit to this one. 

Still, there are parts of the album that stagger and fail to leave lasting impressions, like the Fireboy DML-Joeboy transition from “BMF” to “Body,” two perfectly decent Afropop songs in their own right, but lacking the punch to stand out in an album of potential hit tracks. In contrast, Victony’s “Up”—bold, raunchy and built on a base of electronic music—begins with an exhilarating vigour that doesn’t slip for its entire duration. 

Like most other collaborative albums, ‘Protect Sarz At All Costs’ struggles somewhat with presenting a consistent theme across songs contributed by a large pool of artists. Sarz attempts to bypass this with an emotionally dense opening track, “Grateful,” that maps out his headspace at this time in his career, with Darwinian wisdom delivered by WurlD.” This track flows seamlessly into “Happiness” to stretch the theme of gratitude even further, but, save for the duo of “Getting Paid” and “Billions,” which project Sarz’s gratitude for life and growth into boastful anthems of strictly financial wins, the thread doesn’t run any longer than that.

There was always going to be a limit to the depth that can be conveyed on a collaborative project, and not many people would tune into a maestro producer’s album expecting philosophical richness anyway, so it makes for an excellent decision that Sarz doesn’t sacrifice sound in a chase for substance, especially when the music is as genuinely fun as it is here. 

A lot of effort has clearly gone into ‘Protect Sarz At All Costs,’ and this goes way beyond the most obvious one of the heavyweights on the tracklist. ‘PSAAC’ is a reminder, for anyone who would dare forget, of Sarz’s industry and ingenuity as a music producer, but more importantly, it is a consolidation of his credentials in his next role as curator of excellent music and musical talent. 

Listen to ‘Protect Sarz At All Costs’ here.