“You now rocking with the SDC, Show Dem Camp ọmọ yes indeed”

Over the past five years or so, Show Dem Camp’s tongue-in-cheek tag has become eponymous with a forward-thinking sound and eloquent lyricism. One blinding streak of light in the group’s underground glimmer is the ability to add creative tweaks of old ideas for sprawling new concepts. You’re probably already familiar with the Afrojuju-inspired “Feel Alright” featuring BOJ or “Happy Weekend Sah”, a shout-out to rhythm infused street hip-hop of the early aughts. This time around, the group reinvents the high-life genre with “Up 2 You” featuring Funbi, the first track off Palmwine Music Vol. 1, their latest EP since last year’s Clone Wars Vol. 3.

High-life is a precarious type of music for any one to make. The genre’s reliance on guitars, means the baseline melody must be built with everything else from ground-up without losing any organic detail essential to the markings of a live recording. Perhaps this is why “Up 2 You” opens with unintelligible background chatter that could as well be a man yelling over the static for his bandmates to align themselves in place for the set. This airy moment doesn’t linger for long on “Up 2 You” before it eases into cheery mid-tempo guitars and soft drums for Funbi to breathe life into the arrangement.

“Up 2 You” thrives on the only thing you can do with high-life music: make feel good music about having a good time. But SDC does a bit more. Tec does well to shout-out the squad, sharing a bit of before and after contrasts in the group’s come-up story. For Ghost, it’s Friday night, he’s got a wonder woman looking like ‘blue flames’ and together they’re about ‘to paint the town rouge’, because that’s what you do when you find someone you can have a good time with.

Listen to Show Dem Camp’s “Up 2 You” via SoundCloud below.

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