24th May, 2020
By Preye Campbell
It is certainly an awesome moment when you move fast in life. At that moment, every step is right, every movement is like a round peg in a round hole, moving you closer to life’s bliss. Then, the setting changes totally when all crashes.
With Cynthia Morgan, comes a subtle reminder of how one lady wielded the reggae/ dancehall fusion sword to slay hits upon hits. At a point in the country, every home was Taken and if you are the party type, you get a good fill of the German Juice on Fridays when you are hanging out with friends. And if you ever wondered what a reggae/dancehall artiste could possibly mix with a love/ heartbreak theme, Simati Niya was there, waiting on the sidelines.
Now, about five or six years later and we are on Twitter, with a GoFundMe project on the books for Madrina herself to bring her home from the United States.
In a live Instagram chat, Morgan revealed to the world that she has been sick for about six months and continually depressed for not achieving all that she had planned in her career. She also used the occasion to remind us that it takes a record label to lift you high as an artiste, and it takes a record label to bring you low. An all-time low.
The sky, which now seems so high, was only the starting point for the 28-year old Edo talent a few years back. At the time, you could regard her as the best female dancehall artiste in the country, and she was only just on the rise.
With her trademark voice and the party spirit beats attached to it, everyone wanted a piece of the girl dem skillash. She effortlessly tampered with giving us hits and she acknowledged it herself ‘me tell them, giving them a hit not a problem’.
Of course, her miss from the shores of the music industry was noticed to an extent and it is because, sincerely, how many female dancehall artistes have we had since Morgan? You will be forgiven though if you have totally forgotten about her- we have had other artistes in the game, those already in the game upped their game and the hits have always been flowing.
Of course, Morgan’s is another testament of what life gives with artistes and record labels. The former Northside Inc. diva won’t be the first in the line of hero-to-zero artistes. Unfortunately too, she won’t be the last. It seems to me that she understood clearly, the magnitude of things as she has vowed not to join any record label again.
At the moment, the trending hashtags you see on Twitter and well-meaning Nigerians are what it will take to revitalise a career that has been underwater for a long, long time.
And in all honesty, we want to feel those moments again. We want the German juice to fill the airwaves again.