Parousia: Zaph’s Tender Search for Affection

By Michael Kolawole

Zaph announces his arrival in grand style on Parousia. Across five songs and barely thirteen minutes, the Nigerian UK-based singer sketches a brief but vivid portrait of longing, love, and self-assertion.

Beginning with the soulful “Enough Of You”, Zaph immediately sets the album’s emotional tone. “Baby come close, ‘cause you got me losing my mind,” he croons, expressing his dissatisfaction for being abandoned. “Never wanna lose you… Being without you is like I got no life.”

Moving on to “Balikita”, Zaph widens the album’s emotional palette. Still emotionally reeling from being dejected, he sounds sceptical about embracing love from another woman. Wanting to be sure he won’t be played and abandoned, like he was in his previous relationship, he asks a series of salient questions: “Baby will you let me know, shey you go dey for me / Baby will you let me know, before I spend my dough.” He wants true love, not betrayal, and he is ready to give everything to make it happen.

At the album’s midpoint, Zaph wants to understand the reasons for the constant drama in his new relationship. On “Itunmo”, he regrets embracing love again because his vibe is destroyed while being played around. His woman is manipulative, always causing trouble. Tired of all the drama, Zaph yearns to see her true colour, subtly asking her to change her behaviour.

“Gbona” shifts the album’s atmosphere back to warmth and sensuality. Zaph wants everything steady and slow, to keep things lovely and romantic. “Don’t rush,” Zaph tells his woman. “Let’s take it slow tonight, boy it’s so fast / Let’s take it one at a time, all I see is paradise.” Adding to Zaph’s expression of love, the percussion carries a subtle dancehall sway, and the melodic progression keeps things bright and upbeat.

The instrumentals remain cheerful on the album’s closing track, “Abere”, escalating the album’s energy. Zaph is in a party mood and wants us to join him as he recounts his flirtation with a lady, heightening the emotional negotiations that appear throughout the album. In this way, the EP ends much the same way it begins: sensitive and tender, in search of love and romance.

On the flip side, the same qualities that give Parousia its intimacy also work against it.

For an album whose title carries the theological attribute of revelation or arrival, the songs themselves hardly rise to that sense of magnitude. Parousia, in Christian theology, refers to a moment of appearance, a moment that signals transformation or fulfilment. Listening closely to the album, it becomes clear that the title is loosely related to Zaph’s expression of fervent desire to be loved but its superficial nature doesn’t make it strike a chord.

There is also a strong disconnect between the album’s title and some of the tracks. Besides the first track, “Enough Of You”, other tracks like “Balikita”, “Itunmo”, “Gbona”, and “Abere” bear the titles and templates of the Afrobeats romance.

Despite the shortcomings, Parousia remains an engaging introduction to Zaph’s silvery vocal which informs us about his heartbeat, heartbreak, and discomfort.

Parousia seems like a placeholder for a more coherent and expressive album, suggesting that Zaph’s true arrival is yet to come.