Music Review: Modola and BhadBoi OML’s “Kupe” Underscores Their Musical Chemistry Within a Modern Soundscape

I know this came out a week ago, but Afrobeats season is quietly creeping up on us, and Kupe has been sitting in the back of my head rent-free since first listen, which means it deserves a proper reckoning. Not a celebration, a reckoning. Because there is something genuinely brilliant happening in this song, and also something that should have been pushed further, and both things are true at the same time.

The song opens with an intro that immediately tells you what kind of record this is going to be. “Vien da me / On danse on va coupe” — come to me, we dance, we cut loose, sung in French, landing over a groove that already has its hips moving before the first proper lyric arrives. Modola was raised in Milan. The French isn’t an affectation. It’s a biography. And that detail matters because Kupe is essentially the sound of a woman who absorbed Lagos, Europe, and the dancefloor simultaneously and decided, wisely, not to choose between them.

Then Verse 1 drops, and this is where Kupe earns its reputation:

“Wetin I no like na see finish this thing funny Gbena woju Modola wa gbale sun nita Ase lo ma liga, liga liga li ja kupe Life na 50/50 jaye orita”

What do you mean liga liga li ja kupe? Why is she saying kupe kupen ku bam bam? How is I give them lamba pishammm — with three m’s, the extra m doing real sonic work landing as one of the most satisfying phrases of the year so far? These lines shouldn’t work as hard as they do. They evoke a feeling more than they denote a meaning, which is exactly what the best Afropop has always done, going all the way back to the Fela records, where the chants existed in the body before they lived in the brain. Modola has figured out, early, that sound is its own argument. “Life na 50/50 jaye orita” — enjoy yourself at the crossroads is delivered so matter-of-factly it becomes a kind of ancient truth about Lagos and the specific philosophy of surviving it with your joy intact.

The chorus does what a chorus should do, which is make you forget you have anywhere else to be:

“As my body dey gbọn gbọn gbọn gbọn gbọn gbọn E dey make dem want to pull over My body la banging, la hot, la fresh, la smooth E dey give dem the carry over”

The gbọn gbọn gbọn repetition has been called lazy by people who I suspect have never thought carefully about onomatopoeia. The word shakes. Physically. Say it out loud, and your mouth vibrates. Modola didn’t write a description of a body in motion — she wrote the motion itself into the syllables. And then “pull over / carry over” arrives, bilingual, timed perfectly, and it’s the kind of couplet that most pop writers spend entire careers chasing.

Then BhadBoi OML takes Verse 2 and does something genuinely unexpected — he doesn’t chase the English / pidgin energy of Verse 1 at all. He goes entirely into Yoruba:

“E don scatter / E don scatter For my party ṣayo yapa / Ṣayo yapa Atigba ti mo ti w’Eko L’ọn ti fun mi ni orijo Nibo lẹ tun ti lọ ṣedi o Ọrọbọ rọra ma redi o”

This is the most interesting and the most frustrating part of Kupe in equal measure. BhadBoi OML arriving in pure Yoruba is a bold left turn. It deepens the song’s cultural texture, it refuses the easy route of another English hook, and ṣayo yapa has a rhythmic bounce that earns its place in the groove. But the verse is also over almost before it begins. Just as you’re leaning in, adjusting your ear, finding the melody — he’s gone, the chorus swallows him back up, and you’re left wanting a full minute of what you only got twenty seconds of. It’s the most compelling thing on the record, and it’s also the most underwritten. BhadBoi OML has the range for something genuinely layered here. This verse is a sketch when it should have been a painting.

That is the central frustration with Kupe, not that it isn’t good, because it clearly is, but that its best moments feel like previews of a bolder song that nobody quite committed to making. The groove is deep enough for real risk-taking. Modola’s instincts are sharp enough. BhadBoi’s Yoruba detour proves there was a more adventurous record hiding inside this one, and it was let go too quickly.

Still. It’s April in Lagos, and this song is winning dance floors, top charts, and is currently number 5 on Shazam’s most-streamed and number 2 on their most viral songs. It also quickly rose to number 8 on Boomplay’s Top 100 in Africa and is ubiquitous on TikTok feeds and group chats simultaneously. Kupe is the sound of two artists finding each other at exactly the right frequency, even if neither of them fully explored what that frequency could carry. Maybe next time they push further. For now, this is very good. Just not quite great.