Charles Onyeabor’s ‘Like Father, Like Son,’ An Exploratory Album   

In 2002, while in my first year in secondary school, I read a novel. They titled it Like Father, Like Son, a tragic story that chronicled the travail of a father and son, caught in the same shameful act. So, I found it surprising when I saw this same title on Spotify while checking out some William Onyeabor records two days ago.

On a deeper level, I got to know more about the singer, Charles Onyeabor. In the years preceding 2020, he was more devoted to his businesses. According to some of the interviews he granted media houses in Nigeria, the 2020 lockdown changed everything for him.

While his father’s music is psychedelic and filled with genre fluid productions, Charles plays it safe on this album. The topics are even different from his father.

After more than two takes of this album, it is glaring that Charles Onyeabor is close to his father in terms of talent, although he was born in music, nevertheless his over two decades of absence doesn’t really show.

On the intro track “Feeling Good,” his vocals are mellow, the occasional yeah helped it and he penned his lyrics successfully. This is almost noticeable throughout the album that he sonically channels his emotion into lyrics. “Nwa,” is one of my most likable tracks on this album. My likeness can be attributed to the singer’s vocals. The production just made everything so super cool. Same as the piano powered “Loving Till The End,” the piano takes it to another level while Charles Vocals follows.

Magnito, the Hausa rapper dominated the title track, he made the first verse easily relatable. For me, I think a lot of these collaborations on this album were initiated to leverage on each other’s strength. It shows off Charles’ sonic range.

Although Like Father, Like Son is Charles first long play, some of these tracks showcases Charles Onyeabor’s musical growth for someone who left music for over two decades, and also showcases if there’s a hint for him to put in more work as an artiste.

From the brilliant title and the impressive album cover design and the long list of tracks, to a highly executed production, for someone that is based in Italy, you wouldn’t expect less from him. It shows the level of work put into creating this album.

Charles Onyeabor smartly slimmed down the features on this album, this allowed him to shine more, show the fans his level of skill, being his first time of releasing a body of work, it is a smart move for him. All in all, it is an impressive run of play by the Italy based artiste.