Rita Dominic,eLDee: Do they really Flop @ the Headies - Question I ask?

Eldee and Rita Dominic

Last week Saturday, October 22, 2011, one of the biggest award in Nigeria, The Headies (formerly known as HipHop World Award) took centre stage at the prestigious Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.

With its 6^th consecutive season, The Headies has grown from an ephemeral award ceremony to the norm. It has practically become a contemporary sub-culture with enormous respect and prestige, both home and abroad. Read more...

In the past, locally organized awards events were disdained, however thanks to The Headies, this has changed for the better. Artistes now look forward to winning a Headie because of the prestige associated with it and that has over the years rubbed off on other awards ceremonies and big music events.

This year’s Headies  night was full of all sorts of drama, ranging from the artistes performances, hosts and even the presenters of the award at the night.

Eldee

The pairing of Rita Dominic and eLDee as host was the worst the award has got in recent years. Rita was featureless and wasn’t connecting with the audience while eLDee turned the podium to his living room, where he could do anything he liked.

Unfortunately and surprisingly, they performed below expectations. But eLDee occasionally managed to put his act together while Rita, a truly brilliant actress and performer goofed all the way, often upsetting her lines with poor attempts at stand-up or poorly delivered banters with eLDee who kept puffing a cigar as if his wife won’t allow him romance a stick back home.

Shamefully, Rita refused to get back on stage after her first two lacklustre appearances which made it seems she’s not use to such magnitude of crowd and couldn’t continue to host the show alongside eLDee.

Rita Dominic will definitely go into record as the worst co-host the prestigious awards show has ever had.

To cover up the hosts flops, there were intermittent voice-overs from backstage guiding guests through the night’s event.

Along the line, Funke Kuti and Toni Payne were introduced to come on stage to present an award to the winner of the Best Pop Single.

Sir Shina Peters

It was another drama of sort when the two estranged wives of Femi Kuti and Abolore Akande (9ice) presented the award to Dr Sid, and Toni Payne tried to come back to the stage to tell the audience that, ‘I’m going to be your co-host for the rest of the night’ but the audience went gaga and shouted ‘No’, while she stylishly retreated to the back stage. Obviously, the move by Toni was suppose to be a cover-up for  Rita but the audience was not ready for another drama.

After so much display by eLDee, he won the newly added category – Conscious music of the year which goes with a $10,000 prize money, but the audience booed him off stage when he said that, ‘I didn’t  see this coming’.

Unarguably, Dr. Sid deserves the award for the worst performance of the night his performance was a sham.

First it was thought to be theatrical when Dr Sid stood on stage in an awful costume with his dancers, as the lights dimmed and his song refused to blast from the sound system.

Minutes later, the music came on, Dr Sid seemed unable to move and was forced to cut the performance short. The pop singer didn’t quite cue with the DJ who obviously played the wrong performance CD.

The two time Headies winner started out for a few minutes, then stopped abruptly as he apologized, ‘I’ll come back guys’ and he walked out of the stage to the amazement of everybody.

The Mo’hit star must have forgotten that his microphone was still on when he cursed out ‘F***k’ while at backstage. If the singer had opted for a live band performance just like other performers had done, the mess  up might have been avoided.

Another major thing is the stage and the lighting, although the stage was quiet fantastic but lacked the functionality. The lighting is nothing to write home about, the stage was always dark when there’s no one on stage. The use of stylized lightings is absolutely a disappointment when the audience finds it hard to see what’s going on the stage clearly.

Prior to the award night, the nominee list indicate that Chief Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi has his name on the Special Recognition Category but all we saw was Sir Shina Peters taking home the 21 carat gold Headie.

However, the build up to the award is world class even without a major sponsor, as telecommunications giant, MTN which used to be its main sponsors pulled out of this year’s edition, the show still boast of some memorable moments.