The unexpected inventiveness of Bosom P-Yung

It has taken the sudden stardom occasioned by a comical viral performance of “Attaa Adwoa,” and the commencement of his tenure as internet sensation, for rapper Bosom P-Yung’s ingenuity to properly see daylight.

Seven months ago, when the song was first published, concealed amongst six other Trap joints on the Awiesu album, it had hardly rippled Chop Bar tattle, and was on the journey to becoming (or remaining) one of the world-wide web’s many secrets. Yet, thanks to a merciless humour and flamboyant charm dispatched by the pink-haired eccentric in the now-famous video (available on the Flow Rhythms YouTube channel), coupled with the Internet’s open-handedness with rewarding content like this, the man has duly secured his fifteen minutes, and a cosign by the mighty Sarkodie.

Typically, giftees of Twitter fame remain within the province of the light content that shoved them into their unexpected celebrity. Furthermore, Trap, the sub-genre that has become popular among today’s urban youth, and the vehicle of choice for P-Yung’s album, is seen as an avenue for the diffusion of sub-par artistry under the guise of Avant-Garde wokeness.

Still, should one pick up Awiesu (which translates from the rapper’s native Twi as “done crying”) wearing such bias, an unnerving surprise is imminent.

The LP, twenty–three minutes long and containing within it a wildly unanticipated auditory euphoria, unfolds as a valuable voyage into one of a handful of failsafe routes to modern pop relevance, i.e, it’s an impressive tapestry of youthful recklessness, perky humour with which to draw the listener in, and rich wit to succeed with his scenic messaging style (which flits between vigorous obsessions of love and lust, through to the psychedelic thrills of a good party, to the art of the hustle.) “Beema,” the brilliant opening track that relates the attitudes of the average Joe, is a great example.

“Attaa Adwoa,” the joint whose catchy chorus and sidesplitting delivery is the primary catalyst of P-Yung’s new-found notoriety and the album’s new life, is another. That particular song sees the rapper in the throes of having to process unreturned love, but it is rendered with splendid underpinnings of the self-deprecating humour that is sure to win over even the toughest sceptic.

Awiesu also finds P-Yung clearly benefitting from premium wavy productions that manage to contain all his antics, such as the autotune overlays that compensate for his off-kilter excesses. It also sees to the safeguarding of the palpable emotions he exudes via pealing octaves.

In all of this, the most powerful quivers in his arrow — one would wager — are an unhinged imagination and the crucial artistic nonchalance heard on the album’s final track, “WYD,” a spiritually assured submission which finds him declare by the fifty-second mark, that “we no dey follow trend.” And that — that last line, is the unmistakable source of P-Yung’s greatness.