My mum once told me ‘Never underestimate anybody’. Ok, was it even my mum? My dad? Can’t really remember. It could even be one of those memes quote with the Pete Edochie pictures that I saw it on.
My point here is that in 2008, there was this track Bachelor by 9ice on his hugely successful Gongo Aso album. Admittedly Bachelor wasn’t exactly one of the best songs on the album, it featured a couple of fellas XP, Six 0 and Reminisce. Here, Reminisce was nothing but a footnote on the track, he probably only got on it because he was at that point big friends with the artistes at ID Kabasa’s Coded Tunes. Some months later he released One Chance with Jahbless which received mild buzz.
It was not until Jahbless’ Joor Oh that he popped into our consciousness again. Something had changed though; he was more confident, more aware and most importantly perfectly in sync with the Sarz inspired beat. It wasn’t at all surprising when he hit big time on his own, inspired by another Sarz beat with Kako Bi Chicken’, his breakout single off his Book of Rap Stories album.
Safe to say he has never looked back since then.
Put this scenario into context to measure how far Reminisce has come. A couple of years ago, there was this spat with the then ‘in form’ rapper, Vector. Reminisce was clearly the underdog then even though he held his own through the bout. Fast forward to today, and on the Black Magic track- Africa Remix, which incidentally features both artistes, answer who is the bigger artiste now? My money isn’t on Vector.
Already 2 albums in and with multiple shows and a multi-million naira endorsement deal, it is hard to argue that Reminisce is one of the hottest artiste around who is both successful on the commercial front yet fully armed with street cred. One only has to look at the anticipation and fan fare surrounding his new album Baba Hafusa to see how far and well Remilekun Safaru has come in the game. It did not come bigger than when; the rapper was recently featured on Time Magazine’s website where he was named one of the; ‘Seven World Rappers You Should Meet.’
Reminisce is one that has made his luck, rode on it and has climaxed with success.

Extracted from Mystreetz Magazine.

Words by Akin ‘Nizzle’ Solanke