Maleek Berry opens "The Matter" with a simple command: back to the matter. Before a single verse lands, the song locks you into a groove built around dancing, flirtation, and a night with nowhere to be in the morning. The chorus, looping its "open and close, touch your toes" refrain, is less about lyrics and more about giving the body something to follow on the dancefloor.
Wizkid steps in as Starboy, the self-described girl dem manna, calling out to tall, short, fat, or skinny, every kind of woman, one by one. The verse name-checks Shalewa and Vanessa in the same breath, painting a picture of a man with range, charm, and enough of whatever he is offering to go around. It is confident without being cruel, the kind of bravado that smiles while it speaks.
The pre-chorus adds a little edge to the party mood. Both artists make clear that the fun is not an invitation for trouble. Cross their lane and twenty men fall, they warn, though it is said with the easy cool of people who do not expect to be tested. The threat lands more like punctuation than aggression.
What makes "The Matter" stick is its refusal to complicate itself. The Yoruba phrases, the Pidgin lines, the repetitive chorus, all of it is designed to feel familiar the first time you hear it. It is a song that works on a speaker at a cookout just as well as it does in a Lagos club at 2 a.m. That kind of range is harder to pull off than it sounds.
Originally published by NotJustOk.