Kim Kardashian Played A Fast One On Us

All roads led to the Eko Hotel and Suites last Sunday for Dare Art-Alade’s show tagged ‘Love Like a Movie’. To be candid, I am not really a fan of Dare’s music but I just had to be there to see a much-hyped show! It was just the hype that made me journey to the venue. I just wanted to see what would make the show different from what has been the norm.

 

As with most Nigerian shows, ‘Love Like a Movie’ did not start on time. The red carpet did not end until past eight while the main show did not begin until a quarter to nine. I am sure that most people who attended the show were there just to see and maybe hear Kim. They all waited anxiously as the event unfolded.

 

Eventually, Kim showed up. It was indeed love like a movie when Kim Kardashian came on stage, spoke for a few seconds and disappeared behind the stage. That was the first and last we saw of her. Nothing was heard from Kim till the one-hour show ended. It was sad.

As expected, the topic trended on Twitter. In fact, I got different messages on my BB about people’s angst with such a brief appearance from Kim. Jeremy Weate wrote in an online article titled ‘Kim Kardashian does Lagos’ on www.guardian.co.uk thus: “And then Ms Kardashian appeared, said, ‘Hey Naija’ and vamoosed. The rumour was that she’d been paid 500,000 Benjamins for the honour of mixing with the petro-class. She arrived on Saturday evening (on Air France), and left within 24 hours (someone Instagrammed her back at MMIA). Prole class tickets were apparently N100,000 ($640), although quite a few got in gratis on the guest list.

 

“The Lagos elite blows money at puffery, while most of Nigeria suffers. It’s the same as it ever was. I recall Carlos Moore railing against the Gowon era on his trip to Nigeria a couple of years ago – how Lagosians were partying while bodies were lying unburied in the street. Gowon was famous at the time for saying that the problem in Nigeria was not money, but how to spend it.

 

Reflecting a little on the unfolding disappointment in Lagos, I couldn’t help but think that the narrow slice of KK the audience was granted reflects a cargo cult/import economy/colo-mentality that dresses its shame in dandified arrogance. Last year, Hugh Masekela played at the Motor Boat club. I was lucky to be there (I think I paid N15,000 for the privilege). People chatted noisily throughout. The great jazzman could hardly hide his disgust.”

 

For me, I think the fault is not Kim’s but that of the show organisers who perhaps did not brief her properly on what they expected her to do, although the radio jingles that preceded the show told us she would co-host the show with Dare.

 

Maybe we have to define what hosting means at this juncture. Dare was the host because he conceived the idea, planned it with his team and he lives in Nigeria. Kim was invited by Dare, that means Dare was her host, right?

 

So if Dare was her host, do we then say she also hosted Dare? It would have been right to say she co-hosted the show with Dare if they had both appeared on stage to talk to the audience or sang together or even acted a scene of the ‘Love Like a Movie’. But that was not the case. Kim just came on stage to introduce the show in a sentence and left. Dare was not on stage with her.

 

Well, we need to cry over spilt milk because Kim used American sense for us. She outsmarted us all. Like Weate concluded in the article: “As the disgruntled tweets flowed out on my timeline, I thought of Special K, comfy in her jimjams, the plane rising gradually above the Atlantic, safe from all Lagos harm, smiling to herself that she’d actually 419’d the 419ers. And I went to bed with one final thought: oil turns all who touch it completely insane.”

 

-------Funke Osae-Brown, Business Day, Friday, February 22, 2013