Ten weeks into its chart run, “Raindance” lastly will get the visible therapy it deserves.
Shot in Lagos by Gabriel Moses, the video arrives simply because the monitor hits a brand new peak at quantity three within the UK, having climbed steadily from its quantity 5 debut.
The timing isn’t unintended. With #24 on Spotify’s World Chart and Prime 20 positions throughout eleven nations, Dave and Tems are capitalizing on momentum that reveals no indicators of breaking.
The Lagos setting issues greater than you’d suppose. For Tems, it’s residence floor. For Dave, it’s a return to roots that his music has at all times honored however not often made this specific.
Gabriel Moses shoots with the sort of ease that solely comes from precise familiarity, not the performative tourism that generally plagues these cross-continental collaborations.
Moses, whose work with Skepta and Little Simz established him as one of the vital trusted UK visible translator, understands easy methods to make diaspora really feel lived-in slightly than introduced.
The simple narrative round “Raindance” centres Dave – he’s the album artist, the hometown hero with three consecutive UK #1s.
However Tems doesn’t simply sing the hook. She restructures your complete emotional language of the monitor.
When she repeats “I like you” within the post-chorus, it’s not ornament. It’s the purpose. Dave can write about romance together with his attribute precision (“Wanting in your eyes is the very best factor / Brake lights providing you with the pink pores and skin”), however Tems makes you are feeling it.
Her trajectory deserves its personal consideration right here. From her Grammy win with Wizkid and Burna Boy on “Essence” to options with Drake and Future, Tems has spent the previous few years proving she will be able to elevate anybody’s report.
However “Raindance” reveals one thing totally different: what occurs when she’s given area to truly duet slightly than simply present a refrain.
The decision-and-response construction between her verses and Dave’s lets each artists breathe, neither overwhelming the opposite.
The manufacturing from Kyle Evans, Jo Caleb, and Jonny Leslie works as a result of it refuses to select sides.
The piano that opens the monitor may rating a Dave introspective or a Tems ballad.
The Afrobeats percussion by no means overwhelms the combination, sitting simply outstanding sufficient to sign affect with out demanding centre stage.
It’s a fragile steadiness that the majority UK-Nigerian collaborations fumble, both going too laborious on the African parts or treating them like sonic tourism.
Dave borrows from Drake on the third verse, consciously or not. “Wild baby, lovely baby, I would like your assist / Wanting such as you got here from the ’90s by your self” echoes Drake’s “From Time”: “You’re a flower baby, lovely baby, I’m in your zone / Wanting such as you got here from the 70’s by yourself.”
It’s not theft, extra like Dave nodding to a template that works. Drake made vulnerability worthwhile in rap.
Dave’s been working with that blueprint for years, including his personal UK specificity and political consciousness to the system.
Right here, he’s utilizing it to speak about home romance slightly than fame’s isolation, which appears like progress.
Moses constructions the video across the rhythm of a Lagos night. It opens with Dave and Tems on a pier at sundown, the golden hour mild catching the water behind them.
From there, it strikes via a proper dinner scene, an intimate orange-lit room the place Tems performs alone, and at last to a seaside celebration at evening with string lights strung between palm bushes.
The development from day to nighttime, from quiet moments to celebration, mirrors the music’s personal emotional arc.
Moses shoots most of it in pure mild, letting Lagos’ particular textures and colours do the work slightly than imposing a shiny sheen over all the things.
That is Dave’s fourth collaboration with a Nigerian artist (Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Boj got here earlier than), and you’ll see him getting extra snug with the change.
On his debut Psychodrama, the Burna Boy characteristic felt like an announcement of intent. By We’re All Alone In This Collectively, Wizkid on “System” gave the impression of two friends buying and selling verses.
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“Raindance” goes additional: it’s a real assembly of kinds the place neither artist compromises.
Dave doesn’t attempt to match Tems’ melodic strategy, and she or he doesn’t power herself into his percussive circulation. They only coexist.
The industrial efficiency tells its personal story. “Raindance” spent most of December hovering within the mid-twenties on the UK charts, shedding floor to the annual Christmas music invasion.
However in January, it surged again, climbing to quantity three and displaying the sort of longevity that means natural connection slightly than algorithmic push.
Radio play picked up. TikTok discovered the “5’9″, brown eyes” outro. Younger girls particularly have claimed this music, which in all probability explains its endurance greater than any important evaluation may.
Dave’s album The Boy Who Performed the Harp landed to near-universal acclaim (87 on Metacritic) and large gross sales (74,000 first-week items, Gold certification inside six weeks).
However critics have famous its heaviness, the way in which Dave positions himself as a prophet determine wrestling with religion and duty.
“Raindance” gives the one actual second of levity on a report in any other case consumed with existential disaster.
It’s a wise sequencing alternative, monitor 5 providing a breather earlier than the album descends into “Egocentric” and “Fairchild,” two of Dave’s most emotionally demanding songs but.
The 4 sold-out O2 Area reveals Dave has scheduled recommend “Raindance” will turn into a reside centerpiece. The query is whether or not he brings Tems out for any of the London dates.
She’s primarily based in LA now, using her personal international success, however a joint efficiency would cement this as greater than only a characteristic, positioning it as a substitute as a real collaboration between equals.
What makes “Raindance” work, lastly, is that it doesn’t announce its personal significance.
In an period when each UK rap collaboration with an African artist will get positioned as some grand cultural assertion, Dave and Tems simply made a music about falling for somebody.
The Lagos video provides context however doesn’t overwhelm the simplicity of that premise.
Typically essentially the most radical factor you are able to do is belief that the work speaks for itself.
