There is a certain kind of creative scourge that plagues producers who operate behind the scenes within the Nigerian alternative music scene, the scourge of being too good to ignore, yet unplatformed enough to push a brand. Adedotun Michael Adekanmbi, the Lagos-based producer and songwriter who goes by “dotunonamission”, fits perfectly into this description.
When Lemon Vinyl, the music and media collective founded by Adedotun, Hakeeb Ibrahim and Samuel John, released their seventeen-track debut album “If Life Gives You Lemons” in November 2023, the intent was clear, the reception was warm, and the over 30 talents who contributed to the body of work felt fulfilment.
Music industry reviewers, critics and fans celebrated the project’s ambition and the evidence of its curators’ intentionality. The intentionality of its direction, arrangement and production credits from music producers including dotunonamission, who produced “Ma Jo”, “Freaky”, and “Faraway” off the Album.
Not his first rodeo!
Begin with “Ma Jo”, the album’s most outwardly gregarious offering, featuring OT and Xplode. The beat Dotunonamission creatively mashes up here is engineered for movement. The song title, which means “Will Dance” in Yoruba, sets a premise for the percussive, sharp-edged, and deliberately infectious high bpm rhythm that accompanies it.
On the surface, it works. The track does what a track called “Ma Jo” must do: compelling the body before the mind has time to negotiate. However, spend three listens on the track and you begin to appreciate the production quality and direction. The rhythmic architecture is confident, carefully arranged to fit the curation of the whole album, and very conventional. The sonic choices are those of a producer who knows exactly what the market will accept, and has decided to give it precisely that.
The song is enjoyable. The beat is repetitively danceable and the composition is nothing short of inspiring from a music producer and composer who is slowly carving his creative identity and artistic input within the Nigerian music industry.
After all, this is not his first rodeo. Dotunonamission already showed us a glimpse of that talent when he produced and wrote “Be There” with Boy Delian just last year.
“Freaky”, featuring Marxii, Caleboniel, and Loti off the ILGYL Vol. 1 Album, is another track where Dotunonamission shows great production strength and versatility. The sound in the track is in itself sleek, textured and unconventional, away from the usual Afrobeats influence one expects to hear nowadays. It gives Soul Train era influence and that just shows creative intelligence from Dotunonamission. Sitting under vocal performances that suit the track so well, it could not have been produced any better than what was created.
Going “Faraway” on a Mission
The producer – songwriter relationship Dotunonamission enjoys with Boy Delian reveals itself once again on “Faraway”. After both talents came together on “Be There” mid-last year, they have continued to show so much synergy and abundance of talent with each project and snippets they share. Faraway is the track on which Dotunonamission comes closest to shedding the habit of self-moderation. There is an emotional spaciousness in the production which accompanies amazing vocals from Boy Delian.
The beat and musical composition show a sense of distance and longing, a sound that suggests a producer capable of genuine storytelling through sounds alone. The song shows ambition, and the results are striking enough to make the listener momentarily position themselves in an emotional state. There is little doubt as to why “Faraway” dropped first as a 2-part project away from the ILGYL Vol. 1, which it eventually became part of. This was an intentional output that showed Dotun is far from completing his mission with music production through Lemon Vinyl.
Pushing the boundaries with Lemon Vinyl While Lemon Vinyl might have made a potential impact on the music industry through their first project, “If Life Gives You Lemons”, there is still much left unanswered on the plans for the collective. The album is a serious and admirable debut, a genuine statement of “free-flowing” collaboration amongst various artists, songwriters and producers like Dotunonamission; however, little is known of the goal for the project or the collective
For all its ambition and collaborative scale, ILGYL Vol. 1 ultimately suffers from a lack of a sharply defined identity, with Dotunonamission’s contributions reflecting technical competence more than artistic risk.
Across tracks like “Ma Jo” and even the more textured “Freaky,” the production often feels calculated to meet audience expectations rather than challenge them, resulting in a soundscape that is polished but largely predictable. The album’s length further exposes this limitation, as the seventeen-track runtime stretches ideas that might have been more impactful in a tighter, more curated format.
While moments like “Faraway” hint at emotional depth and a more daring creative direction, they are not consistent enough to anchor the project as a cohesive or standout body of work. In trying to balance collaboration, accessibility, and ambition, the project ends up playing it too safe, leaving Dotunonamission positioned as a reliable producer, but not yet a truly distinctive voice within the crowded alternative music space.
The Music industry is an unforgiving ecosystem for creative talents, and those who have created memories for the audience are often forgotten quickly when there is no steam to their ascent. Being a creative music producer is admirable, but being a consistent creative music producer will always be better.
For Dotunonamission and his music production prowess, the mission has just begun.
