From the title alone, it’s easy to dismiss Smazsmiles’ “Y.O.L.O”. The acronym peaked years ago, and plenty of records have used it as an excuse to be careless. However, Olague Osakpamwan, whose pen name is OSAKP AMWAN, gets around that in the chorus. “Aiye o pe meji, aiye kan lo wa,” he writes what the title says: that life does not come twice, but in Yoruba and in the cadence of a proverb. With that, the slogan gets an elder’s voice, and the ad-libbed Y.O.L.O answers like a younger person agreeing. It is the best idea in the song.

The first verse is the finest. It opens with bravado. His “gbedu go sweet like Indomie” makes a drum as familiar and comforting as a packet of noodles, and he promises that South Africa and the UK will dance to it. Then he says he will “live my life like sey tomorrow no dey”. But the mood changes within a few lines. He asks “a brother” (read: friend) that if things turn red, “you go stay” while insisting that “this life no be play o”.

He aspires to remove himself “from trenches”, the Pidgin word for the ghetto, to highbrow neighbourhoods. “Y.O.L.O.” is not a licence to party. It is what someone says when they grow up with little and have decided not to wait in vain. That balance between swagger and seriousness lifts the song above its slogan.

Verse two tries the same trick and gets less from it. The demands from a romantic partner, “lie for me”, “dey for me”, “ride with me”, “flex for me”, are like a loyalty test, and then he turns to praise: “No one… can make me feel so good”. The shape is right, but the writing around it is thin. The verse is littered with a lot of fillers, making it less effective as the first. “No na, pa na pa pa” and “Steady popping”, “Baby, let’s party” and “Come with your besties” could come from a hundred other party songs. After the Indomie and the trenches of the opening verse, nothing here is as specific or as funny. The woman he is addressing never becomes a person, and “lie for me” and “so good” pull in different directions without the song noticing.

The Amapiano instrumental suits the message. Its slower pace gives Smazsmiles ample space to say “Nobody knows tomorrow” without hurrying it. Nigerian acts have mostly taken up the log drum to reflect local drums instead of making pure amapiano, which fits a singer who calls his own beat gbedu.

Smazsmiles starts flat, almost matter-of-factly, and that fits a man announcing he doesn’t care about tomorrow. Flatness is the humility. His phrasing lifts when he turns to the balancing lines, and you can hear the humility give way to bravado and conviction. That is the most interesting thing he does. It makes the “trenches” line serve as an aspiration for something grander. His interpretation understands the lyrics better than the lyrics’ weaker passages deserve.

He is less convincing once the writing runs out. In the filler passages, the lift in his voice holds nothing. The “No one, no one” refrain gets the same energy as everything around it, so the praise sounds like a hook, not a feeling. He rarely leaves the beat’s comfortable groove, and a more daring vocal might have pushed the verse-two turn further.

“Y.O.L.O” is a good first verse and a good chorus wrapped around a generic second half. Osakpamwan shows he can make an overused slogan feel fresh and meaningful. Smazsmiles shows he can sell it. A second verse as specific as the first would have turned a pleasant party record into a memorable one.