The Billboard Magazine rates it as the best Dancehall chorus of the 21st century, but it is shocking how fast we have forgotten Kevin Lyttle’s song, “She Drives Me Crazy,” and how it taught millions to see and understand the beauty of life.
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| Kevin Lyttle's Music Album Cover |
If you are the type that relates well with music, you will agree that music, though underrated, is one thing that gives life a soul. Music that is sublime has a way of creating an imprint in one’s heart, an imprint that lingers for as long as you live.
Today, a roadside music-retailing shop played Kevin Lyttle’s “She Drives Me Crazy.” Suddenly, I recalled there was a time the song thundered, rumbled and reverberated around the planet. I had forgotten such a song ever “lived.”
I love music anytime. However, big hits from genres that I understand have often done something astonishing to me when I am homesick and the longing has eaten up its bounds. At this point, I will feel like I have travelled to another planet to feel something mother earth couldn’t offer. And, in the years to come, that moment will show up anytime I listen to that song.
It happened to me three times. The first was in 1992, when I was travelling away from Jos, my home city, to Benin, Edo State, for national youth service. The second was while I was away in Port Harcourt and a deadly fight broke out in Jos. The third was in 2006, while staying in a remote town where I had been posted to work. It is this last one that concerns Kelvin Lyttle’s “She Drives Me Crazy.”
Ganawri, where I had been posted is a rural town with a funk that the even the blind can feel by groping. All decent housings you see are built by owners who live in them, the shack in which I stayed had no electrify, there weren’t restaurants except if you had to eat moi-moi or drink the highly fermented and sour kunu that is native to Ganawuri, friends were scarce and, hence, I was always thinking of Bukuru, in Jos-South. I often returned on Fridays to resume on Mondays. Thus, the five days between Sunday and Saturday often felt like five years. It was so grave that, on Fridays, I hadn’t the patience to wait until closing time.
On one such Fridays, I left before closing. The jalopy roved around the hills bordering the dusty road. I felt like an American solider returning from Afghanistan after a year searching for Bin Ladin on the Tora Bora Mountain. Eventually, we hit the Jos-Abuja Expressway by Makera. Once there, the feeling of being in the city was triggered, perhaps, by the sight of the sparkling automobiles driving to and from Abuja. Like the petals of rose on an accelerated TV footage, the relief unfolded.
There was just one logical thing to do at the point: celebrating that milestone of the journey. I hopped into a road-side kiosk to have a cold and soothing Fanta drink. At that moment a Friday reggae show on Peace FM was live. Just as I sat down, She Drives Me Crazy started playing. My lips constricted, gripping a plastic straw, my mouth sucking the top end and ushering a gentle flow of the drink. With eyes closed, I felt the music rising to a crescendo, accentuating the beauty of the freedom I had just found and etching itself on the tablet of my heart.
Today, as I strolled by Vom Junction, a roadside audio monitor rumbled with She Drives Me Crazy, and the astonishing feeling at Makera, Riyom, played out again. Thanks to Kevin Lyttle; you added your own colour, making the world even more beautiful.
