I have restrained myself for a couple of years from commenting on Tonto Dike's career after my last comments about her role in the soft indecency movie she acted in two years back, were badly taken by her and she went on twitter to hurl infantile insults on my person with expletives and uncomplimentary remarks. My reaction to such then was just a dignified silence. After all, I had already spoken on her stunted talent as an up and coming actress and further comments on her incensed tweets were unnecessary.
All through the past few hours, the social media networks have been abuzz with the new singles of actress, Tonto Dike. She seems to have joined the actors of her ilk who have the moonlighting itch to delve into singing. While no one can stop such an ambition by those artistes, I do think those who surround such artistes are their worst enemies if they can't tell them the truth about leaving their sometimes doubtful day job. Well, I will! I listened to Miss Dike's two singles a few minutes ago and my initial speechlessness morphed to a nagging laughter and then subsided into a befuddled anguish.
I'm a music label owner (November Records) and have produced and Executive Produced acts like Majek Fashek, Terry tha Rapman, Zubby Enebeli etc. I know much about music and the slant of commercial music. But after listening to Miss Dike's songs, I'm inclined to align with the majorly negative comments about them on cyberspace. Ah-ah! Whoever produced her knew she has a bad voice for singing and masked our listening torture with the Autotune effect. But even the Autotune rejected any attempt to make a bad voice worse and Miss Dike came out sounding like she was in mid-stream heavenly feeling instead of singing! Her anguished tremolos would have been better reserved for a horror movie sound effect than an attempt at joining the revered profession of music.
If Omotola got away with her last two terrible attempts at singing, it was because Omotola is a fantastic actress and her fans could forgive her musical failings after backtracking her body of work in Nollywood. With Tonto, I can't say much either for her acting depth. She's a one-dimensional actress in my opinion, who mistakes notoriety for fame. She needs more training in acting and this I say with all sense of professionalism as a movie Director. She might achieve greater heights in acting if she trains more. But she has no heights to achieve in singing. Only a downward plunge, the stuff bad endings in movies are made of.
