Still, they wouldn’t break. P-Square would remain ever respectable, not quite incendiary in the form of Eedris Abdulkareem or even 2Face Ididia, their closest peer. Like their outfits, the perspective remained clean, unaffected by the tiresome nature of the external world. Twenty years later, it speaks to their nuance with sociopolitical commentary that, amongst all the contemporary greats, they’re the least reflective of the theme. And yet, P-Square’s discography didn’t suffer any dearth in wholesomeness, and perhaps we can associate that with the transcendent quality of the one song that reflected said theme.

‘Oga Police’ would catch on because it was an earnest plea. These guys weren’t looking to make any trouble. They just wanted to get to the party in time and rock the crowd. ‘See wetin I dey miss,’ they bemoaned, but still the police, as they would today, didn’t budge. Thus, when the duo admonishes us to ‘Get Squared’, it was a refreshing break into exuberance, like those American movie scenes when the landlord breaks into a party of teenagers, cautioning them to keep quiet or the police would be called. Everyone looks sombre and sober, almost broken by the unnerving resilience of the older person. But as soon as they turn away, the party continues, this time even louder than before. The house party-set video of Sean Paul’s ‘Get Busy’ also utilized this narrative technique. P-Square’s ingenuity came from the seamlessness of the association; the music carried all the relief one needed to be sure.

To be sure, the casual nature of the P-Square brand was their strongest appeal. And no other cache of songs reflected this as well as the love songs: ‘Omoge Mi’ and ‘Say Your Love’ would forever shine as a totem of the ordinary made to gleam extraordinarily. Worked into perfection, they perfectly embodied Nigerian R&B, a sound the duo was lucky to share with masters of the form. Styl Plus and Paul Play most remarkably, and the defunct Plantashun Boiz. Wherever they turned, they could see someone infusing the peculiar Nigerian quality into the genre of the nineties, which they were directly emerging from.

I remember what it felt like hearing ‘Omoge Mi’ at the time. Most poignantly, it is the video that has stayed in mind—the angelic hues of their white outfits, the outstretched hands depicting pain, the laboured, though beautiful brown faces of the twins, going through the motions of heartbreak. One felt that they were indeed hurt—so convincing was the act that went with the music, putting the viewer into direct touch with what was considered everyday feelings. One didn’t find a bizzy body or get into an altercation with the police every day, but one could certainly yearn with unceasing devotion, tears sacrificed at the altar of faded dreams.

‘If na you, tell me wetin you go do your girlfriend,’ they asked about the confounding situation of finding your lover cheating with your best friend. Even though betrayal is essentially part of the human condition, the phrasing is uniquely Nigerian in flavour. If na you, after all, is a phrase that’s still prevalent today, often employed to spur the empathy of the other person. P Square’s usage was effective because they reflected the narrative with character and situational depth. It was a question that was duly justified, likewise the admonition of truth that marks ‘Say Your Love’.

How could one album have so many generational records? Even with musical genius, it takes something special to speak directly to so many different people with a unifying voice. For 2Face, he had the benefit of versatility—those who didn’t like his love songs could pick up the political ones, or the esoteric musings on Self. P-Square didn’t move across such a wide thematic register, even later in their career, but they consolidated on their prime qualities. If anything, it was the duo’s everyday perspective that galvanized their charge towards legacy.

The Lagos-based musician Ekene ‘Kemena’ Nkemena attests to that influence. Dubbing his relationship with the album as ‘powerful,’ the singer-songwriter says that ‘P-Square [was] among my introduction to African music’. His mother was a big fan of the duo and would play their music a lot and talk about them as well, inspiring a rich vein of admiration within young Kemena. ‘It makes a very strong case for their impact in the basic unit of society, which is the family,’ he says:

They were one of a few, but definitely one of my earliest exposures to music—African music—and what it can sound like. And there’s no way I can talk about influence on my own music generally without P-Square being very strong in the foreground. I had Get Squared; I do not remember if I purchased it myself or my mom did, but I had the album and I played it a lot.

My relationship with the album was not very personal; I related with it on a creative basis. But it also goes to show how huge they were because as far as pop culture was concerned, the whole of Nigeria listened to P-Square, and I was simply just one of the people. It’s just that my own connection to it was extra because I had a thing for music, even though at the time I did not even realize that I was going to be a creative. I just knew that it resonated deeply, which makes another case that, apart from commercial appeal, the simple quality of the music itself connected to somebody who really had an almost-genius knack for being able to point out good music. It is definitely a pillar of foundational sounds for my generation—that is, the generation of millennials and early Gen-Z. P-Square was definitely the formative sound of what would become Afrobeats and R&B fusion.