Edem defends new controversial song “Toto” produced by Mr. Lekki

The VRMG Boss, Edem, sheds light on his newbie and unriddles the title “Toto” produced by Mr Lekki.

Though a few weeks old, the motivational reality infused jam is making controversial rounds among music lovers and critics who seem to translate the chorus of the song as offensive to the hearing, in fact the title of the song “Toto” also betrays the intentions of the singer, “toto” in the Gã language means ” the vagina”. But the artiste, intends to convey another meaning to his music lovers.

The lines in the song “we dey hustle for xetoto toto xetoto,….boys dey hustle for xetoto toto xetoto” got many critics concluding the song as foul and pronounced it unworthy of airplay. On their first hearing, they claim the lines leading up to the word paints a gross picture of what boys do as a hustle, and makes them cringe without understanding the words from the Ewe land.

It’s not the first and won’t be the last to find words meaning something else in another language, there’s the similarity of like-sounding words in one language or dialect which could mean something different in another language although the speakers of these two dialects may occupy a single geographical or cultural community. In linguistics, there’s the occurence of “false cognates”, this could be as a result of cultural contact between two language communities.

Cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. Cognates may have evolved similar, different or even opposite meanings, but in most cases there are some similar letters in the word. Some words sound similar, but don’t come from the same root; these are called false cognates.

Edem’s new jam “Toto” is a victim of false cognate, the singer/rapper explains in an Instagram comment in a reply to an Accra based drive show host, Elvis Crystal of Pluzz Fm, that in the Ewe dialect “xetoto” means hot afternoon, “xe” is the Sun, and “Toto” is to rise. From the chorus cycles you’d hear “we dey hustle for xetoto, boys dey hustle for xetoto toto xetoto, we dey hustle for xetoto”

Having stamped out the puzzlement of the word in relation to the song, Edem’ s new banger tells the vivid story of young people and their daily hustle to make ends meet in the hot afternoon “xetoto”.

(Story: Elvis Crystal)