The title of Sarz’s long-awaited debut album, Protect Sarz At All Costs, compels us to ask: what makes Sarz so important that he must be protected at all costs?
The question is answered in the 12-track project, spanning 34 minutes, featuring some of the producer’s frequent collaborators and fresh voices drawn into his orbit.
The album is a collection of finely constructed melodies – pulsing, groovy, and soulful – typical of Sarz’s output. Yet it pushes into new directions. It is at once a continuation of his legacy and a reinvention of it, suggesting that the best way to protect Sarz is to allow him room to evolve.
As a music producer, Sarz has been busy and prolific in the background for years, shaping artists and helping them build their sounds. Now he is ready to reshape himself as a curator of sound and voices. Yet, he though he seems unwilling to hug the spotlight, neither does he shrink into the background. Instead, he constructs an environment where his collaborators have the freedom to vocalise his vision while extending their own creative identities.
It took Sarz over two years to curate the album to his tastes, and the result is that its harmony is neither forced nor accidental. “It’s always been something I wanted to do,” Sarz says before the album’s release. “I’ve just taken the step forward to make an album because it’s a lot of work. It’s not something I can just put together in a week or so, because I like to take my time with my work.”
Sarz also admits that he was anxious, despite taking his time to put the album together. That admission reveals a vulnerability producers rarely show publicly: that the work of arranging voices, beats, and moods into a coherent album is not simply technical, but deeply personal.
Anxious but grateful, Sarz opens the album with gratitude. On “Grateful,” featuring WurlD and the South African Ndlovu Youth Choir, he positions divine protection as the ultimate safety net. The song is two-part: The first part begins with a female voiceover praising God for being able-bodied with clear thoughts and food to eat. It’s followed by Wurld reflecting as a sinner who begs for God’s protection. The second, sung soulfully by the South African Ndlovu Youth Choir, sleekly serves as a prelude to the subsequent track, “Happiness”, featuring an inspired Asake and elated Gunna.
Moving from uncertainty to certainty, the album plunges into earthly pursuits. Asake, again, joins Wizkid on “Getting Paid”. Sarz interpolates with “Jarabi” by the Malian Grammy-winning kora player Toumani Diabaté, merging West African griot tradition with contemporary Afropop melody. Asake and Wizkid, Skillbeng, artists of different vocal temperaments, are placed on the same level, and Sarz ensures that they never overwhelm one another. Sarz replicates the same magic on “Mademoiselles” with ODUMODUBLVCK, Shallipopi, Theodora, Zeina, slightly heightening the album’s tempo.
Beyond gratitude and groove, Protect Sarz At All Costs explores the eternal themes of love and sensuality, though always refracted through Sarz’s playful lens. Desire is draped in elegance on the lush “BMF” featuring Fireboy DML and Byron Messia. The horns and layered percussion create a smoky atmosphere where Fireboy’s velvety delivery and Byron’s patois-edged vocals turn intimacy into celebration and seduction. However, the song ends abruptly, leaving us hanging. It’s a rare moment where Sarz’s control of flow feels interrupted.
“Body,” delivered smoothly by Joeboy, offers perhaps the most direct celebration of physical intimacy. “You [‘re] the gem that I’ve been searching for,” Joeboy sings, trying to curry the favour of the lady. “The way I feel about you girl, say nobody knows, uh.”
That sensual sentiment ripples through other songs but takes on different shades. The mood is subversive with Qing Madi on “In A Mustang” and Teni and Libianca on “African Barbie” (why not Barbies?). Qing Madi wants to give love in a Mustang and show off her man in nice places. All she needs in return is love.
“My focus is your body,” Libianca begins on “African Barbie”. Though she wants them to get naughty, she doesn’t want sexual intimacy because she is celibate. She prefers her lover’s mind to sex. Teni doesn’t offer much but asks Libianca a salient question: What exactly do you want? The irony is interesting: Sarz frames abstinence as another form of desire.
And then there’s the jazzy WurlD’s sensual showcase, “Nice & Slow,” where whispered vocals stretch against minimal instrumentation to heighten anticipation.
These tracks ride on the tension between love, celibacy, and longing, hinting at restraint while the beat pulses with temptation underneath. Together, they show Sarz’s ability to curate multiple shades of intimacy, from restraint to abandon, without losing the album’s coherence.
What keeps Protect Sarz At All Costs from being a mere producer’s vanity showcase is its playfulness. From the title to the body of work, the feeling persists that Sarz is taking the piss as he resists the temptation to treat the album like a summary of past successes. Instead, he explores, making some tracks cheeky.
“Up,” featuring Victony, is a high-octane blend of house and EDM, laced with witty lyricism and earworm hooks, its beat creeping in stealthily only to explode with full force. Lojay appears twice on the album, singing solo on “Love Me Then” and “Billion”. The former is about a lover who, despite all his affection and sacrifices, left him broken and full of bones, like a graveyard. The latter is about how romantic relationships in Lagos are driven by money. “Lagos city, sex only sure if you’re rich or popping,” he sings.
Protect Sarz At All Costs is a well-curated album from one of the best Afrobeats beatmakers. Though one had expected the cameos from his prominent collaborators, Reminisce and Niniola, artists whose Sarz helped design and uplift their careers, their absence, however, doesn’t diminish the album’s brilliance.
Throughout his career, Sarz has been a vehicle for other people’s feelings. That’s the long-standing trade-off that comes with being a producer. You become the container, the framework, for other people’s expression. On Protect Sarz At All Costs, however, Sarz tilts the scale back towards himself.
This project is a celebration of his influence and a declaration of his untouchable status. By curating, composing, and directing rather than merely producing, Sarz proves that the title of the album is less hyperbole than prophecy. And even though he doesn’t voice the record, his perspective as well as his personal one is thoroughly reflected.
The call to “protect Sarz at all costs” is not simply about shielding one man. It is about valuing the brain behind the music, the mind that shapes sound into feeling. With this project, Sarz is no longer just a producer lending beats to others. He is a curator of worlds, reminding us that the safest hands in music might, in fact, be his own.
