A friend insists Cole is a citizen of the world and has a strange notion of Lagos. He thinks Cole’s treatment of Lagos is unfair, somewhat panders to a western stereotypical idea of an African city. The obvious gaze of corruption, suffering, and everything bad, difficult to disagree with.

Although, whenever I think about stereotypes – I am usually careful because of my relationship with truth-telling – I try to think of the truth first, but I have learned that sometimes our truths have ways that unintentionally enforces certain stereotypes. So, I feel that Cole’s guilt is that of telling the truth. The truth is what it is, whether or not it panders to an existing negative ideology.

Cole’s Lagos isn’t different from today’s reality Lagos, save the necessary evolutions aided by time. New roads and new BRT buses, now mostly rickety, giving Lagos a new identity but – even at that – old Lagos still peeps through the cracks with its yellow buses, also known as danfos, and the agberos with their thick and pompous attitudes.

The most fascinating thing about Lagos, which Cole acknowledges is the idea of power or perhaps the notion of it. Allegiances are quick to switch. A threat could morph to apologies or praise if you can just dare to query the ruffian who issued the threat. Cole writes of an uncle who bluffs his way out of a tight corner by asking an extortionist if he knew who he was. It is events like this where one learns to adjust to the hostile environment, the speed of improvisation, that changes how one sees the city.

The reading at Jazzhole was over. A line of people holding books percolated, waiting for Cole’s autograph. I had signed my copies of his books on his return to the Ake Festival in 2016 so I instead browsed the store’s shelves for books and spoke to other guests. I was determined not to repeat the debacle of my first encounter with him. I had imagined the forms my conversations with him might take, the topics and themes, perhaps photography or the manner with which he sees things which usually takes his essays to a route different from everyone else’s. I even imagined perhaps we could talk about music or books, his opinion on Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and bell hooks. Or ask if he enjoyed Jay-Z or listened to Avicii. 

Cole finished signing and I found him standing alone. His smiling face turned towards me, warmer than I could have ever thought and I became disarmed, so much so I stood in front of him and smiled back like a simpleton. I would muse later about his impression of me in that instance and what could have occurred had my friend Adeola Opeyemi not intervened and done the introductions.