MTN Y’ello Star viewers watched as 14 finalists displayed their vocal strength and performance abilities as they performed to determine who would be the first to lose their right of performance on the show.
At the end of the sixth episode of the show’s debut season, five of the 14 contestants, who are at the bottom of the leaderboard after scoring the lowest cumulative points, are up for exclusion from live performance.
Excluded contestants will lose their right to perform at the live shows but will remain in the Y’ello Hub to continue their musical education delivered by acclaimed faculty members.
Week 3 kicked off with highlife and folk music performances from the finalists with each performance rated within the range of 10. Jesse Drumz performed first singing “Time Na Money” by Mike Okri. At the end of his performance, Banky W, one of 3 judges on the show expressed delight at his improvement saying he was “starting to come into his own”.
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Banky W used the judges chat session as an opportunity to remind the contestants that talent is never enough in the music industry, it takes more than that to succeed. “If you are talented and entitled and not willing to push yourself and get the other things you need to complete that picture; you will never make it,” he said.
Asides watching the contestants put in some work to keep themselves in the show, performances from episode 5 proved to be a journey down memory lane as contestants performed Nigerian classics from various decades from the 70s to the 2010s.
Rael scored the lowest for the highlife performances as her rendition of Onyeka Onwenu’s “You and I” didn’t impress the judges enough to get her a score better than 4.3.
For Sunday’s episode 6, the contestants performed a mix of pop and RNB hits by Aretha Franklin, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Rihanna and Seal. The top performance of the day was Freeborn’s powerful delivery of Aretha Franklin’s “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman”, which earned her a 19.6 rating, as the judges ranked contestants on a scale of 0 to 20.
Rael once again got the lowest rating, as her performance of Alicia Keys’ Empire State of Mind earned her an 11.3 rating. Guest judge, Olisa Adibua criticized her song choice, stating that though she had fun performing it, she could have picked a bettersuited song.
