Last year ended on a crescendo for Nigerian pop culture. Closing out with the yearly Detty December activities that bled into a hectic Christmas season, an influx of I Just Got Backs and indeed, those who had never been before, brought the country, especially its cultural capital in Lagos, to life. Tyla and Gunna shared a stage at Flytime Fest to perform their single, Jump. Chloe Bailey spent a few days in Lagos in the company of Burna Boy. Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido, who shuttle residences between Nigeria and abroad, were all homebound in December. Whilst this saturation of music stars appeared on the surface as some indication of our industry’s robust status, the paucity of performances from these artists, especially during the otherwise festive Detty December, betrays an imbalance between Nigeria’s music industry and its stars that has been growing for the past few years.
Zoom out the picture beyond December and it is even more concerning. 2024 was a continuation of a restructuring that our music industry has been unwittingly undergoing for the last two decades, one that refashions our country as a producer of music for a global audience, and not necessarily a consumer. The investment made into Afrobeats in the past decade has been enormous, setting up young creatives for life on the strength of their talents and funding a local industry to support AnRs, talent managers, executives and more. Yet our industry has not grown at the same pace as its stars.
Nowhere does this manifest than in concerts, as show promoters complain about the challenge of booking Nigerian artists who try to charge as much in Naira as they do in prosperous countries abroad. As the situation gets more frustrating, promoters get creative. While some sign on underground acts as headline performers, others recruit top-class DJs who can unroll many artists’ discography for the price of one. Yet others throw together rave parties, where mega fans can unite over a star’s music in their absence: a number of fans who failed to read the fine print were left disappointed after a Lungu Boy block party organized by Empire and Coke Studio did not feature the titular Lungu Boy.
These workabouts, clever as they are, do not hide that Nigerians are now too poor to afford their biggest acts. In December, Wizkid, Davido, and Burna Boy performed only at a handful of events, brought together by the few Nigerian organizations with the resources and/or influence to book them—deep-pocketed multinationals like GTCO and Oando, or a governmental arm like the Lagos State Government. Afrobeats to the world looks to have come at an enormous price: taking Afrobeats away from Nigeria.
Two years ago, at the 16th Headies award ceremony, Rema delivered a speech, mostly directed at his colleagues, on the need to support the institutions that uphold the industry. He could not have picked a better venue than the award that, despite its many shortcomings, had taken several measures to make its honors of some worth to the artists that receive them—they upgraded the Next Rated car prize to an exquisite Bentley Bentayga, and they controversially moved the show outside the country to accommodate a better-produced venue. None of these, however, was sufficient to convince Nigeria’s best and brightest to attend the ceremony en masse. In August, the Headies announced a call for entries for the 17th Headies, but no further announcement has followed. Nigerian artists do not appear very concerned about the status of their premier music award.
The record label situation is another indication of a growing national-foreign disparity. The current strategy for the major artist is to have two labels: a Nigerian one, and an attachment to one of the Majors or their subsidiaries. Wizkid owns his Starboy imprint and is attached to RCA records, Burna Boy has Spaceship and Warner Records Inc., and Davido balances DMW with RCA records. Over the years, many a relationship between a star and a Nigerian label has fallen into an increasingly familiar tale of acrimonious separation. Artists outgrow (or assume they have outgrown) membership of a Nigerian imprint, training their eyes on international partners. A year ago, Ruger and Joeboy were the latest of many artists to exchange the labels that first platformed them for self-founded imprints. Before the year ended, Shallipopi and the teenage hotshot Muyeez pulled a coup on Dapper music, terminating contracts with the label that prides itself in discovering and showcasing its Street-fashioned talents. It was a move that, following Seyi Vibez’s earlier departure, landed it a heavy blow. It threatens a future where record label owners fear the futility of artist investment, especially towards a long-term plan.
Music-wise, the picture isn’t much better. Releases from the second half of last year masked the rot of what 2024 was initially shaping to be—a year of stagnation after half a decade of propulsive rise of Afrobeats. It was bad enough to have fans and critics alike worried of our music’s continued growth and even survival. Although those opinions are now in the past, the symptoms that necessitated them are far from resolved. It was a year of evolution for our industry, for better or worse. We took a collective step away from Amapiano, the South African genre that has steered the direction of Afropop in the last few years. But this shift, albeit commendable, comes with its own unintended effects. It places our industry in sonic limbo with the next stamping sound yet to be discovered.
Rema made waves with Heis— “I don put the game for reset”—but its ripples are yet to arrive at other major houses of our industry. Asake’s Lungu Boy posits his ingenuity in skipping the high-energy fusion of Fuji and Amapiano that had hitherto been his staple, but without a singular, genre-defining sound, Asake can no longer impact the industry like he did before. Relative newcomer Minz excelled with By Any Minz, but its strength was not in ingenuity but craft, how Minz held on to vestiges of Amapiano to fashion a sound that was familiar without feeling antiquated. Wizkid’s Morayo showcases sonic range, from Wizkid’s new affront to RnB and Afro-soul to fiery Afropop jams reminiscent of Superstar, but none of these can be considered definitive or novel. The projects that held on to a distinct sonic template—like Odunsi’s LEATHER PARK Vol. 1 with Alté—are faithful to genres that are still left outside the consciousness of mainstream consumers.
This in itself, the need for Nigerian music to have a single dominating soundscape at each time, is a product of poor categorization that has appointed Afrobeats as Nigeria’s sole “genre.” Our music is therefore circumscribed into eras and not sub-genres, and each era pulls the entire creative industry in a single direction: like Pon-Pon in 2017 or Amapiano in 2021. The artists that break the mould with conviction may go on to headline the next era: Mr. Eazi, Asake, and now, perhaps Rema. A few other brave, passionate pioneers stick to a niche that is not very popular or profitable, like the disciples of Alte have done for the last ten years. The rest of the industry expends so much creative force on whatever movement is currently trending. When music is not very authentic it cannot be very good, and it has been noted that our music has declined in quality in recent years, especially the songs that make it to the top of our charts.
Last year was notable for its lack of a globally incandescent hit, the likes of which propelled CKay, Fireboy, Oxlade, and Bnxn into international conversations in the past. As it stands, most of the foreign airplay of Nigerian music is in the hands of a few superstars, and the chasm between this contingent and the artists developing in Lagos has never been larger. Ironically, it exists because the stars who have made this crossover are burning the proverbial bridge by downplaying the institutions that propelled them to success: abandoning record labels that platformed them, ignoring award shows that provided their first silverware, snubbing media that published their first profiles, overcharging local showmakers who granted them their first minutes on the microphone.
As the fervor of Detty December cools, it is time to examine the industry that has brought us so much national pride in the last two decades. Nigeria still has its precarious economic situation, so most creative effort will understandably be directed towards pushing our music where it can be exchanged for big bucks. But it doesn’t mean our local industry has to suffer for it. For one, there is still no pathway to stardom that avoids the step of first attaining some clout in Nigeria, and a cursory comparison between the UK and US Afrobeats charts and Nigeria’s own rankings reveals that, to a large extent, the local listenership of Afrobeats songs still influences the rest of the world. It is up to the industry of today—artists, music executives, record labels, and more—to preserve Nigerian institutions for the next generation of superstars, or there won’t be a next-generation at all.
Source: Culture Custodian
