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StarrGirl Takes the Stage

Let us begin with the purple gèlè.

There is something to the draw of alté artists to old school Nollywood style. These old Nolly films were not much for subtlety, so the too-muchness of the makeup and too-short-ness of the skirts provided strong visual cues for what it looks like to be a young woman who refuses to be tamed by our collective socioreligious ideals. It contrasted wonderfully with the too-longness of the skirts of those women who would later give their lives to Christ, and the too-fullness of the boubous of the women who are wives and mothers. Meme culture is a re-appropriation of pre-existing cultural artifacts (old Nollywood films, in this case), so the original intent of these portrayals as cautionary tales is not quite the point here. In the 2010s, rather than its original intent, the maximalism of Nollywood “bad girl” style provided excellent fodder for both online meme culture that used memes as the palm oil with which social media posts are eaten (my profuse apologies to Chinua Achebe), and in the fashion landscape of the alté scene as a way of claiming both space and originality.

For me, the visual identity for Starrgirl — with the super-tight dress and the loud purple gele — is in line with the decade-plus long engagement with the maximalism in Nigerian style imagination. I see in that maximalism a way of remixing the age-long with the present alongside a refusal to be quiet, in either word or deed. When we arrive, it seems to say, we do not slink quietly into a dark corner of the room. It is an insistence on our presence; Nigerian as fuck, yes, but also shaped by — and shaping! — this world we have found ourselves in. The difference here, though, is that Ayra is using this representation, not towards an exclusively Nigerian audience, but rather as a way to claim space in a global pop landscape that mostly favors pop music styles that are more recognisable to western audiences.

The cultural confidence in the purple-hued visuals reflects the confidence with which Ayra presents Starrgirl. To be fair, it is the same cultural confidence with which Ayra has done pretty much everything else, from the Ayra Starr EP that introduced her to the world and her first album 19 and Dangerous, up to now. She has always been unmistakably Nigerian, but also a talented young woman with many different influences and grand global ambitions for herself.

The sequencing on the album embodies this cultural confidence, arranged as it is by mood while hopscotching easily between genres, from afrobeats to r’n’b to afrohouse styles emerging from Nigerians’ flirtations with dance and electronic music (this time, mercifully free of the amapiano logdrum). Starrgirl begins with the intro “Dangerous”, which begins with Terry Apala’s voice. It’s a most Yoruba of beginnings, full of self-praise and bombast, with Terry Apala’s distinctive voice laced through it. It gives way to “Amazing”, a sexy album standout that features Kwn. This probably isn’t fair, but I couldn’t help thinking back on her verse in Young Jonn’s “Stamina”, and how much more grown up of a verse it is on pretty much similar subject matter. “Dangerous” to “Amazing” is a sharp change in direction — from afrobeats to r’n’b — but it feels a lot less jarring a transition than it should be. She moves back to afrobeats with “Gimme Dat”, but the transition and sequencing between the songs again makes it effortless. I’m still working on forgiving her for her use of the Diallo sample, which honestly still feels weird given the significance of the Wyclef Jean song it borrows from. She stays sexy and flirty through a few more songs, from the Wizkid collaboration on “Gimme Dat” to “Midnight in New York”. “Ms. Paper” and “Dance” sound like the kind of electronic-influenced dance music we’re beginning to see coming out of Nigeria. I love the francophone collaboration with Theodora, and would love to see more guest verses on it in the coming months.

Given her move to NY to make this album, one big question I had was how she would use r’n’b and more mainstream pop in this new record, how much she would lean away from afrobeats. There is no correct balance to the cocktail, but I think it is interesting that her lead singles “Gimme Dat,” “Who’s Dat Girl,” and “Tornado” are strongly afrobeats, while “Where Do We Go” is more of a dance/pop record. In the run-up to the album release, de-contextualized from the larger body of work, the song choices felt lacking in direction and I worried for what StarrGirl would be. I’m still not sure they were the best singles choices but now, having listened to the larger body of work, the songs somehow sound even better. They are anchored in the larger story of her musical identity as an artist, even if not truly representative of what the body of work ended up being.

The final third of the album is slowed down and earnest. “Letter to God” and “Treasure” are both brilliant and tender, but “Heaven Baby” is the real standout here. It feels almost like a rock ballad, and Zayn brings a vulnerability to it that I love. In the 1980s, “Heaven Baby” would have had a lengthy piano or electronic guitar solo somewhere in the middle, kinda like Bon Jovi’s classic “Always”, but we’re in the 2020s where all our music has to be under three minutes long. Much of pop music has adapted to the two-minute pop song, but there are still times that it can be jarring, and this is one of those times. Or maybe I’m just sad because I wanted even more of an utterly gorgeous song.

Just as with her previous album, Ayra once again gives us a cohesive body of work that demonstrates a real point of view that is strongly filtered through her vision, taste and experiences. Her previous album was let down post-rollout with singles choices and missed opportunities (I still can’t forgive her team for never giving us a video for “Woman Commando”). I hope this album goes out into the world and does what it deserves to.

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Speaking of gèlè…

While we’re talking about alté stylings and the use of gèlè, I would be remiss to not talk about Solana. I feel a little smug about the attention “Okunkun” has gotten because I’ve known of her for a year or so now as an indie artist with promise. She’s occupied the same folder of my brain that artists like Winny and Celeste Ojatula (both of whom I enjoy) sit. The first verse opens with (here’s the English translation) “It is getting dark/ I’m all alone/ I’m not waiting, quickly quickly, I get ready and move quickly/ bad things tend to be waiting in the dark”. If you do not speak Yoruba, you would be forgiven for missing the apprehension and defiance in the lyrics given the jaunty, danceable beat and her even, confident vocal. It’s a thing we see in so many songs we love, like Burna Boy’s “Last Last”or even Magic System’s “Premier Gaou,” both of which we dance to as though they are not break-up songs.

I really love the use of traditional dress in the visualizer for this because I think it represents the confidence with which we ought to engage with our respective cultures. A culture is yours when you do not treat it as though it were behind high-security glass casing at a museum. It is a living, breathing thing that lives beside you, with you, and shapes the way you see the world, but you also have to take hold of it and mold it, and make it engage and adapt with the present. It is the visual equivalent of slang, in the way that it both subverts and re-contextualizes language, bends it to the will of those who use it in the here and now. So you take that iro and buba, and make the iro shorter and the buba slightly more fitted. You take that boubou and you add a drawstring for the days you have errands and need something easy to put on, but still want to remind the world that the body is tea.

You might even wear that short skin-tight dress, complete the look with a big ass purple gèlè, and create an animated visual identity with it. Why the fuck not?

All this talk about Nollywood-inspired fashion and style is making me think the newsletter probably needs a fashion edition at some point. Watch this space.

More New Music

A couple of editions ago, I complained about how not much of the Nigerian music scene has grabbed me this year. I’m very glad that seems to be changing now. Taves’ new Popstar EP has been on constant rotation for me. Been absolutely loving “Preaching”, the genius Wizkid sample "on “Uche Jombo” and the laidback delivery on “Take Me Away”. The entire body of work is worth your time.

I’ve recently got wind of an artist named Noah Guy. I’m checking out his album Memoria, in Blue on my next gym day, but you can get to it before I do.

Baby Rose’ new album Yearnalism has also been on rotation since it has landed. I can’t stop listening to the plaintive but hopeful “Sunday”, but I also really enjoy “Better”, “But Nvm” and her collaboration with Leon Thomas “Friends Again.” Her voice is distinctive, and she wields it in wonderfully unexpected ways.

Girlsweetvoiced is a new artist with a new body of work called Lovesweet you should check out. I’m still making my way through it, so I have no solid takes just yet, but maybe I can convince you to check her out with this: her song “Tonight” contains a sample that was cleared by THE Joni Mitchell.

Until next time.

Happy New Edition to all who celebrate! Previous editions here and here.

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So, About the South Africa thing…

Nigerians, along with much of black Africa on social media, have been getting high off of sweet schadenfreude from South Africa playing woefully and losing against Mexico in the first game of the World Cup. This is not unexpected, of course; South African xenophobic violence against other black Africans has been a recurring issue over the decade, but the latest round of violence has been roiling for the past couple of months.

But why has Nigeria’s popular culture not reflected this anger? Group Therapy raves this past May still included the South African DJ Heavy K. Asake named Uncle Waffles as part of his upcoming tour. There has not been a single word on the xenophobic violence from the most famous Nigerian artists who make up some of the most popular figures across the continent. There has been no pressure from Nigerian artists on their South African counterparts to verbalize even the most lukewarm “One Africa” response. None of our biggest artists have issued even the most anodyne commentary. This recent wave of violence has been added to the pile of things our artists ignore in favor of calls to the dancefloor, how much sex they are having, and how lavishly they can spend in a club.

This, by the way, is not a call for Nigerian artists to completely shun South African collaborations. Indeed, I’m a huge fan of South African music myself, and have been a huge fan of South African house music since I was in secondary school when Channel O was still available in Nigeria and Big Nuz was still a thing. Cross-continental music collaborations, unmediated as they are by the west, always make me happy. Rather, I think it is important to recognise this silence as deliberate and ask ourselves why artists speaking up in favour of the audiences that vaulted them to international stardom is not happening more.

And yes, even though our music has lost much of its political edge, the silence is still weird. The EndSars protests of 2020 was the last time I remember meaningful pressure on Nigerian popular culture figures to “say something” because people showed that they gave a damn. A lot has happened in the last six years, and I cannot recall a time that moved our artists to speak on issues that concern us. It is true that TuBaba and Asa are of the last generation of Nigerian artists who were as likely to sing about political themes as they are to sing love songs. For the generation of Nigerian artists before them, such as with artists like Sunny Okosun, Onyeka, and Femi Kuti, being political was as natural as breathing. It would not be true to say that we never get political awareness anymore; after all, Patoranking’s “Abobi” and Ajebo Hustlers’ “Barawo” took on weighty topics. However, this engagement has been few and far between compared to what Nigerian music sounded like in the pre-Afrobeats era between the late 1980s and circa 2003 when Kennis Music emerged. As I wrote back around election time in 2023:

“As our politics and local economies became more of a shitshow and our artists became more popular globally, our music became more and more a place of escape from our desperately awful socio-political existence. Even our clubs and partying have only seemed to become more lavish and hedonistic the more shitty things have gotten, our attempts at escape more elaborate and inviting with each passing year. I once asked a Nollywood filmmaker friend why so many films focused so much on the wealthiest Nigerians and not enough on lower-income people, and his response was “nobody wants to watch stories about poverty.” Similarly, logic goes, nobody wants to listen to music about the shit realities they live in everyday, and the entertainers we look to for escapism probably don’t want to reflect anything of our realities either.”

One of the unique things about Nigeria is that the mark of having attained full socioeconomic freedom is disengagement from your environment. For most Nigerians, it means not relying on local electricity distribution for light, not relying on local sources for water, being so untouched by our economy that one can travel at will or even leave the country altogether, and having as much money as one could ever want. For our artists, it means being able to tour abroad, do foreign collabs, get foreign endorsements, and maybe being able to spend most of their time away from Nigeria. Given that 2023 elections saw much fewer of the “go out and vote” PSAs from Nigerian entertainers that we saw in 2019 and 2015, you could say that our artists are adopted the “success as disengagement” rationale that the rest of us have.

We need to be concerned about what it means when it is not deemed an obvious business decision for our artists to speak out for your primary audience. It is one thing for our artists to find no material benefit in focusing on local fans, in terms of streaming numbers and touring locally. It is quite another for our artists’ eyes to have wandered so far away that they do not seek to represent us – in word or deed.

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Ibeyi’s Striking New Video

The video for Aset begins with an empty hallway. We then see young people walking this hallway to an apartment already teeming with people. We can see the sweaty sheen from the heat on their bodies. Someone comes in with a cake that looks homemade. In this small flat, there’s a couch backed up against the wall, one of those plush, brown ones with the white lace on the headrest that you probably recognise from an old house from another era. In this cramped space, we see many small worlds: two little kids playing on the floor in the small space between the couch and the television, a pair of lovers being tender with each other, another pair lighting a smoke, a mixed group with an older man and younger ones playing dominos. When one of the Ibeyi twins begins dancing, the air in the room changes. The dance spreads across the room like a fever. Someone sprays alcohol on her with their mouth as she dances, an act often done as a purification practice in some traditional religions. There is a lack of self-consciousness, a lack of desire to please or pander. It does not explain who these people are. The artists themselves are simply part of the larger gathering. There are drums and there is dancing and it feels human and real.

I watched this video several times wondering why it was so striking to me, and I realized that it was the first time in a while that I was watching a music video where neither the message of the song nor the video were stylized to within an inch of its life. It showcased no aspiration in the material sense. The video is clearly depicting working class people, but the video showcases neither their relative lack nor wealth. There was no desire to explain. Instead, there was spirituality, community, and gathering. The video seeks to embody something of the music and its context for the viewer. It does the work of claiming space and naming its people. This claiming of space is political work, because it makes our point of view the center of our world and gives us the platform to claim the centrality of that point of view. Even if only for a few minutes, the people get to just be, holding each other and holding space for each other. And for those few minutes, that is enough.

If you’re not up on Ibeyi, go check out their last album from a few years ago before their new album drops. Mama Says, Deathless and River are my favorites. Their video for the second single Offerings from their upcoming album of the same name is beautiful as well.

ALSO: I’ve written about Nigerian music videos and why they should be more relatable before. You can read that here.

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Some New-New

Celeste Ojatula has a lovely new EP called “Our Time in the Sun”. It’s quirky and folksy and made me smile a lot. The talking drums on Oya Wa made me want to stand up and dance like an old Yoruba grandmother at a wedding. This Side of Love is a collaboration with Dwin the Stoic, and their voices meld beautifully. The whole EP is worth your time.

Ayra Starr is dropping a new album, and I LOVE the album art. Wearing a tight dress with a gele shows a real point of view, a consciousness of her positionality as a Nigerian with global pop-star ambitions. I can’t lie, though, I’m a bit worried about her management. After an impressive rollout of her last album, they fucked everything up with weird singles choices (I’ll never forgive them for not giving us a Woman Commando video). Going to the 2025 Met Gala is a huge deal, but her styling was so bad that Ayra herself didn’t even post it, opting to only post her after-party look. Also, the summer is here and I don’t understand why Hot Body hasn’t caught a second wind. Her single Where Did We Go came and went, but let’s see what happens with her new single Tornado and with the album itself. I hope it does well.

I’ve been absolutely stoked by all the experimental hiphop I’ve been listening to recently. Vince Staples has a new rock album that’s political and fiery. It’s such a departure from his 2024 album “Dark Times” that I absolutely loved, which was much more sparse. Lil Simz’ EP is also experimental but a lot more fun. Simz collaborated Deela on track called Open Arms, and what I like about Deela and the rise of sub-genres like Mara (which I wrote about last month) is that you can see the influence of rave culture in her style. Check out her new single Repeat.

And now some albums I’m impatiently waiting for. I’ve currently got Baby Rose’s upcoming album “Yearnalism” pre-saved. Both singles she’s released from it — But, Nvm and Friends Again with Leon Thomas — are well worth your time. Entirely too many of you slept on the Baby Rose x BadBadNotGood “Slow Burn” EP for my liking, so please go fix that before the new one drops. My girl Syd has a new album called “Beard” coming out, too. Her first in four years. I can’t wait.

Until next time.

It’s another edition! Thanks so much for reading/sharing/subscribing. You’re a real one. Previous editions here and here.

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Hold Your Applause

You guys mind if I rant real quick?

Another award season has mostly come and gone (I know the American Music Awards is around the corner), and honestly after watching year after year of the Grammys I really began to resent the talk about Nigerian music artists and western award shows. Honestly, the conversation around award shows as it relates to creators who are non-white and non-Western (thinking of the swirl of conversation around the movie “Sinners” and Teyana Taylor in “One Battle” here) in western countries bears some discussion, but I’m going to restrict my rant to Nigerian music artists. A major reason why this in particular irks me is because it reminds me of the way the cost of Nigeria’s dysfunction shows up everywhere.

One of the features of having come up in a low-trust society is that nobody trusts anyone else’s intentions, and everything – even validation – is up for the highest bidder. Add to that our struggle with building credible long-standing institutions, and the systemic failure of everything that requires collective effort. Think about it: We have great writers who publish well-received books, but most of the films we produce suck. We sometimes point to individuals in government we hold in high esteem, but would largely agree that most institutions are run by charlatans or incompetent people. The entertain industry as a whole has seen some immensely talented young Nigerians thrive, even though the actual systems undergirding the industry, like how royalties are collected and dealing with piracy, remains long-standing issues. This is even leaving aside how the local economy is affecting the industry. For example, how many fans cannot afford shows or visits to the cinema as the economy worsens, and how cheap streaming subscriptions also means that local streams in Nigeria are not as valuable as streams in places with stronger economies.

I get it. Once something starts requiring too many Nigerians, we know not to expect it to work. And if it works, we know not to expect it to last. If we cannot build solid institutions that last, then we cannot build institutions whose awards mean anything.

It is no wonder, then, we mostly look askance at local awards, artist or not. Even outside of music, politicians and celebrities are often offered awards and titles for a fee, and I can’t quite say I blame them; these awards add to their popularity, and popularity is currency. Burna Boy captured his ambivalence towards local awards in an old EbonyLife interview where he explained why he trusts awards given outside Nigeria. A key thing he notes is that you can’t bribe your way to awards in other countries. I get that.

The problem with this is that we now look to westerners who do not know us or our context, who consume our media in the tiniest sips if at all, to categorize, judge and validate our output. Our inability to do things that require a collective is part of why Nigerian pop music even got named afrobeats in the first place, but now the coast of this name that has been foisted on us has expanded well beyond our shores. For IHeartMusic, MTV, and the Grammy awards, everything from the continent is afrobeats.

The expansion of the coast, however, also serves as a cage. When two Nigerian artists Wizkid and Tems made a global hit with “Essence” that saw a huge commercial success in America, it still only saw nominations in African music categories, but not in mainstream popular music categories that it had earned. Sure, the Grammys are an American award, but an equally successful song by a British artist would have seen more mainstream recognition. Tems has managed to cross over to mainstream r’n’b, thanks in part to hugely successful collaborations with Drake and Future, and more recently a great collaboration with Dave. Tyla with her upcoming album A-Pop for which she just dropped a collaboration with Zara Larssen, is also attempting a similar crossover (we’ll see how that goes). I’m glad its worked out for these artists, but there are many artists from Naija with far less crossover appeal that perhaps these kinds of overtures would not even be even worth attempting.

It is normal to seek awards and even validation and recognition, but global markets are often like funhouse mirrors that do not show you as you are. They do not see you as clearly as people who know the context of your work do, who know what you’re trying to do. It betrays the dubious wisdom of seeking your validation from people who do not know you or your work well enough to truly provide it. Burna on the “Level Up” intro on his album Twice as Tall talked about how missing out on the Grammys had him feeling “sick as fuck,” and I remember how sad it made me then that we do not have an award locally that would mean as much to him as a Grammy would. Seeing people mock an artist who did not win a Grammy annoys me.

Awards are more important than merely giving someone their tens. They are also part of how we tell our collective story of who we are, what/who is important to us, and contextualize what we have now in the larger backdrop of who we have been. Global superstardom is great, but we now have a situation where even just being known and loved in your own country, among your own people, is not enough for reasons both economic and cultural.

It is bad enough that many young Nigerians have to leave the country to realize their dreams and potential. To see Nigerian music artists having to do is just as unacceptable.

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Read This

I really enjoyed Hanif Abdulrraqib’s essay in The New Yorker called “Our Longing for Inconvenience” on how our modern lives are ill-equipped with dealing with inconvenience in a way that does not help us build community. It’s beautiful. You should check it out.

Currently bookmarked somewhere in my tabs is a short story by a writer I’d not heard of named Toye Oladinni published in Granta called “International Soul Cultist”. The opening lines drew me in, so I’m digging into it this weekend. Granta also has what looks like an excerpt from Buchi Emecheta’s memoirs on her childhood in Lagos published in 1983 free to read. If you want more fiction, check out Eloghosa Osunde’s gorgeous short story “Silverscreen” published in Jupiter magazine. It’s about two women, former lovers who reconnect on a beach holiday.

If you’re part of the crew that frequents raves, you likely know a thing or two about mara music, which is a sort of offshoot of electronic music that’s emerged in the past year. Naija artists have finally left the amapiano log-drum alone (RIP, THANK GOD), but the popularity of raves I have been waiting to see how electronic music would continue to shape Nigerian music. DJs like YK Mule and Khalipha are at the forefront of this new subgenre that blends afrobeats sounds with heavy synths and trance-like rhythms. Tiktok charts its rise, chronicles its dances (pretty much various forms of legwork) and its emerging sound that’s already broken through commercially, with heavy influence in songs like Seyi Vibes “Shaolin”. Native Magazine did a piece on it a while ago, and so did OkayAfrica.

Lastly, I really enjoyed reading Culture Custodian’s Industea’s Substack on Tola Akerele’s work to revamp the National Theater in Lagos. I’m keen to see how the space will continue to be used in the coming years.

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We Jammin’

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I have to say that much of the music I’ve been listening to this year has not been Nigerian. The odd single, yes, but no real bodies of work have been worth it so far.

Outside of Naija, though, I’ve finally loosened my grip – but only just! – on ASAP Rocky’s album Don’t Be Dumb, which I liked a lot more than I expected to. It’s surprising and experimental but cohesive and so well done. I like it a lot.

I’ve also been really enjoying Raye’s album. It’s beautiful and deeply affecting with songs like “Click-Clack Symphony”, “Lifeboat”, “I Know You’re Hurting” and “Fields”, but it’s also got a lot of joy and play. You can tell she made the album she really want to make, and that she enjoyed herself. It’s truly masterful, ambitious work. And to think she’s an independent artist not signed to any label? Insane.

My guy James Blake also blessed us this year with Trying Times. The title track is such a gorgeous song that my listening experience has mostly been me keeping it on loop. Other favorites on this one are “Days Go By” and “Make Something Up”. I’ll form an opinion on the body of work soon.

For Naija music, I finally checked out Joeboy and Wizard Chan’s EP Agaba Romantic. The first track “Fall Back In Your Arms” is decent, felt like it wanted to be a highlife song but didn’t fully commit to the bit. It needed some laid-back guitar or something. Some of the production feels… sparse where it doesn’t need to be. “Love Sick Crazy” and “100 meters” feel like songs that nailed the sound they were going for, and they are worth your time.

Until next time.

It’s another edition, ladies and gentlemen! Let’s dance. Previous editions here and here.

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Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah on Sexuality, Community, and Why You Should Take Pleasure More Seriously

In the past couple of decades, very few people have spent as much time thinking, writing and speaking on sexuality, sex education and African women as Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah. She started Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, a popular blog that captures the sexual experiences of women from across Africa, with her friend Malaka Grant back in January 2009. She has written extensively on issues bordering on gender and women’s rights for years, and has been a leader in women’s rights advocacy spaces. Her first book “The Sex Lives of African Women” contains stories on sexuality and freedom from women across the continent was published in 2021. Look out for her second book “Seeking Sexual Freedom: African Rites, Rituals and Sankofa in the Bedroom.” The North American edition got released on March 3rd, so it’s out now (go get it!). It’s out in African countries and everywhere else on March 12th, 2026.

What follows is a lightly edited version of our conversation. My questions are bolded.

Hey Nana! Happy New Year! We’re in March now and those Christmas decorations have already begun to gather dust, but I can say that still, right? How did 2026 land for you, and how’s it going so far?

Thanks so much for interviewing me for your newsletter. And I love your newsletter!

This is a good question. I feel like I went from one year to another without much of a break. I more than hit the ground running. I was running in 2025, I ran into 2026, and I haven’t yet had the chance to slow down. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to slow down until the middle of July when I go to Kenya on holiday with my daughter, my cousin, and my nephew. Kenya is one of my favourite countries, and I go there as often as I can. At this rate I need a Kenyan bae so I can get citizenship!

But all things considered, 2026 has started well. I’ve been using this expression to describe this year in my life so far: “blessed but stressed”. Because I’m lucky! So many good things are happening for me. I have a second book coming out. I’m organising my sex positive festival at the end of the year. Work is good. My businesses are thriving. While people are losing jobs, I have more work than I can do. All of those blessings also mean I don’t have a lot of down time. I’m tired. I could do with more sleep and, I didn’t get to take a break over Christmas.

So yes, blessed but stressed!

You’ve been writing about sexuality and the bedrooms of African women for a couple decades now. What’s been the biggest change you’ve noticed in that time?

I think there’s a lot more openness and conversation around African women and sexualities, and that makes me happy. I think I can say that I contributed in opening up the space, in terms of there being way more spaces now for African women online and offline to express their thoughts around sexuality. I would like to think that younger men have heard us (laughs), but I would need some of the younger women who are their lovers to let me know.

You definitely contributed massively to opening up that space. Speaking generally, I think the pandemic really shifted people’s understanding of community, the importance of platonic relationships, and even renewed urgency with regards the importance of our romantic and sexual lives. Would you say that’s correct, with respect to young Africans? And the reason I’m thinking of this is that I don’t think folks who live on the continent live as much of our lives online as our western counterparts do.

I don’t think it shifted as many things for us as it did for those in the West, frankly. For those of us on the continent. We were not as impacted by COVID-19. For example, in most places across Africa we did not have the kind of severe lockdowns that happened in other parts of the world, so I can’t say the pandemic shifted African people’s thinking about community. On the contrary, it feels like the world is catching up to us. We’ve always been a communal people. If anything, overly communal. Within the West, I think there’s now a greater understanding of the importance of platonic relationships. I feel like we’ve had that through kinship groups, alumni groups. However, I think middle class African women are not as good about making friends throughout every stage of life. We tend to keep the friends we’ve had since primary or secondary school, or whenever we made the most friends.

Online conversation is rife with discussions and complaints around loneliness, commitment and community in western platforms. I can’t completely dismiss it, because so many young Africans live in western societies. From your vantage point, what threads would you say are similar with the contemporary African context? What would you say is different?

A similar contemporary thread in terms of online conversations is a kind of disappointment in straight men, and straight women feeling like they don’t have a lot of options when it comes to men. Cis-women who want to date straight men feel like it’s the dregs and that they need more options which I agree 100% with. I really feel that Black women need to open up our dating options to people of all backgrounds, genders etc so we have more choices than less.

That point about women being disappointed in romantic relationships is interesting. One of the fixtures of modern life as a woman – and particularly on the continent – is the push-and-pull between saying what you want and sort of deferring to men to make a move. The conversation we’re seeing on men being more antagonistic towards feminism is complicated by religious adherence, especially in our part of the world. Is there a recurring pattern from what you’ve seen and heard from talking to women about how they navigate this in their romantic lives?

Honestly I am not really sure I am fully understanding this question, but if it is, how are women navigating romance in a world where some may feel torn between adherence to religious/cultural norms versus an encouragement to be bold and state what they want in relationships - I almost feel like there are two broad schools of thought. Women who are invested in sticking to cultural and religious norms because of what they gain from those systems of power - recognition, being chosen as ‘wives’ etc, and those who buck the system, and find new ways to make connections, and find romance and love on their own terms even if those paths are harder.

Two different sets of women, I guess. I can see that. How would you say queerness complicates notions of loneliness and community in the African context?

Oh gosh, it really does complicate it. I’m thinking of a friend who’s planning to leave Ghana because she wants a partnership. She’s a lesbian woman and the queer scene tends to be very very young, and she’s closer to 40. So knowing that she wants a partner, she feels like she has to move for love. The fact that queerness is still very much stigmatised and criminalised, plays a huge role in this. For instance, it feels like there’s no older or middle-aged queers. There are, obviously, but they’re mostly on the down-low and it’s young people who are brave enough to live their lives openly. So if you happen to be a middle-aged queer woman looking for others to be in relationships or in community with, It’s very hard and that makes loneliness real in a very particular way.

I’m curious, in these conversations you have had on pleasure and sexuality across the continent, would you say there are common things you’ve noticed about how we tend to think about sexuality and pleasure that you wish more people would step away from? What are the main things you think we need to unlearn, or at least challenge?

We need to unlearn and relearn so many things. We need to unlearn ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ so people don’t grow up being told what they are - but rather are encouraged to become, or not even feel like they need to fit into any one box. We also need to unlearn shame and stigma around desire, and eros. We also need to recognise that sexuality is not just for younger people - older people also have rich erotic lives.

I’ve been re-reading Audre Lorde these past couple months, and recently re-read her essay on the uses of the erotic (pdf), where she claims the erotic as a feminine power and source of knowledge. She warns us that “oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy”, and points to the erotic as “a considered source of power and information within our lives.” Reading this is actually what made me want to talk to you, because it reminded me about your upcoming book on sexual freedom. What does sexual freedom mean to you?

I love this Audre Lorde quote! Sexual freedom to me means lots of things. I think I’d prefer to speak about various elements of sexual freedom.

First of all, it’s feeling at home in your body. I’m thinking of that especially because I’m thinking of all the people that experience body dysmorphia including women like myself who are constantly trying to lose weight, trans people who may not feel at home in the body they were born in, and people whose bodies are considered ‘dissident’ in some way, shape or form. If you can’t live comfortably in the body that you know ought to house you, I think that impinges on your sexual freedom. I think feeling a sense of Sexual Freedom also requires bodily confidence, or at least feeling neutral about your body, and recognising it as a vessel, as a home. If you can love your body, then great. But it feels like a lot of pressure. So I would say feeling at home in your body, feeling neutral about your body would be good.

Also, feeling like you can live out your sexuality. It doesn’t mean you have to be out, but having people who know who you are as a sexual being, who know your identity, who know your gender and sexual identity and who affirm you. Being able to be in community with people who see you in your full diversity and having the space to express your identity. So these for me are some of the critical elements of sexual freedom.

I like the point you’re making about the pressure to love your body and how it’s OK just to be at home in it and starting from there. How do you think having sexual freedom, all of those components in place in one’s life, shapes the way you approach life in general? I’m trying to get a sense for why you think sexual freedom matters.

I think Sexual Freedom matters because it is on one hand deeply personal, and on the other totally political. It’s the reason why States try to control who we can love and be in relationships with. I also think there is a way in which once we even experience moments in which we feel sexually confident, it gives us an inner confidence which translates to how we literally move in the world - with a greater sense of our power, with renewed confidence and energy. I also think people who are sexually free are happier people, and invest their time and energies in building people and communities up, and so make the world a better place all round.

Can I just say, I love that you say that the book came about from your conversations with a Namibian witch and a Zimbabwean rope master!

So it didn’t just come about like that! But yes, those were some folks I spoke to and had experiences with, and interviewed. The Namibian witch was Nakashwa. We did a four-day tantric coaching, which was really good. The Zimbabwean rope master was Sunja Konji. I had a session with him in Cape Town and also interviewed him. I have also had other experiences as well. But yes, I need to leave some stuff for people to discover in the book (laughs).

I love how in your recent Substack you talk about a Sankofa of pleasure. Do we all need one?

I do think we need a Sankofa of Pleasure. We need to go back to our traditions and rituals that created space for an inter-generational passing down of knowledge around sex and sexualities.

Speaking of pleasure, I like to think now of pleasure rituals, even small ones that make us happy. For me, it’s simple: going for a walk while listening to a podcast or an audiobook. My day is much better when I do that, and I do that nine times out of ten, so pretty consistently. Also, burning incense. I like a nice smelling space. That’s a constant; even when I travel I take my incense with me. These are very small things but I have realised they make such a difference to my day so I make space and time to prioritise this.

In this dating culture many of us who are single and searching find ourselves in where we encounter so much fear around commitment, so much fear around naming things, people who want all the touch but none of the feeling, what does operationalising sexual freedom look like?

Chale, the thing is, you just have to know what you want. If you’re someone who wants commitment, avoid the people who are not ready for commitment. I know it’s easier said than done, but be very boundaried. Put your walls up high, actually put yourself out there a whole lot more, and don’t lower your standards.

Wise words! Thanks for your time, Nana!

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Nana’s Three Things: Sex and Sexuality

Read: Sylvia Tamale! Obviously. She’s the Grand Dame of writing on African Sexuality. https://a.co/d/0fO3874f

Listen: I have to plug my own podcast here. This edition of Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women really shaped a lot of my own thinking of sex and sexuality.

Watch: the Sex Education Netflix series. I might have to make the African version!

We Jammin’

While we’re on the topic of recommendations, I have to nudge you guys in the direction of Willow’s new album Petal Rock Black. Willow has been an interesting, experimental artist for a while, but this album especially made me take notice. The music is raw, thoughtful, with many “woah, what’s that” moments that highlight real idiosyncratic artistry. It’s the kind of music you might look back on a few years from now, all her artistic promise fulfilled, as the beginning of a real moment of becoming. She plays all the instruments on the record herself, but the most meaningful sword she wields is the surprising malleability of her voice. It feels at once at home in this seemingly genre-less space as it might if it were put to the service of pretty much any sound. Go check it out. The album is well worth a listen.

If you are looking for more genre-agnostic gems, go check out Precious Pepala’s oeuvre. Begin with this, then check out her Dark Days EP.

Also, if you’re missing the days where punk bands were more mainstream, check out the all-black punk band The Paradox. I got hip to their music when I saw a video of Green Day frontman giving them the nod.

I’m pretty sure I’ve discussed them in a previous edition, but Internet Girl is another band you should check out. They’re a band of three guys (yes, guys) from South Africa, and their music leans very heavily punk, but with a strong hip-hop influence. Very interesting.

Lastly, Gorillaz have a new album! I haven’t checked it out yet, but it’s on my gym playlist for next week.

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Nigerians on Love and Relationships

The good people over at Zikoko have released their survey on young adults’ perspectives on love and romance. They usually set our social media timelines ablaze with stories of love, life, and hustle as a young Nigerian, so I’m really glad they decided to do a survey to give some context to what we anecdotally see.

Nigerian young people are no different from their counterparts abroad, it seems, with the proclivity for situationships. Given that ~60% of Nigerians in the survey say they’ve been cheated on in relationships, though, I can imagine wanting to keep the emotional risk low. I was especially fascinated by how hesitant respondents were to discuss their stance on gender roles in relationships, and agree with the analysis in the report that it denotes a wariness of social judgement either way. I think that points to changing attitudes, or at least a shift in what is accepted as universally true. As a whole, the numbers tell an interesting story about how socio-economic dynamics are shaping how Nigerians are approaching intimate relationships, and there’s a lot more uniformity in experience than gendered conversations online will lead you to believe.

I think a good companion piece to this report is the Nigerian Demographic Health Survey (DHS) that gets released every two years. I first came across the report in my brief stint in public health, and found to be a most fascinating document. The last full report was in 2024 (pdf), and it’s a survey with data collected through Primary Health Centres (PHCs) across Nigeria. It has comprehensive numbers on sexual and public health concerns like year of first sexual experience and STI rates, as well as other figures from rates of use of contraception to rates of infidelity and average numbers of sexual partners broken down by state and gender.

Until next time.

And just like that, the final edition of this newsletter for 2025. Thank you so much for reading, sharing, commenting, engaging, subscribing. You’re a real one! One more spin before the end of the year? Previous editions here and here.

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Super Eagles, National Pride, and Making Peace with Unfulfilled Potential

Another Afcon is upon us, and because it is a World Cup qualifier year it has been pretty bittersweet for most. The Nigerian team had its shot at qualification for the expanded tournament snuffed out in the penultimate playoff game it barely made it to. For once, though, I barely even sought out the games. I did not follow the commentary. When we lost, I shrugged and moved on quickly.

It felt like seeing an ex for the first time since a devastating breakup and feeling nothing. I’ve been thinking a lot about why, and how the way I feel about Nigeria and about Nigerian football are often twinned in my mind.

I can’t speak for everyone, but as a football lover and a Nigerian, the Atlanta ‘96 Olympics was a core memory for me. Nigeria had qualified for the knockout stages in the World Cup two years earlier. The memory of Rashidi Yekini scoring the first goal against Bulgaria in the group stages and celebrating in the net after tapping in from close range was still fresh. In my house, we were expectant, if a little nervous (OK, a LOT nervous), about playing Brazil in the semifinals. I remember my whole family gathering around in the living room. The snacks in the center table of the living room were untouched as we watched, quietly despondent when the first half ended with Brazil 3-1 up. Victor Ikpeba scored late in the second half to give Nigeria a second goal to make it 3-2, and I remember being pleased that even if we lost it at least wouldn’t be a blow-out. But when Kanu scored the equalizing goal, we all may as well have been transported to a stadium. I could hear all my neighbors cheer in their homes as though we were all together in the same room. The air in the room felt electric, the way it does when you’re awaiting something beautiful and your heart is open and expectant and alive. We would go on to win that game, and then win the gold medal in the final against Argentina. We would win the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in 1994, too. Nigerian football was a bright light in a time of political instability and military dictatorship, the one thing we all could agree made us happy.

Over the years, the bright light that Nigerian men’s football had been for us has flickered and waned. My relationship with Nigerian men’s football in recent years has mirrored the disillusionment with Nigeria itself. The problems of poor management have softened the edge we should have, given the sheer amount of footballing talent available to us. Our local leagues have suffered from perennial under-investment and support, and the pipeline from youth academy and feeder teams to budding senior team talents isn’t nearly what it needs to be. We seem to have lost our fear factor when playing against other teams on the continent, big-time individual names notwithstanding. Sure, we haven’t got too bad of a record at Afcon, but we haven’t won it since 2013. The Nigerian women’s team, on the other hand, has been thriving continentally for years, but remain under-appreciated, poorly treated, and underpaid, in spite of their success.

Much like with the country, all that remains for me of the bright light of Nigerian football is its cultural sway and some individual brilliance. Our jerseys are among the world’s most sought after, so much so that the 2018 jersey with Wizkid and Alex Iwobi in the campaign were sold above recommended retail price at its launch. I didn’t bother trying to get one at the time, because it was sold out everywhere. There were two jersey designs; one simple and dark green, but the other one that rightly got all the love had white and black ‘V’s made to look like feathers of wings on the arms of the short sleeves, and a pale green color with white feather-like Vs along the torso. It was also a time where Alex Iwobi was becoming a household name in Nigerian football and afrobeats was an emerging cultural force. Everything felt right, and the jersey’s appeal seemed to capture so much of what made Nigerian youth culture the force that it was becoming. This all made our early exit in the Russia World Cup admittedly droll, but watching Ahmed Musa score against Iceland in the only game we won in the group stages before we crashed out was special. Seeing him run towards the stands, a huge grin on his face and his arms out like he wanted to fly in that jersey designed to look like wings made me smile.

The decline in our football fortunes threatens to continue. The shittiness of our recruitment over the years reflects in the lack of balance in the team, all backline and forward line with barely enough ball carriers and midfield control. The middle of the pitch for us is currently Iwobi and Inshallah. We pretty much have to play long balls to bypass tricky midfield battles that we might lose and pray that our attackers are having a good day. Having one of the best strikers in the world not named Haaland in Osimhen did not save us from stumbling around in the qualifiers like a drunk penguin on a sheet of ice. We somehow found ourselves in the playoffs, only to lose to Democratic Republic of Congo in the one game that Osimhen did not finish, leaving us to miss out on qualification for the expanded 48-country World Cup. There’s an argument to be made for Nigerians choosing to play for other countries contributing to the weaknesses of our team, but the unending quarrels that players have with the Nigerian Football Federation over pay and mistreatment means that one can’t blame them for choosing to not play for their home country. We have now missed two World Cups in a row. In the past two Afcons, we crashed out in the Round of 16 in Cameroon in 2021 then lost to a better Ivorian side in the final in 2023. The team has disappointed me too many times and, unlike in a dubious romance, the good times I have seen are not nearly good enough to blind me to the absurdity of it all.

I have quietly accepted that our individual brilliance will always be overshadowed by our collective mediocrity, just as I have learned to mute my cheer at our collective fortune, as much as I manage my disappointment.

Yes, I’m still talking about football.

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The Best of the Best in a Year of Afrobeats

Who was your favorite artist of 2025? I honestly don’t have one, but I did make you guys a playlist of a few songs that I listened to a lot this year. Let me know what songs are familiar to you, which are new, and what songs stayed in your rotation.

The good people at Culture Custodian assembled a lively crew to talk about who’s the biggest artist of the year. Do you agree with their top 10?

I find that I mostly like where they ended up. Fola ran things this year, and Davido dropped hit after hit. There was a whole conversation on Rema and Ayra, and I’m glad where they ended things with that, although I don’t understand the dismissal of Ayra’s “Hot Body” by the menfolk on the panel. That said, I fully agree with the rank in the top 10, and think it’s impressive because this wasn’t even a year Ayra dropped an album or EP.

The difference between Davido and Wiz really shined through in the kinds of 2025 they both had. Davido is a singles guy – not an album guy! – who cares about dropping hits. That is all. He wants to tap into what the streets are feeling and supply it. I believe that Wizkid’s ambitions are different. He’s more of a curator who is interested in exploring a particular sound and making a statement about the kind of artist he is. That is why Made in Lagos and Morayo (let’s just act like that More Love, Less Ego doesn’t exist) are the way they are, and Davido is more likely to make albums like 5ive and Timeless that are not quite artistic statements as much as they are agglomerations of hits. That is not to say that Wiz doesn’t want hits, of course. He just moves like someone who wants them his own way, doing things a particular way. Both approaches to the music clearly work, but it would be interesting to see how this would continue to look as they evolve into OGs.

A second observation I’d make here is my bemusement for how Adekunle Gold was left out entirely in the initial list. This is especially so because Adekunle Gold fulfilled a lot of the criteria that CC put forward: a successful tour, cultural impact, commercial success with his singles “Bobo”, “Coco Money” and “Many People.” Even though the album wasn’t as fuji as I’d have liked, I’d argue that his use of more traditional Yoruba music sounds in “Many People” and thoughtful and immensely listenable inclusion of older heavyweights like Adewale Ayuba and Yinka Ayefele in a mainstream pop song merited more of a mention than it got. He then went on to do a fully sold-out concert with an orchestra, further re-contextualizing music inspired by Yoruba traditional music and pushing the sound forward. This is important in a context where fuji music has seen a resurgence in mainstream popularity. It felt under-discussed, and for reasons I don’t quite understand. It would have been better to hold the facts up and then weigh it against other artists being considered and still put AG at no.10, which one could do; but to not discuss these things at all felt like a travesty.

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How Detty is your December?

Mine is pretty clean, I must admit. I’m hanging out with family, playing with my nieces, and reading. The Detty December hordes have descended on Lagos, though, and I’m pleased for everyone having a great time.

The conversation around Detty December (in Nigeria anyway) this year has been pretty focused on price gouging and insane traffic, and I’m honestly glad to hear more conversation about how progressively expensive the city gets in this time. Even the people who are coming from abroad with dollars and pounds seem to also be complaining. I’ve been following Reddit threads and reading a fair bit of stuff about how expensive everything is, and how Lagos is simply not able to cope. I like this report on Al-Jazeera about how Detty December came to be and exploring how sustainable it is long-term.

If you’re wondering how much of an economic boom Detty December comes with, I saw this piece in This Day with some numbers, and asks the same question the AJE pieces asks – how sustainable is all this with the city’s collapsing infrastructure?:

“ In Lagos alone, the 2024 festive period drew an estimated 1.2 million visitors, nearly 90 per cent of them Nigerians from abroad returning home to reconnect and celebrate. The economic impact was staggering: the halls of Murtala Muhammed Airport were packed, hotels ran at 95 per cent occupancy, short-lets surged, event centres were fully booked, and an entire ecosystem of food, music, transport, fashion, and nightlife roared to life.

Lagos State recorded N111.5 billion in tourism, hospitality, and entertainment revenue in that single month, while diaspora visitors injected over N60 billion directly into the local economy.

This was not an isolated spike. December has become a dependable season that sustains thousands of businesses across hospitality, aviation, events, logistics, digital media, and retail. Top nightclubs alone reportedly generated N4.32 billion, short-lets added N21 billion, luxury car rentals hit N1.5 billion, and beaches, restaurants, and resorts absorbed over 70 per cent of leisure spending. The creative economy from concerts to cinemas and influencer campaigns reached some of its highest annual earnings in December 2024, with FilmOne reporting N2.8 billion at the box office.”

Interesting stuff. Let me know what you think. Thank you for rocking with me this year, for reading and sharing and engaging.

Here’s to a great 2026 for all of us!

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New month, new Three! Previous editions here and here.

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My Father’s Shadow is a tender meditation on manhood and life in early ‘90s Lagos

My Father’s Shadow is a film about fatherhood, but it’s also a film about Lagos, about growing up, and about the inscrutable things in childhood that only become legible after enough time has passed.

We see the world through the eyes of Remi and Akin, two little boys, from the onset. Because we see the world through their gaze, the world is a strange, wonderful and sometimes scary place. The bugs are big in the sand, just a couple feet below our eyes. The wind rustling the leaves is as loud as a wounded animal’s howl. When we meet their estranged father Folarin, the distance between them is palpable, but so is the older son’s desire to bridge it. He too is filmed from the kids’ vantage point, so he is filmed from below so we see how grand he is in the boys’ imagination. When they follow their father to Lagos, everything is big. The faces of the passersby. The buildings. The too-much-ness of the city, contrasting so sharply to the unnamed verdant small town where we first meet the boys.

The pacing of the film will be slow to people more accustomed to snappier Nollywood fare, but the pacing allows the story to unfurl rewardingly. The relationship between each of the boys and his dad is given its own ebb and flow. When they first get to Lagos, we learn the extent to which Folarin does not spend much time with his boys; for example, he did not even know that one of his sons does not like onions. When we eventually progress to heartfelt conversations about his love for the family and explaining why he is always away, it is well earned. In the tender scenes at the beach, the father is no longer a grand figure; he is sitting at eye level with the older of the two boys, while the younger one leaves them both, having expressed to their father his anger about Folarin’s frequent absence. The moments where they swim in the ocean seem to be a lovely reference to the swimming lesson scene in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. The camera work here is beautiful, shot close, their bodies gleaming in the sun contrasting with the bluish green of the water and the cloudless sky above.

The film’s tenderness contrasts strikingly against the harshness of the political environment and the bite of financial lack. It was a reminder of the way most of us survive as Nigerians, how we find ways to clear the brush and find soft spaces where we can, whatever our financial capacities. A big part of the success of the film hinged on Sope Dirisu’s portrayal of Folarin. He was a father and a husband and a frustrated adult Nigerian with hopes that things will be better for his family and the country as a whole. For many millenials, he was also a window into what it may have been like being an adult in Lagos at that time. His work in this film was tender, layered and reflective. I just wish his Yoruba was better, because the way he spoke made it pretty clear that he’s not fluent. I understand Yoruba well, but like Dirisu my spoken Yoruba also sounds like I’m plucking my words carefully as though they were fruit from a tree. I found myself cringe a bit sometimes.

Nigerian films typically embody the aspirational nature of Nigerians, which usually guides them to lift their stories from the context of the city they are set (often Lagos). It’s an ambition that aims at universality, to unburden itself from the shackles of our specific sociopolitical infrastructure and tell a story everyone can relate to. This makes a lot of our recent cinema seem almost like fantasy. When they do discuss poverty or police brutality, it becomes the story itself, and not in the larger milieu that we interact with but find ways to carve out pockets of joy, romance, even love. By contrast, My Father’s Shadow confronted that ugliness, whether it was the decaying wood in the doorframe of the boys’ house, or the politics of the day. It was good to see a film about the relationships between a father and his sons with tenderness, that takes on the environment that it is set in but is not defined by it.

The final act in the film feels rushed, and I feel could have been eased into a bit with a scene or two before the heartbreaking ending. Still, there is a cruel dramatic irony watching the hopefulness of the adults discussing their excitement for a democratic government. Much the same way the boys will not know the importance of the day they got to spend with their father, the film captured a time that shaped our collective lives in Nigeria forever, with the reminder that Nigerians survived, lived and loved in the midst of uncertainty and political upheaval, just as we do now.

ALSO: Show Dem Camp on Nigerian Masculinity

I can’t help but think Folarin’s progression in My Father’s Shadow — from this big, unattainable figure whose relationship with his sons is marked by his absence from their lives to this human being made flesh by struggle and affection — is a commentary on Nigerian masculinity. The guy who wrote the screenplay for the film is Wale ‘Tec’ Davies, one half of my favorite rap group Show Dem Camp and the director Akinola Davies’ brother. My favorite album of SDC’s is “Clone Wars IV: These Buhari Times”, and one of my favorite songs on it is “Duade”. It is a song about masculinity in Nigeria. I watched Wale Davies’ Overnight Success interview where he talked about wanting to write about masculinity. His first verse on the song pretty much captures his thesis.

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One More Thing: The Director of My Father’s Shadow is on Culture Custodian’s first print edition

The good people at Culture Custodian have launched their first print edition capturing what it means to be a young/youngish Nigerian today. It has the film director Akinola Davies on the cover, fresh from the release of his critically acclaimed film that I reviewed above. Buy the print edition here.

Adekunle Gold makes his own “Fuji”

Adekunle Gold is so much fun because of how experimental he is. From one album to the next, he switches up his style, his nickname, and shifts his sound. I’ve reviewed “Afropop Vol. 1”, “Catch Me If You Can”, and “Tequila Ever After”, and I can honestly say the man has never made a bad album. This particular experiment, though, I reckon is his least successful.

I don’t think he quite pulled it off here with “Fuji”, and it is not because the quality of the songs itself. AG is great at weaving his story into his music, as he does here with the swaggering killer of a first song “Big Fish” that begins with a sample that nods to his royal roots in the Kosoko family, and in the tender “My Love Is the Same” where he discusses fatherhood. “Simile”, his collaboration with the Soweto gospel choir, is gorgeous. What the album was missing for me was storytelling that tied in why he called the album “Fuji” in the first place, and what the genre represents to him. Perhaps a few intros would have tied it together, made the thesis of the record more clear.

My favorite moments on the album are all probably what I would consider the songs that most effectively engage with the idea of a record inspired by fuji, with elements from other music styles that inspire him. “Many People” is triumphant and fun, sampling from the Yinka Ayefele classic (even though Ayefele isn’t typically understood as a Fuji artist). “Oba” is also very anchored in Yoruba traditional sounds in a very noticeable way. There’s echoes of the idea of the record in “Don Corleone” and his tone in “Bobo”, but… honestly, that’s it as far as I can hear. Where he pulls in other influences, such as in his use of samples like Bill Withers’ “Do for love” and Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money”, I wish there was more of an effort to re-contextualize them in more markedly fuji sounds, or even other sounds like Sakara and Were that preceded the genre.

I wanted more ambition, more experimentation. More. Instead, what we got was basically an afrobeats album. I have no problem with afrobeats albums, but it feels a bit like that thing that we saw during the pandemic where someone would present, say, a bowl of chicken wings, then cut into it revealing it’s actually cake.

Anyway, check out Zikoko’s review as well. Also, Jide Taiwo of Fuji Opera had this to say about AG’s calling his album fuji when it isn’t quite anchored in the genre. I don’t necessarily agree that he should’ve featured more fuji artists and I don’t know that this album represents an attempt at appropriation, but I think it’s a good perspective to keep in mind.

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Go Listen to Olivia Dean’s new album

I knew I needed to pay attention to Olivia Dean more closely when I first heard “Dive”. She begins the song with this line: “it isn’t working/ I’m a tidal wave of question marks/ and you’re just surfing/ leaning into me like it’s an art”. I loved the imagery of a tidal wave, and a person surfing on that wave that troubles you like it’s nothing. Then she carries through the water-based imagery throughout the song, beginning the second verse with “‘cause the water’s warm enough and nothing’s wrong, it’s alright/ I’m coming out and diving in tonight”. Her songwriting captures feelings using plain language, and the instrumentals give the song an almost sepia-toned nostalgia that puts a color and a tone to longing and reflection.

The timeless sound of Olivia Dean’s new album “The Art of Loving” also employs songwriting that sticks to age-old themes of love, longing and memory. With these themes, she weaves tender magic in a wonderfully cohesive record that I have not stopped listening to since it came out. In another person’s hands, “So Easy to Fall in Love” could be a sexy come-on, but she suffuses it instead with a wholesome, charming confidence and a flirtatious twinkle. I love the vaguely ‘80s pop sound of “Nice to Each Other” and “Man I Need”. There’s a faint echo of Bill Withers’ “Just the two of us” in the final song called “I’ve Seen It”, which meditates on how love in its many forms is all around us — a lovely sentiment that, due to some thoughtful writing, does not come off as maudlin as it could if it was done badly. In “Baby Steps”, she writes of self-love: “there will be roses on the shelf/ ‘cause this house gon’ love itself”. My current favorite song on the album (this changes day to day) is “A Couple Minutes”, a song about reconnecting with someone you know you can’t be with, but you allow yourself to feel your feelings anyway, if momentarily. Even the most pragmatic among us are given to letting our fingers curl around a feeling just before it flitters away. We rarely have songs about this that don’t curl all the way around to “spinning the block” or giving in altogether to a Bad Decision™.

The doe-eyed hopefulness and thoughtful reflection that permeates the album makes it feel like a warm hug. The music feels like a world where online dating and being ghosted after three dates and a promise of a baecation doesn’t exist. I want that world.

Other New Music

You know an album that kinda disappointed me? Sarz. I was really looking forward to “Protect Sarz at All Costs” but I have to say it fell flat for me. My favorite thing about him is how he re-contextualizes afrobeats and pushes the sound further. His EPs with Obongjayar, WurlD and Lojay were so great because he took the afrobeats we know and added “yo, what was that??” elements to it. That’s why “Mad” with WurlD and “Gone Girl” with Obongjayar were so good. That’s why “Ibadi” with Niniola was such a moment. It’s also why “Happiness” with Asake and Gunna was such a great song. But there weren’t any songs on this new album that sounded like nobody else could do it.

Odumodoblvck’s new album is also like a box of Quality Street where you’re sure to not like the entire thing but you’ll have gems. My current gems are “Baggio” (so good to see him and Prettyboy DO on good terms again), the Davido featured “Grooving”, and “Layi Wasabi” where Reminisce showed why he’s one of the best MCs from Nigeria in any language.

If you’re looking for something dance-y, check out Rochelle Jordan’s new album Through The Wall. It was my gym companion the other day, and it kept me bouncing. I still need to pick out a fave, but the entire album feels so good. I don’t know if I mentioned this in the last edition, but Destin Conrad’s jazz album wHIMSY is so so good. So worth your time. Lastly, go pre-save Party of 2’s new album. They’re going to be huge in a year or two.

Until next time.

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We meet again, Mr. Bond. Let’s dance. Previous edition here.

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In praise of the local scene

Can I rant for a second?

I recently watched the video for Seyi Shay’s 2014 collaboration with Patoranking and Shaydee ‘Murda’ again, and it felt really refreshing. It took me back to a time where videos from artists in their prime were filmed on streets that looked familiar. In the video, Patoranking approaches Seyi Shay on a street that may well be yours. The party scene looked like a party you’ve probably been to. The only thing that may have been unrelatable was probably Patoranking’s red Mercedes that you maybe didn’t own.

I remember laughing back then about how P-Square’s video for ‘Beautiful Oninye’ was full of biracial babes who could not possibly be mistaken for an Oninye. Today, that would not raise an eyebrow. Songs steeped in our lingo with the videos set elsewhere are pretty much the norm. Our biggest artists like Wiz and Burna have shot most of their recent videos outside. Even recent videos from artists like Seyi Vibes and Shallipopi who are deemed more ‘street’ are de-contextualized from the setting that shapes their lingo and identity.

In recent years, our artists’ ambition for global success and recognition has taken over not just the way that our artists have chosen to market themselves and tour, but also in the way they represent their music. I am sure there are pragmatic considerations that militate against shooting videos in Nigeria, but still I wish this was not the case. It feels like a strange lack of ambition. We sing and rap in our own languages and confidently project that into the world. Why do we not do so with our cities, our streets, the very backdrop that makes the music what it is? We should, as Toni Morrison would say, claim the marginal as centre in this regard, too, and pull the world’s attention to where we are.

To be clear, this is not to say no afrobeats music video should never be shot outside Nigeria, nor is this a call for music videos to be more down to earth. Making a video that’s steeped in the local context does not mean the videos cannot be opulent. Artists from previous decades made all kinds of videos in Lagos, from the griminess of Dagrin and Konga’s ‘Kaba kaba’ to the hedonistic fun of Banky W’s ‘Lagos Party’. This is why I think it’s so important that Tems, with the international attention she had garnered ahead of the ‘Born in the Wild’ album, made a music video for the lead single ‘Love Me Jeje’ that showed Lagos as its most laidback and chill, or that Falz made a video that was a playful representation of an owambe with his song ‘No Less’. Our cities, like those of countries abroad, contain multitudes.

Music videos set in our cities can weave narratives that make the songs more real, or they can use the setting merely as backdrop. Crafting narratives with videos, though, can challenge our artists to create images that shape our relationship to the music, rather than merely crafting images that show how far they have come in achieving their ambition for wealth and status.

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New-New

Two of my current favorite songs make really smart use of samples. The first is Tay Iwar’s ‘Wonderful’, which employs a sample from 90s duo Zulezoo’s song ‘Mr. Necessary’. This was their second single after their much bigger hit ‘Kerewa’ that was banned from public radio. The other favorite song of the moment is Offset’s collaboration with JID called ‘Bodies,’ which uses the rock band Drowning Pool’s ‘Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.’ I think hiphop should make use of more rock music samples like this.

A couple more great uses of samples lately? Amaarae’s new album ‘Black Star’ is full of those, like the unexpected Cher sample in ‘She Is My Drug’ and the Thong Song sample in ‘Kiss Me Thru the Phone pt2’. Tiwa Savage’s new album ‘This One is Personal’ has a playful sample of the Tamia’s classic ‘So Into You’ on her lead single ‘You 4 Me’.

No major review of Tiwa’s new record because this edition is already pretty long, but suffice to say – the album is really good. Lots of gems. So far, I’ve been returning to ‘10%’, ‘Holding It Down’, ‘Twisted’, ‘Addicted’ and ‘Will I Run Again’. Tiwa Savage has given us great records back to back since The Sugarcane EP, so this new album being worth the wait is no surprise at all.

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On Public Humiliation, Social Media and Justice

If you’re a Nigerian, you likely still remember the first time you witnessed public humiliation. I remember my first encounter well.

One sunny afternoon, my family’s driver Mr. Debisi had just picked me up from my primary school. On our way to pick up my sister, he tried to join the group of cars that had been waved on to pass by the traffic warden at the busy intersection, and stopped too late. The soldiers parked by the intersection took great exception to this. The soldiers in their military fatigues stopped all traffic at the intersection, then made Mr. Debisi come down from the car. They beckoned him to come to the middle of the intersection. I still remember the pleading look on his face, his hands clasped together as he begged the soldiers to let him go. They slapped his face and hit him with their rifle until he was crouched on the ground, then kicked him until he lay flat. They yelled insults at him, called him names.

This was still the only time I remember ever seeing a busy intersection in Lagos turn quiet. No car dared blast their horn. No one dared to come down. Mr. Debisi had been expelled from the larger body of commuters, cast out and punished for his perceived wrong. Those of us who sat in our cars, including my younger self, played our part as innocent bystanders, our mass silence itself a message rendered as ardently as one from a Greek chorus.

As is often the case in cases of public humiliation that I’ve seen, the person either did something wrong, or something that could be perceived as wrong. It could be a student being called to stand in front of the assembly of schoolmates because their parents missed the deadline for school fees or a driver trying to zoom past a red at a traffic light. The transgression is always debatable, but for me the humiliation that follows is never justified. Not in the case of the viral Ibom Air video where the passenger was forced off the plane, even though the passenger loudly expressed anger with how the flight attendant treated her, and certainly not in the case of the vigilantes’ beating of the NYSC corper. The instinct to strip the person of dignity, to cast the person out of the larger throng, to debase and disrobe, manifests the same way. It is as though Nigerians, unable to change the immovable boulders of dysfunction that surround us, will always choose to discipline and punish ourselves instead with a fervency best directed elsewhere.

I have been thinking about public humiliation a lot since the viral video of Comfort Emmanson being forcefully dragged out of an Ibom Air plane started to circulate. Footage of her clothes being ripped off her body circulated blogs and social media feeds. Not two weeks later, another video circulates of another young woman being beaten and stripped by vigilantes in Anambra. I read passages from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison years ago during my Masters where he wrote of public executions as ceremonies where the collective being of the people is repaired; the evil elements cast out, as a surgeon might remove a foreign element in the body. I think public humiliations are that way, too. In these recent cases, both women were violently expelled from a larger group (Emmanson with other passengers, while the corper with other corpers in the NYSC lodge), and we were called upon as witnesses, in person or from behind the glowing screens of our phones.

Our penchant for performative displays of discipline and punishment go back a long way, even back to colonisation, but I’ll stick to the 90s for the purposes of this essay. Well before the internet era, public executions happened often enough across Nigeria during the military era. The 90s in Lagos were especially marked with armed robberies and home invasions, and a lot of the armed robbers that were caught were killed in public view. These kinds of public executions happened across the country, too. It is not clear when executions officially ended, but they stopped happening at the beginning of our current spell of civilian rule from 1999. Changes in approach to government like this typically bring about changes in approach to punishment. Foucault writes of how the rise of a middle class and the French Revolution helped orient discipline away from keeping people in check for a monarchy and towards a Christian-derived preoccupation with the soul. This shift changed ideas concerning punishment, as it now “ceased to be centred on torture as a technique of pain; it assumed as its principal object loss of wealth or rights” (Foucault, pg. 15).

In Nigeria, our penchant for “jungle justice” takes root in our lack of trust in justice systems. Since the police cannot be trusted to do the right thing and the courts are too slow, we often reason, we handle the matter ourselves. We form vigilante groups to help provide security and deter violent forces. From fragmentation of trust in our justice system comes a fragmentation of centers of legitimate authority to punish. To make matters worse, we apply discipline and punishment to all crimes, even those that are not really crimes. Like when we think someone is being arrogant and unreasonable, or when we make up crimes because we believe someone deserves punishment.

In the act of humiliation, power balance is stark and clarified, and the person being punished is firmly reminded of their place by the stripping of their dignity. They are moments where there is no ambiguity about what the person meting out the humiliation thinks of you, or of the power you (don’t) have in the situation. These kinds of humiliation easily lend themselves to sexual humiliation; and no, this does not always mean that the person is raped, or that the person meting out the humiliation derives sexual pleasure from it. Women are especially susceptible to this kind of humiliation because we are often required to perform a high wire act of simultaneously modeling a level of unattainability (you can’t be easy to “get”) and approachable kindness (you can’t be rude and snobby). There is nothing worse than stripping women (literally and figuratively) of the pretense of this unattainability. Social media has provided a new vista for exacting this discipline, as we see in technology-enabled revenge porn and Grok-enabled porn-ified images of women on the internet. The internet further fragments the question of justice and repair, because we now look to private enterprises (yes, social media platforms are private enterprises) to create codes of conduct not unlike the protection we seek from public authorities.

If public humiliation is the laying bare of our relationship with power, then we cannot hope for an end to these public displays without a fundamental change in our own understandings of power. A state can stop public executions or make laws to deter public humiliation, but policy is not the domain of a collective where social behavior does not seek government assent. This is because governments will forever play catch-up to the various ways we can use technology to harm each other. As we speak, the videos of Emmanson’s nudity will forever live on the internet regardless of what happens to Ibom Air staff that circulated the video. The harm does not stop until we make it stop.

First, a Mea Culpa

You know that Future meme that is used to capture how your toxic ex will spin faux-deep “hey, Big Head” texts to try to get back into your life?

Yes, that’s me right now.

A whole year and change has passed since my last newsletter. In that time, I have moved countries, moved apartments (twice), and moved jobs (also twice). In sum, life has been life-ing extra-hard. Ironically, it’s life-ing even harder than it’s ever life-d before as I write this.

No too vex for me. I can’t promise there won’t be any missed months going forward, but I’m going to try to write these more regularly now. Thank you so much for gentle (and not so gentle) nudges, for sharing, and, as always, for reading.

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Goodgirl LA, Amaarae and Singing Sex and Desire

There’s a certain alchemy to what gets hot and what does not, but the path for superstardom for Nigerian female artists especially is not clear cut at all. The most successful among them in the past decade are Tiwa Savage, Yemi Alade, Ayra, Teni and Tems, and each of them attained their success in wildly different ways. I am sure this makes it difficult for record execs to work with female artists, but it also means that, when we do get female artists coming through, they are pretty unique from one to the other.

I first heard Goodgirl LA on Vector’s excellent standout ‘Early Momo’ from his 2022 album ‘Teslim’, but I only took passing notice of the female vocalist featured on the song. She has my full attention now, though. The Goodgirl EP is defiant, feisty, and full of personality. It begins with a standout song ‘Good Girl’, a reflection on turning “hard guy” after Lagos wo/men have shown your pepper. In ‘Giga’, she introduces herself to us, and tell us she’s only going higher from here. In ‘BoB’, she tells us she is “talking to herself” as she packs the song full of affirmations “based on belief”. The sequencing of the record feels a bit off, and it skews the storytelling. Songs like ‘Giga’ and ‘BoB’ that were saying “this is what I’m about” came in the middle of the EP, after songs like the too-sexy-for-work ‘Buss It’ and forlorn ‘Goodgirl’. The latter half of the EP has songs like ‘BoB’ and ‘Back 2 Back’ that chronicles her ambition were on either side of ‘Gbesoun’, a party track about partying with your (yes, your own) girlfriend. Her songs pull from various influences but are very strongly afrobeats. We get that chilled-out laidback groove we associated with alté artists in the 2010s and that classic afrobeats drumbeat we are accustomed to in ‘Back 2 Back’, but the production was not quite varied enough for me. I’m going to chalk that up to her being up-and-coming, though. Her final form is coming, and I can tell it’s going to be so much fun watching her grow in the coming years.

Amaarae has also just dropped her album ‘Black Star’, a follow-up to her excellent ‘Fountain Baby’. I’m still feeling my way around it, but I was really excited about it after hearing the singles. In ‘Fountain Baby’, the sound was fresh and unexpected, moving effortlessly between r’n’b, afrobeat, dance, electronic, and even Asian electronic influences to create a sound all her own. ‘Black Star’, though, is explicitly a dance record, and not in that faux-amapiano way that afrobeats artists do it. This is an album that calls to mind popping a pill or two and washing it down with a cheap cocktail as you move with other sweaty bodies at a rave at 3am in the morning. Sure, there’s some heartbreak and yearning, but the one demand Amaarae seems to be making of us is that we go out there and feel good.

Listening to both Goodgirl LA and Amaarae made me think about how male and female artists in this corner of the world approach singing about sex and desire differently. Songs by female artists usually have an object of their desire and yearning, whereas Naija male afrobeats artists, much like rappers, are invested in projecting an image of someone who “gets girls”, of which the object of desire is a part. Goodgirl and Amaarae both sing of female love interests and have a self-assuredness and swagger about them that you might associate with hiphop, so this distinction felt very stark in the music.

It is one thing for an artist to be sexy, and quite another for their music to engage with their sexuality. Ayra Starr, for example, reminds me of Shakira, in the sense that the image that she projects of herself is sexier than her music. This might just be true of many Naija female artists in the mainstream, and says something about the weird tightrope Nigerian women walk where the ticket to respectability can be a high-wire act of aspiring to desirability without being too sexual. Songs like Ayra’s recent hit single ‘Gimme Dat’ are essentially come-ons with euphemisms (like using “love” when you likely mean sex) that provide sufficient plausible deniability. Tiwa Savage does this, too; I think the only song of hers where she’s actually explicitly talking about sex is ‘Save My Life’ on her 2020 ‘Celia’ album, but even then she sings sexier bits in Yoruba. The only other references to sex I can think of tend to use humor, like Teni’s ‘Fargin’. Niniola is an obvious rejoinder about a Nigerian woman in the mainstream singing about sex and desire, but she only really does so in Yoruba. Also, I’m not sure I should name her among our most popular mainstream acts, a fact for which I honestly think her management should be drawn and quartered.

It is not so much that I think everybody must sing about sex as explicitly as Amaarae and Goodgirl LA do. Rather, I think it says something that mainstream music and popular culture. Remember: pop culture is culture.

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Other Music I’ve Enjoyed

I have really enjoyed rap so far this year. The year began with Kendrick’s fantastic GNX, and I was sure it would be my album of the year. Then Clipse dropped a masterpiece, and so did JID with ‘God Does Like Ugly’ and Freddie Gibbs’ ‘Alfredo 2’. I can’t put into words how incredible ‘Let God Sort It Out’ is for me’ and I won’t try. Instead, I’ll hand you over to the good people over at Rap Latte instead. I’m still yet to check out Slick Rick and LL Cool J’s newest, but my late 30s hiphop-listening self is well pleased.

Speaking of recent rap releases, Gunna released a new album ‘The Last Wun’ that’s been pretty well received. That sing-songy trap thing isn’t really for me, but I really liked ‘Forever Be Mine’ with Wizkid and the feature with Asake.

Away from hiphop, I like BNXN’s latest record ‘Captain’. There’s very few upcoming artists that I’m excited about, but Fola is one of them and I enjoy what he brings to ‘Very Soon.’ Other songs I liked on this one include ‘Jies’ and ‘Laye Mi.’

Haim’s lead single from their new album ‘I Quit’ is called ‘Relationships’ and it was my absolute jam for like a month or two. Precious Pepala’s ‘Dark Days EP’ is dark and reflective and so good. I also recently discovered Internet Girl, a South African punk-rock-meets-hiphop band. They have an 2024 album called Role Model that is very much worth your time.

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Read, Watch, Listen

I’m not getting as much reading done as I would like these days (like I said at the top of this newsletter, life has been life-ing), but here are some recent highlights.

Namwali Serpell has an essay in the New Yorker on literalism that I think pretty much defines the problem with so much Hollywood film these days. She talks about how literal so much of it is now, and you see it in everything from Barbie, which hit us over the head with a gavel, its Feminist 101 messaging squeezed in between dance numbers, and also in eyerolling monologues and obvious parallels in the recent Superman movie. She tries to make a distinction between good repetition and “redundancy”. Even though I generally do not like moral messaging in films to be too overt, I’m not entirely convinced by the argument she makes here. There’s too much “slipperiness” between the categories of repetition in messaging in film. Still, I enjoyed grappling with it. You might, too.

I enjoyed reading this Culture Custodian essay on whether Nigerian romantic comedies reflect us. I share a lot of the frustrations the writer has with our filmmakers’ obsession of wealthy people, the lack of chemistry between leads, and the way the stories do not actually show how people fall in love – like, really fall in love – in our context. But romantic comedies are essentially a fantasy genre. What is the Nigerian fantasy for love? What socioeconomic dynamics shape these fantasies? What visions of romance remain even when you account for class differences?

The youth-driven digital publication Zikoko made a series of short films. Each film is less than 45 mins long and well worth your time. My favorite thing about these shorts is the simplicity of the stories. Nigerians are ambitious people, and often want to do grand, earth-shaking work. However, there is a quiet ambition in familiar stories that elevate ordinary life in simple but powerful ways. I liked ‘Something Sweet’ a lot, but wanted to get more of a sense of what it was that eventually convinced her to date the younger man (I know it’s a short film, but still). My favorite was ‘My Body, My Temple’. It handled a tough topic well, and got really good performances from the two leads. My only gripe was with the title (come on, guys, not so literal).

Another thing worth your time: Human Angle published a story recently about online misinformation merchants in northern Nigeria. Add this to the use of AI to make realistic videos that can be circulated on WhatsApp, and we have a very interesting election season coming up in two years.

Until next time.

New month, new Three! A new year is upon us, and I’m so grateful for your readership, your subscriptions, your shares. Thank you for rocking with me. Previous editions here and here.

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Dance, Dance!

One of the most exciting things about this year in music for me was seeing how much danceable music styles resonated in some of the best albums I heard this year. I have always enjoyed electronic and dance music, from the early American stuff that started in Chicago to UK dance bands that meld trip-hop and electronica like Faithless; from UK big beat to drum and bass, and all the delightful electronic music we’re getting from South Africa. When South Africa’s Channel O was still available on Nigerian cable when I was still in secondary school, I fell in love with the various South African house music styles and was immensely pleased when Nigerian mainstream artists started to borrow from amapiano and other styles (heavy on the “was”, but that’s another topic). Back then, my relationship with the music was different. Dance music was unalloyed joy, while I looked to other genres like r’n’b, jazz, and folk for music that mines our emotional depths. The younger version of me as a music listener did not think of joy as an emotion worth examining closely, holding up to the light, fixing it in its context, and celebrating and understanding it in all its shades. 

Electronic music has soared over the past couple of years since the pandemic, and this is as true mainstream pop music globally as it is in Nigeria. Amapiano have been the key “what’s that?” element that’s been sprinkled heavily throughout Nigerian afrobeats in the past few years as the genre has gained more global mainstream ground. While a lot has been said about Nigerians trying to “take over” amapiano, it has been especially gratifying to see South African house DJs like DJ Waffles and Major League DJs making names of their own, doing residencies and headlining sold out shows across Europe and North America. The emergence of the pandemic and the popularity of various dance music styles are twinned for me. I like to think that, after a long time of being holed up in our homes, music that centers on joy resonated anew with audiences. For artists who are omnivorous in their music influences and tastes, dance music styles also provided yet another palette to work from and to expand on typical pop music themes of joy, sexuality, and pleasure.

In 2023, some of the best albums I heard melded dance and electronic music styles with other genres. Beyonce’s Renaissance is an obvious starting point here, where she used dance as a vector for joy, freedom and self-confidence, but there were other albums that used dance styles in really cool ways as well and showed the versatility of it. Chappell Roan’s excellent The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess had songs like the boisterous and flirtatious “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl”, “HOT TO GO!”, and “Red Wine Supernova”, made for dancing with abandon in your room or out with friends. These dance songs punctuated the record, and along with the storytelling and vibrancy in the songs added to the earnestness of the album. Jessie Ware’s That! Feels Good! is a sensory delight, a melange of funk and disco that captures the heady highs and lows of love and pleasure. With songs like “Free Yourself”, “Hello Love”, and the title track, the album finds lots of sonic space for play and experimentation by using its varied influences to toy with tempo and mood. I also really enjoyed Troye Sivan’s Something to Give Each Other, which used dance styles effectively in its storytelling. Songs like “Rush”, “Got Me Started” and “What’s The Time Where You Are?” are delightful jolts of sexiness that calls to mind the most packed dancefloor and the gravitational pull of attraction that makes the dancefloor feel like it’s just you and that other person.  

Across all of these various albums, the longing they expressed was eloquent and frank, and the joy they depicted felt urgent. These albums and their dance-y leanings were especially refreshing to me, because they came out at a time where it seems so many of us have practiced a studious coolness, trying not to commit to hard or feel too much. Given the practiced cynicism of our time, music that takes joy seriously gives me some hope.  I want to believe that these albums and the current moment that we are having where dance music resonates so much is because more people agree with me than not, that giving oneself over to the feeling of joy and the desire to dance can feel as rapturous as any epiphany. 

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Authenticity Is the Mission

We owe the Nigerian alté movement from the early 2010s a debt for shaping both the aesthetics and the evolution of the way Nigerian music sounds, but much more besides. People like Odumodublvck and Seyi Vibes who both had a huge year would not be here if we never had a cultural turn where things like authenticity and community mattered. 

I’ve written before about how there is a huge difference between when an artist fan base has a Big Man and hangers-on dynamic, as opposed to when an artist seems to be emerging from a specific community that identifies him/her as one of their own. The artists that fall in the latter category tend to come with a specific sound. Their use of specific language makes them recognizable to a group of people or subculture, making them loved as much for who they are as the music they produce. Seyi Vibes is rooted deeply in his hometown of Ikorodu, and his afro-adura sound is shaped by Yoruba music styles like fuji and more contemporary popular music sounds. Ikorodu was his first audience before his breakthrough “‘God Sent”’ piqued the attention of street-pop listeners beyond Ikorodu and his hit single “‘Chance (Na Ham)”’ broke him fully into the mainstream. His blend of influences speaks to the blend of influences of a group of young people who developed an appreciation of the fuji their parents jammed to while listening to music from elsewhere and watching Nigeria’s own afrobeats scene evolve. Seeing Seyi Vibez spring forward is so obvious now, if you ever jammed to Da Grin and Konga’s “Sare Kaba Kaba”, listened to 9ice when he first came out, or gotten familiar with Olamide’s earlier work. Odumodublvck also built his audience outside the mainstream before he caught popular attention, and songs like “Picanto” piqued mainstream interest. You hear his music, and you can hear the culmination of everything from UK rap to DRB, along with his own definitive signature and a use of language that’s very Nigerian. Even Shallipopi, another artist who had a huge year in 2023, is similar in his appeal, in that his use of Edo pidgin and slang in his easy-going flow that reminds me of early UK grime gives him a strong sense of place that helped songs like “Elon Musk” become huge hits. 

Seeing people building from smaller places and retaining strong identities as they grow in their music has always been fascinating to me, especially in an industry where mass appeal means big money. These artists reflect the nature of what I imagine to be the challenge that Nigerian A&R managers face as they seek to find and support new artists. Finding new voices is always more art than science, but in many western countries where streaming numbers will indicate something about their following, streams in Nigeria are very much a lagging indicator that will only fully emerge when the artist has gotten industry backing. What’s exciting about this time is that more artists will see the examples set by artists like Shallipopi, Seyi Vibes and Odumodublvck and feel more free to be themselves, convinced that if their output is strong enough, the audience will come.

Looking Ahead

There are so many Nigerian female artists who I am excited to hear more from in the coming year. Lifesize Teddy and Fave are versatile and original with great pens, but Bloody Civilian is probably my favorite. Her singing voice is measured, and with songs like “How to Kill a Man” and “Family Meeting '' off her aptly-named EP Anger Management, the dark subject matter tinges the restraint in her voice with a quiet disdain. The songs are refreshing because it is so good to hear a Nigerian woman making music that is not as preoccupied with her desirability, and expresses irritation and annoyance in ways that are very relatable. She did a remix EP of Anger Management EP called At Least We Tried featuring collaborations with other up and coming artists, including pretty much every emerging female Nigerian artist you should know about. I’m very excited to see what else she does in the coming year.

There’s other music I’m digging into from new artists. I’ve recently downloaded Yarden’s new EP The One Who Descends because I liked his way-too-short song “Wetin”. I’m also really enjoying Sarz’s direction with the music he’s making. The song with Skrillex and Crayon and now the new one with Gunna and Asake make it clear that he’s exploring new sonic landscapes. That tendency was observable even really on in his work on Niniola’s Ibadi way back in 2014, and in his work with Obongjayar’s Sweetness EP and WurlD’s I Love Girls with Trobul. I’m hopeful that Sarz will drop a proper full-length record of collaborations in the coming year.

I’m really excited about Culture Custodian’s recent new podcasts. They dropped Overnight Success, which is an interview series with people who are making an impact on popular culture in Nigeria, and Uncultured, which is takes on different pop culture topics. I think we need more people steeped in our context telling our stories and helping to control the narrative, so I think this is very important work.

Lastly, I wrote a long-ish, reflective piece on Asa, her importance and her place in Nigerian music for the good folks over at The Republic. It’s dropping on Monday, so make sure you check that out.

Happy Holidays once more! Thanks so much for reading. Until next time.

New month, new Three! So good to be doing this again this month. Let’s get to it, shall we? Read, comment, share. Subscribe! Previous editions here and here.

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Shanty Town, Gangs of Lagos, and the politics of elite innocence

I have been really excited about the number of Nigerian movies and shows recently that have focused on Lagos’ underbelly and grappled with the country’s political environment, and I’d been meaning to engage with some of the themes of these films. I know all these movies came out early in the year, but this essay honestly could not have come earlier. The elections were a slow-moving clusterfuck that eventually gave way to a ridiculous amount of difficulty for Nigerians. Even while the year had me by the neck with work and teaching my students and life-ing, engaging with political topics was completely out of the question. Until now. 

There are actually a bunch of shows and films we could be discussing for various reasons, but I want to hold up two of these pieces of work: Gangs of Lagos, which follows a young man Obalola’s journey into gang activity in downtown Lagos; and Shanty Town, a mini-series where a group of sex workers seek to escape control of a dangerous gang leader. Both Shantytown and Gangs are set in Lagos, and feature gang activity as part of the long arm with which politicians gain and keep control. Both have one looming political figure calling the shots, and both feature poor people who make up the ecosystem that fuels the political machine that this key figure commands. Both are also similar in that they have privileged characters who are not directly involved in the grimy work that keeps the cogs of the political wheels turning. I enjoyed both of these pieces of work (I’m not getting into the plot holes in Shanty Town especially), and found them both interesting for the commentary they make (or perhaps don’t make) on privilege.  

Where the political figures and the gang leaders who do their dirty work are presented as cruel ogres driven entirely by their seemingly unslakable thirst for power, Teni in Gangs and Femi in Shanty are presented in a warmer, more inviting light. Teni in Gangs is the daughter of the gang leader Kazeem who grew up friendly with Obalola. She went abroad for university and returned home to a very comfortable situation set up by her father, with Obalola ordered to serve as her guard and driver. As far as we know, in spite of how much has changed in Teni's wealth due to her father’s political success, she does not treat Obalola any differently, even though the differences in their stations in life are clear. Similarly in Shanty Town, we are introduced to Femi Fernandez, who is the son of the politician that looms large above Lagos in the show. He is portrayed first as a hot stranger that Shalewa, the sex worker who works for the gang leader Scar, meets at a bar, then as a good guy who is happy to date her, a woman who is attractive but mostly speaks pidgin and is several rungs below the income ladder from him. Teni and Femi are portrayed as confident and good-looking. They crack jokes. They are allowed to keep their hands clean. We would be forgiven for liking them, or thinking of them as different from their parents.

The problem with allowing these characters to hold onto their innocence is that it represents a huge missed opportunity in these political films. With the characters of Teni and Femi, we are not given insight into anything about their interior lives. We do not know what they think about their positions of privilege, what stories they tell themselves about what is theirs and what they deserve. Who gets given an interior life with hopes, aspirations, and full humanness and who does not is treated as a political weapon that is wielded to demonstrate the impact of the sociopolitical environment on the private lives of characters.

But what if characterization has more potential than this narrow political use? What if it can be used to expose the way a character like Teni sees herself and these people who grew up around her? What if we are allowed to see up close how characters like Femi Fernandez and Teni care [or not] about the state of the country around them? In Gangs, when Obalola has an outburst about how charmed Teni’s life is while he has to clean up messes she knows nothing about, the confrontation was interrupted with an assassination attempt on Teni. The one time we see in Shanty Town where Shalewa and Femi have an actual conversation that shows the gulf between them, it serves no purpose. What if we are given an opportunity to see how people like Teni are keen to return to their Isale Eko neighborhood because that is where she is someone relevant, and what that tells us about the utilitarian relationship she has with the area she grew up, and how not so dissimilar she is from her father in that regard?

Far from exoneration, a choice to beam a kaleidoscopic light on privileged people will actually subject these characters to enhanced scrutiny, giving these works more interesting things to say about the Nigerian condition. They will enable our political films to tell stories about wealth and its impact that also gets at the humanness of these characters in a way that just stops at the enforced innocence that their parental wealth affords them. Our film storytellers have so much material, and there’s always more work to do. But imagine the stories we would tell if we allowed everyone shade and color.  

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What Did Burna Tell Us?

Burna Boy’s albums always begin with an intro that sets the tone for the rest of the album. My favorite album of his is Outside (yes, still), and it began with my favorite intro “More Life” which was a reflection on his journey at the time. In African Giant, the intro was where he spoke of his skill and ambition and shared his aspiration to win a Grammy. In Twice as Tall, he spoke about coming back stronger after the disappointment of not having won the Grammy. After having won that Grammy, he dropped Love, Damini and the first track was “Glory”, which was reflective and gratitude-filled, and was one full of gratitude for where he is in his career. These intros have always been a thing that helped with giving the albums a personal touch, giving us an inkling into his aspirations and where he’s at personally and professionally. 

Similarly, right from the intro on the new album I Told Them, we see a Burna who cares so much about his haters that he can’t even properly do a well-deserved victory dance. Right from that first opening, he is snarling at his audience full of haters. He beats his chest, telling us he is a genius and that he has always been as good as he is, as though the result of his prowess don’t speak for itself. It is as though the ovations from people who have loved his music for years have never been loud enough. Come to think of it, I don’t recall a moment in the whole album where he even acknowledges the near-constant standing ovation he’s been receiving for the last few years. 

Here is the thing: Burna is an exceptional artist. There is a whole discography and a whole catalog of growth that shows that. Burna has also always been someone who seemed to be looking over his shoulder at his haters. If this were earlier on in his career when he was still being snubbed for Headies, or the time when On a Spaceship had just dropped, or years later when he dropped the excellent EP Redemption, I would get it. He hadn’t at that time become the undeniable force that he would be. Now, though, we are seven albums in, a Grammy and several sold-out tours later. Because of this, Burna’s preoccupation with “them” feels strange to my ears. The more I listened to the album, the stranger it felt.

I Told Them has its gems, but the ambition of the album seems much smaller than the previous three in his oeuvre, while showcasing the best and worst of his instincts. The album feels more assertive and direct, because he does not experiment with as many styles as he did on Love or even on Twice. The album feels “smaller” in its ambition as a result, although that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Ambition by way of experimentation, after all, does not always translate to great music. Besides, at Burna’s best, there are very few other people who are as able to play with different styles while being fully himself. He gives us a jam worthy of a drunken whine in the darkened corner of a club on the album standout “Tested, Approved and Trusted”. I was happy to see him teaming up with British rapper Dave again on one of my favorite songs on the record “Cheat on Me”, which weirdly enough doesn’t seem to have anything to do with infidelity or women. Burna’s musical instincts are typically sharp, as we see on “Giza”, an album standout where Burna teams up with Seyi Vibez to give us afro-adura realness. Songs like it and “Killing Dem” three albums ago on African Giant show how much Burna enjoys playing with new styles and working with promising new acts. He gives Seyi Vibez the first verse then follows with his own in what is probably the album’s main jolt of playful experimentation. This and “City Boys” are raucous, foot-stamping bops that are some of the album’s best moments. I’m no fan of “Sitting on Top of the World”, which feels like a lazy attempt to recreate the magic that was “Last Last”. The album is mercifully free of politically-charged songs, but he does give us a slow and reflective take on “If I’m Lying”. I always like when he puts that gravelly singing voice to use in service of slower, more pensive songs. This, as well as “Big 7” and that lovely Virgil voice note that preceded it give the record a personal feel.

There was so much potential for this album to simply be an example of a versatile master at work, but Burna gets in his own way. The chip on Burna’s shoulder helps to drive him, and it has largely worked so far to keep himself on his toes. We all need our fuels, but the problem is that it seems as though what Burna seeks is not praise, but blind obeisance not unlike a vengeful god. A lot of the songs on I Told Them are about his success and his journey, and while he can be accused of self-involvement I actually am happy that the album is free of politics, because too often Nigerian artists only ever write about the people when they’re writing about political frustrations. While there are songs for the club aplenty, one has to wonder how much fun he’s actually having if he’s ending the album with “Thanks” (“Talibans II” comes after, but it’s listed as a bonus track). It’s one thing to think you are not given the props you deserve, or to be annoyed by rumors about your life, but to think you need to be thanked for your own personal success is truly the wildest thing I’ve heard an artist put to song. In retrospect, going on Zane Lowe’s popular Apple Music show and commenting on other afrobeats artists’ lack of substance in their music was a foreshadowing of “Thanks”, where he teams up with J Cole to cast aspersions on his Nigerian audience. As a lover of music, it was uniquely disappointing to hear J Cole and Burna Boy were collaborating on a song, only for it to be incoherent, finger-pointing dross that stands at odds with the fact that Burna’s biggest and oldest fans are among these same Nigerians that he’s spitting at. It is disappointing to see that even with all his success and how much has changed for him, Burna refuses to grow out of this petulant narrative he has pushed himself with. That this outburst to his Nigerian fans who don’t give him thanks for “making [my] country proud every chance I get” features an American rapper who ends the song by consoling and praising Burna is both hilarious and further adds to the insult. 

To bookend what would have been a decent follow-up to Love, Damini with these displays of petulance and bitterness is frankly a shame. Burna has been tireless in recent years, laying the tracks for what would be an incredible legacy as he propels forward. I just wish he’d spend more time basking in the light of his progress than bathing in the dust he would do well to leave behind.  

Don’t Sleep

One of my favorite new acts right now is Lifesize Teddy. There are very few people who come out the gate with the confidence to do their own thing and own their own voice. I came away from listening to her EP very impressed. You might be, too. 

 Until next time. 

It’s been a minute! Hope everyone’s year has rolled on pleasantly so far. Mine? Well, it’s been a bit manic with travel, some teaching, and trying to settle into post-grad school life. I missed this space, so it’s great to be writing this newsletter. Let’s proceed, shall we? Previous editions here and here.

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“Hip-Hop is a cultural movement and shouldn’t be in competition with Afrobeats”

If you’ve been following this newsletter for a while, then you know how fascinated I am by how we as people form community and build movements. Hiphop is a great place to look when you think about community, from how Cruel Santino to DRB contributions helped to shape the alté movement, to Show Dem Camp’s approach to community-building and now Odumodu Blvck’s exponential growth over the years.

Any time I want to know who’s got next in Naija hiphop, I check out Nigerian Barz Association’s page. It’s the page that helping me to keep my ears to the ground where new rap music is concerned. I heard about Odumodu Blvck there first, and it is also because of NBA that I first checked out Kinfxlk, Tomi Obanure (who’s also part of the Kinfxlk crew), and Payper. NBA’s Twitter account has been open for just over two years, but in that short time it has done such a great job of curating what’s hot and showcasing the genre for everyone who loves Nigerian hiphop. In the interview that follows, I chopped it up with NBA about all this things Naija hiphop, from who’s coming up, why hiphop fanbases are different from pop music ones’, and how labels need to approach hiphop artists differently from how they do Naija pop artists. My questions are bolded.

Thanks so much for agreeing to speak with me! So I guess a good place to start would be to pan widely. How does Nigeria’s rap scene compare to other rap scenes across the continent, in terms of mainstream popularity? 

In terms of popularity, we’ve never fallen short of holding either of the top 3 spots reserved for countries with the best hip-hop contents on the continent. It can be 1 today or 3 tomorrow, I don’t think it has ever fallen off those spots. A driving factor for that is we have the most competitive Hip-Hop scene in Africa. 

Why do you think Nigeria’s rap scene is the most competitive?  

Competition gives room for innovation, and gives options. This is why we can boast of a good number of Hip-Hop acts thriving successfully in any niche they chose; be it the likes ModeNine, M.I Abaga, Boogey, A-Q, Vector etc. at the height of the lyricism, Olamide, Reminisce, Phyno, IllBliss at the pinnacle of promoting indigenous and successful commercial rap records. Also to the recent success of the new school lead acts like Blaqbonez, Odumodu Blvck et al as the new champions on the block with credible records that can boast of charts and streaming success, and large listenership on digital music platforms. 

Again, competition breeds excellence, and I think  if we are going by the records of countries with the most awards and recognition on the continent, I’m sure we are at the top of the list. We can boast of having high numbers of hip-hop acts from our clime whose audience span across countries in Africa. I believe this is the right time for investors to invest due to the recent successes we have had.

You’ve been running the Nigerian Barz Association's Twitter page for a bit. How did that come about?

It blossomed from a place of disappointment of how under-represented Nigeria hip-hop is in the media, especially on social media. I’m a Nigerian rap enthusiast looking to effect a change.

Tell me about the growth of that page. How long have you been running it for? When did you start to notice an uptick in followership, and why do you think your page is important? 

It clocked 2 years last month, July 5th. Started like any other platform and the rise in followership, popularity and interactions was gradual and organic, considering the reach it got in its first 3 - 4 months; it got about 300 active followers which includes some notable Hip-Hop heads and acts in the industry and established personalities on social media. At first, it was surprising, because I couldn’t put a finger on why they saw a need to follow. It was something I was doing for fun. To some extent it gladdens the heart, and several remarks from observers have made it worthy. 

The page is important because I believe that building a community is a necessary driving force for a solid Hip-Hop system. It can help us to connect all enthusiasts and followers of our Hip-Hop from anywhere in the world.

We are in the digital era where half of every and anything that concerns our daily life can be conducted through social media. So it has made it easy to tackle the problem of under-representation to an obvious extent. Brand representation shouldn’t be a problem in this era, with the help of social media platforms and tools. A lot of people don’t know what some of these hip-hop acts look like, because these acts either lack spotlight or have limits in their reach. That's the role of the pictures in those tweets and videos on the platform, to create awareness, support and publicity for a wider reach. People care a lot about the visual representations of who they listen to. Sometimes people become interested in artists solely for their looks other than their songs. Sometimes! 

It’s an interesting time in Nigerian hip-hop. People like Odumodu Blvck and Blaqbonez have seen mainstream popularity, AQ is building, there’s some new voices like Payper coming up. Is it fair to say Nigerian rappers are finding their audience now more than they have in the previous decade? What’s changed for rappers in recent years?

There’s been a change in the hip-hop sounds with the new growing wave of the sub-genre, sounds like trap, drill and grime which requires a lot of melodic influences, and these artistes have been able to meet that demand.

Would you say that what Nigerian hip-hop needed all this time in order for it to be more mainstream was just a matter of tapping into new sounds?

Tapping into new sounds? No! Tapping into new sounds that are mainstream? Yes! 

They should be open to making use of popping sounds, make collaboration with pop artistes with/for wider reach. 

Is there a rapper (or rappers!) whose model of building their community you currently admire? Who and why? 

I like the Abuja hip-hop community collective and how they fancy the traditional operation of moving in crews. The likes of Apex Village(Psycho YP, Laime, Zilla Oaks, Azanti), Kinfolk Crew(Tomi Obanure, KVV, Nvthy, Infinit Amu), Anti World Gangstars(Odumodu Blvck, Hotyce, Reeplay,etc). It’s a CULT-ural movement and you have to move like one. Love the energy and teamwork. 

I think it’s interesting that so many rappers move in groups, because conventional wisdom tells us that streaming makes it hard for groups to survive. This is why we’re told the boy-band era of American pop music ended. Even individual rappers like Blaq and AQ are doing records together, and there was the whole EP that MI, Blaq and AQ did recently. Why are there so many crews in Naija hip-hop today, where there never used to be? Does it make it easier for them to find audiences?

Like I said before, forming a crew is traditional and conventional to hip-hop. It’s been like that since the days of ModeNine and the “SwatRoot'' crew which has Terry Tha RapMan, OD, Six Foot Plus, ThoroughBreds( IllBliss, Elajoe, Obiwon, B-Elect etc), Trybe Records(Eldee, 2Shots, Freestyle, Dr Sid, Sasha, etc), down to the next era of Choc Boiz(MI, Jesse Jagz, Ice Prince), Grip Boiz(Endia, Yung L, Chopstixx), and even the duo of Show Dem Camp so on. I believe artistes in hip-hop crews have better chances at success than those who are not in a crew. Yes it makes it easier for them to penetrate new audiences. 

What do you think labels need to understand about Nigeria’s rap scene and how best to support Nigerian rappers that maybe are unique to rap in Nigeria? 

Basically, Hip-Hop is considered a cultural movement and shouldn’t be in competition with Afrobeats; a hit-making venture or pop genre. This is not to say they shouldn’t make collaborations with pop artistes or dabble into creating pop songs themselves, because at the end of the day everybody needs what they can move and shake their bodies to. 

The best support hip-hop acts can get is investment in branding and marketing like any other succeeding artistes. 

Why is community so important to Nigerian hip-hop, and why is it so different from the way Nigerian pop artists build fanbases? Naija pop artists build fanbases off of scoring hits and collaborations with bigger artists. It seems that Naija hip-hop works a bit differently.    

Community to Hip-Hop is a CULT(from culture) movement type of thing, for it to thrive, there has to be some form of customs or ideas structured out for people to throw their supports behind, they need to feel they’re part of something. This is why Hip-Hop is a niche genre. It’s more of the artist and content/product that he/she is influencing; it could be a sound(SDC-PalmWine series), could be a persona, could be trends(fashion or dance) or lyrical content. 

Payper Corleone’s content revolves around the gangsta or mobster persona, Odumodu pushes the rebellious street-lifestyle, while Blaqbonez has created the impression around the “NO LOVE” subject to his brand and has thrived successfully off it with two projects that parades the theme. Love is an elusive topic in this age, and he has earned himself remarkable recognition on that path: a Young Preacher of Sex Over Love. 

It’s just like sales, every product will get its customers if it gets the right marketing, no matter how ridiculous the product is.

Thanks so much for speaking with me! 

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Adekunle Gold’s Evolution Continues

It’s been quite the journey for Adekunle Gold these past five or so years. Where Afropop Vol 1 marked the beginning of his recent evolution on the journey he’s currently on, Catch Me If You Can consolidated the shift in his identity as an artist. The quality of the music has been top shelf, so it’s quite a statement that Tequila Ever After has managed to go up a level. The album begins with “Chasing Peace of Mind”, where AG is meditative and thoughtful over Habib Koite’s strumming of his kora, and Ami Faku voice further adds texture. Going from that moodiness to the upbeat “Party No Dey Stop” should be jarring, but because AG’s verse that opens the song is essentially an affirmation, it is a lot less so. “Party” actually serves as great anchoring material for the lighter topics we get on songs like “Soro”, “Tio Baby” and “Ogranya”, so the sequencing in this first half – and stronger half – of the album really works as a result. 

For all the talk of AG having completely abandoned his old persona, I see a lot of the same energy carried through his oeuvre. He has not completely let go of the wholesome romantic songs that made him popular; we still see that in songs like “Look What You Made Me Do” and “Come Back To Me”. He has also seemed to re-channel the earnesty we saw in pining love songs like “Call On Me” and the reflective “Ire” to songs like the upbeat “Falling Up” and the album standouts “Party No Dey Stop” and “Ogaranya”, both of which feel like a grown man’s response to his younger self who sang songs like “Pick Up”. He is as intentional as ever on this album about showcasing his versatility by experimenting with different styles and collaborating with different artists. Of all the collaborations, though, I liked “Falling Up” the least; it just doesn’t hit hard enough for me, and was a bit of a letdown given the excellence of the collaborators, but I did wonder if he made more music with them and when we might hear it.

As fun a ride as Tequila Ever After is, I found myself thinking of who AG has been before and of potential soundscapes I’d love AG to occupy. Given that he also began Catch Me If You Can with a Malian assist from Fatoumata Diawara, Tequila makes it the second time that he has begun a record with a Malian collaboration. It’s enough to make me wonder how many more Malian-flavored jams he has in the can and if we will ever get a proper EP or full-length album featuring interesting collaborations with artists like Mamadou Diabate and Oumou Sangare. Asake’s rise has shown us that you can make music with rich use of a native language without sacrificing mainstream appeal, and it makes me wonder if we might see AG dig into his bag of tricks and give us some soulful Yoruba songs in upcoming records. 

Seeing him go from neo-highlife to pop shows the expansiveness of the lane that he has opened up for himself. It only makes me want to see more. What’s more fun than being excited about an artist’s future?

Also: I’ve reviewed the last couple AG albums, too. Check those reviews out here and here.

Catching My Fancy

Here’s a few things that I enjoyed recently.

I’ve been enjoying my following of Burnt Toast, a substack that focuses on ever-evolving diet culture and anti-fat bias. I particularly enjoyed a recent edition on the Korean beauty culture. It made me wonder who is writing about beauty standards and beauty politics in Nigeria. There’s so much potential for that, from navigating the ever-shifting line between ‘thick’ and ‘fat’ and how those dynamics shape our self-perception, to the BBL craze and accessing cosmetic surgery in Lagos. Even evolving trends in wedding culture, especially where makeup is concerned. Somebody better do it, please. And check out the post, it’s great. I learned a lot and it made me think about how societies are built unspoken things.

Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

When Beauty Work is a Rational Survival Strategy

Listen now (40 min) | You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, anti-fat bias, parenting, and health. I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. I also write the Burnt Toast newsletter. Today I am chatting with Elise Hu, a journalist and podcast host of…

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3 years ago · 65 likes · 12 comments · Virginia Sole-Smith

I also have been thinking a lot about Janelle Monae’ latest album and its place in her ongoing journey as an artist. Age of Pleasure diverges from her previous work, but I don’t mean in its sexuality, as most people have pointed out. Folks somehow skipped on the video of “Makes Me Feel”, forgot about her affinity to Prince whose early oeuvre swung from the profane to the holy, or acted like she didn’t wear a pants that looked like labias in one of her music videos for Dirty Computer. Sure, there’s more cunninlingus allusions per song than we’ve ever heard from her, but honestly. She literally hasn’t worn a suit in a video since her Archandroid album in 2010. Come on. The sexuality of her music isn’t such a huge surprise if you’ve been paying attention.

What’s struck me, rather, is how instead of a narrative as she has done with her previous records; she’s giving us a moment. Everything from Metropolis EP (2007) and Dirty Computer (2018) gave us songs tied to a narrative of an android named Jane. Dirty Computer engaged with sexuality, confidence and freedom, but within the framework of the continued narrative focusing on the character Jane. There were melodies that echoed their way throughout the album, explorations of different musical influences. In Age, Janelle Monae takes a deep breath in and feels. This time, the story is her. Age of Pleasure is tied together only by pleasure, the ability to revel in it and in owning one’s desires.

I think the album is more interest for what it says about the artist’s evolution than it is on a song-by-song basis. Still, the record has some standouts. She always showcases her dexterity and she does so here, too, with r’n’b realness on ‘Only Have Eyes 42’ and ‘Dry Red’, dropping bars on ‘Float’, sing-rapping on ‘Champagne Shit,’ ‘Haute’ and ‘Phenomenal’, and giving us afrobeats flavor on ‘Know Better’ and my current favorite ‘Paid in Pleasure.’ With no Jane the Archandroid, all we have is Janelle Monae. She’s coming forward in her own voice, centering herself, her body and her voice. I dig that.

Until next time.

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New month, new Three! Thanks for reading, sharing and subscribing. Let’s get to it. Previous editions here and here.

A note: Nigeria has had quite a February, but keep in mind, dear reader, that this is a culture newsletter. As such, there will be nothing about dodgy vote counts, nothing about fuel scarcity or cash fiascos, nothing about Labor Party’s chances in the upcoming Lagos’ gubernatorial elections. Follow me on Twitter for those. 

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On Obi, political movements, and acts of faith

During the EndSARS protests, I wrote that what we were seeing was a movement that was essentially an “adhocracy”, a term I borrowed from Zeynep Tufekci’s 2017 book Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protests where people created makeshift organisations to ensure the impromptu protest movement they were creating could run. When EndSARS came to a brutal end at the hands of the military on Oct 20, 2020, it was clear that people were angry and restless for change. Nigeria’s young people had all this energy and passion, but the political environment was not built for their influence. As young people did before, they built another adhocracy that contributed immensely to the growth of Peter Obi’s candidacy through the then-fledgling Labour Party from a distant third, to a formidable threat to Nigeria’s two major parties.

I think Obi is worth a dedicated mention here because of the youth-driven movement around his candidacy and what it managed to inspire in a most nakedly cynical of election periods, even by Nigerian standards. Nigeria is just coming to the end of eight years of a shambolic Buhari presidency that has had us backed into a corner like Mike Tyson in his prime, pounding us with blow after blow of dysfunction and failure. Like I wrote a couple of editions ago in an essay on movements in Nigeria, “the machine for Peter Obi is a community of people who have chosen Peter Obi as a figure representing what they see as a departure from politics as usual.” This movement for Obi would not have taken off as much if Obi was a Vice Presidential candidate under the main opposition party PDP, or if EndSARS itself never happened. 

President Buhari before his eight-year presidency was arguably the one politician in Nigeria who commanded huge organic popularity from people who believed in him. Belief in Buhari as a changemaker was hinged on his ascetic public image, which drove many people to hope that he could get hard things done for the country’s overall good, improve national security, and reduce corruption. Buhari’s reticence added to his mystique and allowed people to project these hopes on him. By contrast, the growth of Obi’s popularity in the campaign months was driven by what he did say, his seeming accessibility and the simple, down-to-earth manner of his relations with Nigerians that belies his grand wealth and status. Obi is not an ascetic like Buhari, but he does present himself simply, always wearing a black buttoned shirt or black kaftan. He has a reputation for frugality, but is known as a hugely successful businessman who made his money through trackable means well before his time in government. 

What has won over the huge numbers of people who believe in Obi is the energy with which he has engaged the electorate throughout the campaign. His campaign has been marked by his willingness to speak off-the-cuff to people in public fora across the country, not just as stakeholder groups to be bargained with, but as citizens who are interested in a better country. In Obi, we see something of the balance one must strike to be a popular figure in Nigeria: elite yet down-home, wealthy enough to be an aspirational figure yet smart enough not to wear in a manner that distances, a willingness to meet people where they are while still keeping one’s exalted position. It’s the kind of a balance that successful pentecostal pastors know more than anyone else how to strike well.

It’s hard to talk about cultural happenings during the election without talking about tribalism and religion. It’s undeniable that a big part of many people’s push for Obi – a Christian man from the southeast – is rejecting the leading party APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket and the main opposition party PDP’s presenting a northern Muslim presidential candidate after eight years a previous northern Muslim one. It was a move that parties presented less as an ethno-religious slight than as a matter of pragmatism in their hopes to get votes and interest from the huge population of northern Muslims. Tribalism and religious bigotry in Nigeria’s politics provides easy identifiers that give cover for a politics that compels, rather than courts, its audience. These identifiers demand loyalty, rather than accountability, from its audience, making it completely incompatible with a democracy if you are looking for democracy to yield development outcomes through governance.

There are still questions swirling over the election results and faulty vote counting, but for me and for the purposes of this essay the most important thing about Obi’s campaign was the widening of our collective political imagination in a most bleak time in our politics. I was dubious on Obi’s chances of victory, but I enjoyed watching people dare to dream. I enjoyed watching young people be taken seriously by someone who says he wants to lead them to something better than where they currently are. I think it is important that Obi ran a campaign where he courted the electorate with ideas and consideration, and went as far as he did. It signals that enough Nigerians are ready for a politics that goes beyond the search for easy tribal alliances and want leaders that truly give a damn about them. 

Voting Obi was an act of faith for many Nigerians, both an expression of frustration and a test of the wingspan to see how far our efforts as a people can move the boulder of political stagnation. People mobilized and built community around their frustration and desire to change politics, and it made more of an impact than many people thought was possible. I think that’s remarkable regardless of what one thinks of the man himself, largely because of what it tells us about ourselves. I feared I would not see such an act of faith in Nigeria again after the brutal finality of Oct 20, 2020, but I should have known that, like my friend Fizzy said to me after the elections, energy never completely goes away. It just gets transformed into something else.  

An Interlude

If you’re not on that new Lojay, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. After teasing us for so long, the man finally dropped a follow-up to LV and ATTN EP, and he doesn’t disappoint. Can’t pick a favorite, either. It’s that good. 

My last couple of gym sessions have seen Ajebutter22’s new album Soundtrack to the Good Life on rotation. Ajebutter fully leans into the Rick Ross luxury rap thing (not as skillfully, but still) and serves up a chilled out escape from Naija wahala. Koromone’s spoken word piece “Soft Life Manifestations” is the perfect alley-oop to the Soft Life, and it rolls on pretty pleasantly from there. 

I’m still burrowing into Masego’s newest, but I’m enjoying it so far. I’ve always dug his musicianship, the way he melds r’n’b, hiphop and jazz. The music is well-done, thoughtful and personal, but not up its own ass. The songs take on his different parts of his life, such as reflections on his life as an artist on ‘Remembering Sundays’ and ‘Who Cares Anyway’, experiences with women like on ‘You Never Visit Me’ and ‘Afraid of Water’. My favorite songs so far are ‘You Never Visit Me’, ‘Remembering Sundays’, ‘Say You Want Me,’ and ‘Two Sides’. If you’re down for something chilled out, you should give this one a spin.

Radio Silence

I’ve seen a few pieces of commentary online on the fact that some of Nigerian music’s biggest names did not comment at all on the elections. What made the silence remarkable to me is that Davido, Don Jazzy, Burna Boy and Wizkid all commented on #EndSARS. Burna made a song called October 20, 2020. Wizkid joined the London #EndSARS protests. Davido had direct engagements with the Chief of Police and partook in the protests in Lagos, along with lots of other Nollywood and Naija music artists. Tiwa Savage had asked Beyonce to voice support on #EndSars. During EndSARS, they seemed pulled in by a willingness to express solidarity with other young Nigerians, a core constituent that contributed to their current status as superstars. Why the silence now?

We are a long way away from the time of Nigerian pop music when popular artists routinely made politically-conscious music. In the military era where the divisions between government and civilian population was thick and red, the music oscillated easily between the playful and the political. As our politics and local economies became more of a shitshow and our artists became more popular globally, our music became more and more a place of escape from our desperately awful socio-political existence. Even our clubs and partying have only seemed to become more lavish and hedonistic the more shitty things have gotten, our attempts at escape more elaborate and inviting with each passing year. I once asked a Nollywood filmmaker friend why so many films focused so much on the wealthiest Nigerians and not enough on lower-income people, and his response was “nobody wants to watch stories about poverty.” Similarly, logic goes, nobody wants to listen to music about the shit realities they live in everyday, and the entertainers we look to for escapism probably don’t want to reflect anything of our realities either. 

All I’ve got on this are questions (if you have answers or insights, share in the comments!), and I should note that I believe that our biggest music stars are private citizens and can sing or talk about whatever they want. They are also free to choose not to vote or make any political statements at all. Besides, it’s not like nobody has lent a voice; people like Simi, Adekunle Gold, Falz, Johnny Drille, MI, Zlatan, and others have spoken about the elections. At the same time, I won’t discount the importance of having our top music stars weigh in – even if in a nonpartisan fashion –  about elections, though. Nobody should feel like they must, but I have to wonder what changed between 2020 and now that has suddenly made them unwilling to speak up.

Until next time.

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Another month, another Three! It feels good to be updating the newsletter. Hope you guys are thriving in 2023. I’m done with the Masters, teaching for the first time, not reading enough, and getting ready to get even busier. Still, I missed writing these for you guys. It’s a great edition for this month of love. Shall we? Previous editions here and here.

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Japa, Japa 

My email signature for a long time has been a line on exile, “You will leave behind everything you love / most dearly, and this is the arrow / the bow of exile first lets fly.” It’s a line from a longer passage from Dante’s Paradiso 17: 

You shall leave everything you love most dearly: 

this is the arrow that the bow of exile

first lets fly. You are to know the bitter taste

of others’ bread, how salt it is, and know

how hard a path it is for one who goes

descending and ascending others’ stairs

In this passage, Dante captured beautifully this notion of the compulsion to leave one’s home,  as well as the difficulty of both the path when people choose to walk it. That initial difficulty is sure, and it manifests itself differently from one person to another. There is currently a wave of upper/middle-class emigration of Nigerians – legal and otherwise, and I think portraits that depict non-physical costs of emigration are important in rendering human stories of our time as Nigerians. This is because if there is one thing that Nigerians often do, it is to underestimate all pain that is not physical, and overestimate our capacity for crude pragmatism when prioritizing the things that truly matter to us. Eyimofe and A Japa Tale (the latter is legally available on YouTube) are two films I’ve seen recently that center on the desire to japa, the Yoruba word we have given to the act of emigration from Nigeria for greener pastures. One thing that these films do well is to grapple with the moral, financial and emotional cost of our lives in Nigeria and the desire and decision to leave.

Eyimofe – meaning “this is what I want” or “this is my desire” in Yoruba – is about longing and failures to land. The film begins and ends with both protagonists in Lagos. One is Rosa, a hair stylist and a waitress, and the other is Mofe, a factory technician and security guard. The opening shot lingers on a jumble of wires, portending the messiness of the lives of the film’s two main protagonists, as they navigate their lack of means and how it dictates the lack of opportunity that will define their lives. Each of the chapters of the film are named Spain and Italy, both countries where the protagonists want to go, but have not and can’t. The film is a technical feat, thoughtfully done, gorgeously shot and ambles at a slow pace, perhaps too slow for those who are used to the easy glide of most Nollywood fare. It is a film with important things to say about who we are now, and what it means for how we live. 

I came away really impressed with the quietly powerful performances in the film by Jude Akwudike who plays Mofe and Temi Ami-Williams who plays Rosa. Like many Nigerians, Mofe is stoic in the face of all that his life chips away from him: a sister and her children he is fond of that die suddenly, money he hoped to get suddenly taken from him, the pathway towards the foreign land he aspires to moving further and further away. When he explodes in anger at the factory where he works, we expect it, and are almost relieved for him, even though we know it endangers one of his jobs. His is a story so typically Nigerian, where the constant wave of private traumas and large-scale dysfunction often demand superhuman levels of resilience, and the only release we get from the pressure we face is each other. 

Another thing that the film does quite well is that it speaks the language of delicate class interactions in Nigerian society fluently. Rosa’s story does this especially well. When we first meet her, she is standing with her face downcast behind a beaded curtain. She is a woman driven by her lack. Both of the men Rosa meets take the shape of something she wants, whether it is the money or the stability, and she is as uneasy in their company as she is desirous of their presence. We see how the weight of all that burdens her life denies her the ability to be the aloof, beautiful figure the expat would prefer that she were. Where she would rather hold herself apart from the lovesick landlord who clearly wants more from her than rent, she caves to his demands for more ease in her life. Her younger sister got pregnant, and their lack of options leads Rosa and her sister down the path to a human trafficker who forces them to make yet another compromise. In the end, she resigns to what she sees as her best option for a better life, the desire she has for herself will likely remain unfulfilled. From the film, we get the sense that poverty in Nigeria is expensive as hell, and can cost you everything from your dignity to your life without a moment’s notice. 

The other film I saw was a short film called A Japa Tale, which told the story of a young couple where one of them is moving abroad. Dubem is a doctor, and Nigerian doctors and nurses are so poorly paid that they often leave the country in droves. The opening five minutes are a sweet, tender depiction of the love they have for each other. Dubem’s desire to emigrate is colored by his desire to remain with Emuche, who has just learned that she is pregnant. We learn that he has been keeping his japa plans from her until it was nearly time for him to leave, and her learning the extent to which he has gone far in his plans adds more conflict. His is not a story of a failure to launch, but rather a depiction of the cost his leaving will bear, for him and for her. 

Another striking thing about A Japa Tale is how sparse it is, and how much the story does with little. It is short, told entirely indoors, in two or three rooms, and with a small cast of three. Because of its sparseness, the story has nowhere to hide. The dialogue had to be strong, the performances had to be good, and the editing had to be tight. In achieving all these things, this small film did a lot that many Nigerian films often struggle to achieve by keeping things simple. There’s a lesson to learn in that.

Music I liked 

I’ve really enjoyed the success that new Cameroonian-American artist Libianca has seen with the success of her single “People”. The song is moody and reflective, capturing a mood of despondency and aloneness that a lot of us have felt before. I usually don’t pay these open verse challenges much attention, but it is notable to me that this is an artist who had not previously built a name for herself and the song is popular enough that she can do such a challenge. I can’t tell if this challenge was flagged off unintentionally because Buju (or Bnxn as he wants to known now) made a verse to it, but it’s still really cool. I love that people who are doing music in these parts have to rely less and less on club bangers to find audiences. 

I really enjoyed Blaqbonez’ Young Preacher album. His flows were tight and melodic, and he largely keeps it simple. I enjoyed the great use of samples from older Nigerian songs in the production, like his use of Style Plus “Runaway” and Asa’s “360”, and some of the playful storytelling as in “She Like Igbo” and one of my favorites “I’ll Be Waiting” (I know the title is actually ‘I’d Be Waiting’ but ‘Will’ is more correct). Rap often does not do well in Nigeria, but I strongly believe that Nigerian rappers with an ear for melody, a skillfulness with local lingo, and unwilling to imitate style for style what rappers elsewhere are doing elsewhere would soar. Blaq proves it well, and I came away impressed with his style and approach. 

That I even liked the album was a surprise for me, primarily because I didn’t bother with his previous and don’t care for the whole “fuck love” public image. I find it really childish and insecure, not to mention misogynistic, to insist that the only reason why someone would want to be with you, even if only sexually, is because of your money. Broke men find women to fuck them and marry them routinely. In the real world, people largely date and marry within their class bracket, and suffering women usually do not find anything other than equally suffering men. The whole thing is especially amusing because the first single from the new album is “Back in Uni” which talked about all the girls whose hearts he broke as a young student. Somehow, we are to square the notion that women only ever want money, but he had a whole harem of girlfriends he fucked around on as a student from a humble background. I rolled my eyes at the gleeful “omg all these girls I fucked around on”, especially as it was in the same body of work as songs like “Mazoe” and “Loyalty”. Perhaps that incoherence is realistic and typical, but I reserve the right to be annoyed by it.

Without much forewarning, Little Simz dropped a follow-up to the Mercury Prize-winning stunner that was “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert” . The fantastic new album “No Thank You” is less of a colorful smorgasbord than SIMBI. Instead of songs driven by lots of different influences from afrobeats to grime, we get a more spare offering with smooth, even-voiced flows over production reminiscent of 90s hip-hop designed for a laidback evening at home, or head-nodding on a long drive. “No Thank You” is an album I always play in its entirety, but my favorites are Angel, Gorilla, No Mercy, Heart on Fire, Sideways and Who Even Cares. In these songs, she covers various themes, like her experience in the music industry, the immigrant experience, mental health and love. From her previous album to this one, she imbues her music with an earnesty and thoughtfulness that adds wondrous complexity to her grit and braggadocio. Once more, she’s proved that she’s one of the best rappers you don’t listen to enough. 

The Political Work of Romance 

It’s the month of love, and I’ve been thinking about the work that romance does. I don’t just mean on the personal level of how it makes us feel, or even how much it is taken for granted that romantic love is something we desire. I mean ‘the work that romance does’ relative to the politics of gender in our intimate spaces, especially for women in heterosexual relationships. The ideal for marriage – that golden apex of human relations that we are all supposed to be striving for – is currently one that hinges on a romantic love. In the best of love stories, romance begins with the spark of a connection between two people that bears the promise of a great love. While the romance may flame out, it could as easily burn steadily over time in warming embers of companionship and comfort. Romance fulfils its promise for many people – lucky bastards, all – or at least seems to for enough people that it can make those of us who have not had our own great love stories feel inadequate for that fact. 

While marriage was always understood as a beautiful possibility of human relations, it has not always been the ideal rationale for marriage. For much longer across many human societies, marriages were largely seen as economic decisions. I’m speaking in huge sweeps here, so bear with me, but I think this is largely true in a lot of places. Women were married off as girls so as to have long child-bearing years, ensuring that women bore as many children as possible. Families arranged marriages to consolidate economic prosperity and security, or to improve the standing of their families, or simply to ensure more hands to do agrarian work on which their local economies were built. While a marriage where one is treated with kindness was the ideal, being in passionate love with one’s partner was not deemed necessary. 

Because the economic rationale for marriage was the default, and women’s respectability was hinged on being with a man in a way that the reverse is not true, it has often meant that women being treated with basic kindness was a fortunate thing. This is especially true in post-colonial societies where western, Judeo-Christian and Islamic perspectives of gender roles and relations were made to prevail. As the economic rationale for marriage continues to take shape over time due to women’s own growing economic power and the romantic rationale for lifelong partnership becomes more prominent, romance has become the factor on which women leverage in heterosexual intimate spaces in which they may lack other kinds of power. 

Romance as an idea has endured because, in heterosexual intimate spaces, it creates a utopia where the socio-economic backdrop against which we live our lives doesn't matter. For men, romance dangles the allure of women who want to be with them for who they are, in spite of what they can do with them. For women, though, it does so much more. In romance, women are courted, their attention held, their hand sought. The men that pose as suitors treat them with care in order to have them close. Indeed, even with socioeconomic power fully asymmetric, romance represents the only arena in women’s relationships with men that men had to seek women. The world is full of contested space for women, but romance has always been a place where it has always been understood and uncontested that women had to be reached for, convinced, made to stay. 

As women have fought and continue to fight for rights, access and space in their different political contexts, romance allows for the hope that you can get more of what you want from the man in your intimate space who has said that he cares for you. It is not for nothing that Delilah is one in a slew of historical seductress archetypes that have loomed large in many a cultural imagination. Delilah was able to wield power over Samson, so much so that she brought him to his knees. Depictions of women like her exist precisely because a woman’s power has historically been understood as a highly situational thing, circumscribed within the sociocultural remit of the men she is appealing to. Unlike a man’s power in his relationship with a woman in many places, supported tacitly and explicitly by the society in which he exists, a woman’s power has historically not been about what she deserves; it is what she can negotiate.

Romance does not erase the question of power in relationships, but it does complicate it and make that power harder to yield with the sole intent of control. We learn from bell hooks’ All About Love that power and control are incompatible with love, because the desire to dominate is ultimately driven by fear. From bell hooks’ All About Love:

“As a culture we are obsessed with the notion of safety. Yet we do not question why we live in states of extreme anxiety and dread. Fear is the primary force upholding systems of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known. When we are taught that safety always lies in sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear - against alienation and separation. The choice to love is the choice to connect - to find ourselves in the other”

Romantic love as a driver for marriage, then, provides a lifeline of protection for women. The opportunity to have romance with a desired partner is the opportunity to have a connection, to find oneself in each other. It is a window through which women can negotiate safety and freedom within traditional institutions that society urges them all their lives to take part. If love has ever been there between a woman and her partner, then perhaps it can be called upon again to soften the asymmetry or create room for compromise where one’s needs and wants may clash with the other. The alchemy of romance, then, can create safety and softness out of nothing, but the sustainability of that safety and softness in our intimate spaces depends on harder, decidedly unsexy stuff like economic power and justice.

Now, those’s are flames that never die out.

And that’s all for my musings in this month of love. Until next time.

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Fanbases, Communities and How Nigerians Come Together

The BBC recently shared an excellent documentary on Amapiano, and I was struck by the focus on community. Some of the main drivers of the amapiano movement still lived in their old neighborhoods in Soweto and identified strongly with their people. Even the recognizable names like Daliwonga, Oskido and Major League DJs all spoke of community and home as well as fans. The music, it seems, retains a solid sense of place. 

This brought to mind some thoughts on just how different fanbases and communities manifest in Nigeria. Instead of communities from which certain sounds come from, what you often see with Nigeria’s biggest mainstream music stars is more of a “Big Man and his hangers-on” dynamic where people flock to him (it’s usually a “him”) because of his success. Much like pentecostal pastors, these Big Man artist creates a delicate alchemy of familiarity and aspiration, while producing music that both speaks to people’s realities and helps them escape them. The biggest mainstream acts blow like bombs with hit after hit, and become the sun around which their bases eventually orbit. It’s very “la communité, c’est moi,” apologies to King Louis XIV. 

The difference between this dynamic and that of a community is that the community precedes the artists, and the music represents the already-existing community’s sense of self. To be sure, there are communities of people to be fed with music that speaks to them. Vincent Desmond wrote for OkayAfrica recently on the electronic music scene in Lagos and how much of a melting pot it is for various sub-communities in the cities. Still in Lagos, Afropolitan Vibes also nurtured a community around a certain kind of music, and it was apparent from the kind of music one might hear at their shows. Similarly, Nativeland shows in Lagos also feed a community of alté music lovers. It is no accident that the examples here are all of various music subcultures. When you have decided that you’re not trying to be a multi-billionaire and just want to make music that you and your people can relate to, it opens up new ways of being that do not confine one to a Big Man formula of one chasing mainstream success. Show Dem Camp typify this community-building path, and I have really enjoy hearing them speak about how they work on building community through their authenticity. It has served them well; their annual Palmwine Fest has grown from a just Lagos affair to a multi-city and international one. In a lot of ways, authenticity is closely related to redefining what success means for you specifically.

The way we build community in Nigeria is different from what the amapiano pioneers have done in part because of how fragmented Nigeria has become over time. So much of Nigerian youth culture today is a dialogue between its local population and its diasporas, especially its London-based one. Getting big in Lagos is hugely important, but other cities like Port Harcourt and Abuja have their subcultures and music hubs, too. Besides, Lagos itself is also fragmented by class, which influences access to various subcultures by finance or even just sheer mainland-island geography. What bridges gaps for young people is what cultural anthropologists might refer to as shared “cultural capital”, the cultural artefacts that we might share with others who came up around the same time that we did: the old school Nollywood films that we all knew and loved growing up that also serve as materials for memes today; songs that we can all sing word for word after too many Long Islands at 2am; cultural events that shape our slang and even inherited stories and experiences that are common across the board. Social media also does a lot to bridge these gaps, teaching people the same lingo or even just bringing people together in ways that make a mockery of distance. Like our amapiano brethren, we have our way of life and we are also inexorably connected – just in a more geographically-agnostic way.

I see a lot of recognition of the nature of community-forming in the youthful energy behind ex-Governor Peter Obi’s run for president. There is the use of social media to bridge gaps – local to diaspora – and build a supporter base. The socioeconomic frustrations of the past decade are part of our cultural capital, but #EndSARS looms large as a time where we saw the power of our collective action. Indeed, I would posit that we would not have a Peter Obi movement if #EndSARS had not happened. The machine for Peter Obi is a community of people who have chosen Peter Obi as a figure representing what they see as a departure from politics as usual. There were even moments in the beginning where it seemed as though the movement for Peter Obi was running on its own. Even though Peter Obi is not necessarily of the Nigerian youth population, many of them have chosen to identify with him and have mobilised for him across the country, taking the energy from online spaces to offline spaces. 

The difference between Peter Obi’s emergence and other examples of community formation I can think of is its intentionality. This community made the first move to assert itself, acting with such certainty of its abilities (again, I think largely as a result of #EndSARS) in the political sphere. We seem to be witnessing a group of people recognizing that they are indeed a community, knowing that they can call upon themselves. That is a powerful force, and one I hope to see continue to shape our politics and our collective lives, whatever happens in the upcoming elections. 

Full disclosure: I am not backing any horse in the Nigerian electoral race in 2023. Nope, not even Peter Obi. What I will say, though, is that I am happy to see so many people believe again. I feared that Oct 20, 2020, might be the last I would see of faith in action in our politics. I am happy that it only seemed to light a fire for many.

Asake Delivers

Like many Nigerians with a pulse and an appreciation for music, I’ve spent the past year becoming a huge Asake fan.

One of the things that strikes me about Asake is how Yoruba he is. He invokes his stage name, which is also his mother’s name, almost as an oriki in his songs. The casualness of prayer in his music is similar to how prayer is a manner of speaking in Yoruba. His collaboration with DJ Spinall ‘Palazzo’ begins with a prayer that would make your heart melt if it were recited by an elder relative before singing “I say who no like designer?” without missing a beat. On the final song on his 2021 Ololade Asake EP ‘Baba God’, he sings “I no fit sober, ‘cause I got Jehovah gan ni”. In his new album Mr. Money With the Vibe, the first track ‘Dull’ evokes both his ancestors and the Orisha of wealth in Yoruba religious tradition named Aje. It brings to mind how, at our most elemental, Yoruba people do indeed hold things that our western predilections tell us do not belong together, like hedonism and prayer, sensuality and God.

Musically, Asake is unlike anyone else out right now, but that does not mean we have never had a fuji-inflected pop do well; Terry Apala’s ‘Champagne Shower’ did alright back in 2016, after all, and Jazzman Olofin collaborated with Ayuba on ‘Raise da Roof’ in the early 2010s. I just have not seen it come together this beautifully, set against an amapiano and deep house-inflected backdrop, with a drunken choir singing the hooks and random string section over a typical amapiano log-drum. He’s mixed these various influences in a formula that has served up hits, back to back.

As a body of work, Mr. Money with the Vibe is an ode to the Lagosian hustle spirit, full of admonishments to get your paper up and play hard. The record is very amapiano and deep house-flavored, but one can also hear Olamide’s influence strongly on songs like ‘Nzaza’, ‘Ototo’ and ‘Muse’. It is because the music is so amapiano and house-flavored that the brevity of the songs feel especially weird, even though most of our pop faves are making two-minute songs now thanks to the influence of our streaming overlords. Also, on my first listen, I found the transitions from song to song rather jarring. My ears eventually adjusted, and I chalk my even noticing this up to having spent so much time jamming my 2022 notables Beyonce’s Renaissance and Kabza de Small’s incredible KOA II, but not taking care to tighten the transitions on amapiano-influenced music feels lazy. All of that said, the record does not disappoint from one song to another. Besides the solid released singles ‘Terminator’, ‘Peace Be Upon You’, and the ‘Sungba’ remix with Burna Boy, other high points include songs like ‘Joha’, ‘Nzaza’, ‘Ototo’, ‘Organise’ and ‘Sunmomi’. There are not really any “bad” songs that make me wrinkle my nose and hit skip; just high points and “OK” points. If I can name eight songs out of a 12-track record that I genuinely enjoy, I’d call that a record to play straight through and begin again.

 Other Stuff I’ve Been Checking Out

Speaking of fanbases, Big Brother Nigeria is currently on, and it has once again brought about a conversation on abuse springing from the relationship between a couple on the show. It has been a subject of much social media conversation and many a Twitter Space already. Document Women and Native have both written editorials opining about the abusive dynamic between two housemates Bella and Sheggz. It reminds me of the conversation in 2017 when a BBN housemate Kemen got disqualified for touching a female housemate while she slept, and even then viewers could not come together to condemn that; in fact, the speaker of his state assembly even defended him in a public statement. I don’t watch BBN, but I hate how much the dynamic of BBN fanbases dictate that people who support a certain housemate cannot also call out their bad behavior. It poisons the well, and obscures what ought to be frank conversations of what cannot be allowed to stand.

There’s also a couple of great conversations you should check out. The amazing British Somali poet Warsan Shire was in conversation with another poet Momtaza Mehri for Granta magazine, and it was full of thoughtful observations on writing, community, immigrant experiences and diasporas. Also, novelist Eloghosa Osunde had a conversation with Joshua Segun-Lean in which they discussed everything from love, friendship, writing and Osunde’s brilliant novel Vagabonds! I keep thinking about how much I should probably drop a review of that novel. Maybe some day.

There’s tons of great music out now. MI’s The Guy is really solid, but I expected nothing less; the man doesn’t know how to make a bad record. My favorite song on that right now is ‘Soft Like Tony.’ Another rap album to check out is Danger Mouse and Black Thought’s Cheat Codes. Black Thought is one of my favorite MCs, and he’s in great form on this one.

I’ve also really enjoyed Buju’s (I still can’t wrap my mind around his new name BNXN) Bad Since ‘97 EP. It’s great chilled out music with solid songwriting and a little playfulness. I didn’t enjoy Magixx’s EP but I found the eponymous EP from Don Jazzy’s other protege Bayanni is much more promising.

Native Sound System’s Nativeworld album that is a lot of fun with some alte faves like Wani and Odunsi, as well as Ayra Starr and Lojay. It’s been on heavy rotation for me, especially ‘Tortoise’, ‘Wedding Ring’, ‘Good Good’, and ‘Stuck on You’. The music is at once contemporary and future-facing, bringing familiar voices with new people you should keep an eye out for. Solid stuff all around.

Speaking of new people, I discovered a Nigerian-Canadian r’n’b artist called Preye. She has a song called ‘Malibu’ that I think is really sweet, and I’m just seeing that she has a body of work called Don’t Look Down! that I’m looking forward to sinking my teeth into. Also on an r’n’b tip, Ari Lennox has a new album age/sex/location that you should check out. The collaborations with Summer Walker and Lucky Daye are my favorites.

I’m also looking forward to checking out Odunsi’s new Denim EP at some point. Maybe you’ll get a review of that next month.

Until next time.

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So good to be writing this, having finished my MA Thesis and my Masters program (YAY! send champagne!). I’m catching up on sleep and non-academic writing. Thanks for subscribing and for sharing. Let’s get to it, shall we? Previous editions here and here.

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On Affirmations and The Renaissance of “I’m Too Sexy”

When ‘I’m too Sexy’ first became a fun party song from the 90s, I don’t think even Right Said Fred themselves knew they were making what would become an enduring hit. The song is playful praise song for the self that satirises the self-image of beautiful supermodels and their set of the 90s who modelled both super-fashionable clothing by the world’s best designers and an outsized confidence in their own desirability. Over an upbeat instrumental, the lyrics are sung – if you can call it that – in a voice that sounds like someone’s awful pretentious Barry White impression after having smoked too many cigarettes. It takes neither itself nor its audience very seriously, and it is very much the kind of song you’d sing in a solo dance party at home with your hairbrush as a microphone.

There’s been a bunch of samplings of the Right Said Fred original in the 2010s, most notably for me was back in 2018 when the rapper YG interpolated ‘Too Sexy’ for his song ‘Too Cocky’. Drake who understands popular music like no one else and has soundtracked so many pop culture moments interpolated ‘I’m Too Sexy’ over a trap beat by Future and Young Thug. More recently, ‘I’m Too Sexy’ was interpolated over a Chicago-style house music beat and blessed by Beyonce herself in ‘Alien Superstar’ for her latest Renaissance album.

If one considers the content of much of what counts as pop music and what we see on our social media feeds, the tongue-in-cheek positive self-talk of ‘I’m Too Sexy’ fits right in with the popularity of bigging oneself up with affirmations and positive self-talk. Social media is full of spins on this kind of content, which likely began as spin-offs from the celebration of the girl-boss and then the self-care subgenres of social media female-centric content. Also related to its rise is likely protection against one’s predilection to comparing one’s reality to others’ Instagram-ready highlight reel. The female and sometimes queer skew of a lot of this positivity content also makes sense, because these are groups that often have to create communities to mobilize, organize and, yes, affirm themselves while living in larger societies that have laws and regulations that do not fully affirm them. The fabulous confidence of many content creators who peddle positivity can be armor for fortifying oneself against the headwinds that one faces beyond the walls of one’s safe spaces, or it can be just a way of celebrating oneself in defiance of the box that society tries to put one in.

Currently, there are well over 100 apps dedicated to affirmations all over app stores. Seriously, I counted and stopped at 107 and many of them indeed skew towards female audiences. There are popular TikToks and IG reels of people saying humorous and sincere affirmations to themselves. There are people whose entire social media schtick is to declare that they will only deal with “good vibes only” forever and ever amen. We seem now to have no use for self-deprecation, other people’s “bad vibes”, as we are admonished to think good thoughts, take no shit from anyone, exude joy and live soft lives. Positive self-talk is very much “the moment”.

My theory is that a lot of what we see in the stubborn optimism – or what I’ve also seen less flatteringly called “toxic positivity” – is in large part because of the increasing secularity of our culture. Religion used to hold a space for more of us where we were affirmed by the exceptionality of the group of our belonging, with texts that we would refer to for affirmations and admonitions sent from on high to guide us through our lives. It also provided more of us with spaces to be vulnerable with our fears and our near-misses and even celebrate our joys with testimonies to God’s goodness.

More and more, people are finding these places of belonging in more secular online spaces. In much the same way religious spaces both encourage you to put on a stubborn “it is well” face for the outside world while also creating room for you to crumble within its walls, these online secular spaces both provided spaces for us to be brashly confident and always happy while also giving us the [illusion of] safety to show and share in our vulnerability.

If affirmations resonate enough for us to download apps and feverishly save and share content containing them, then they will be popular enough to cross over into other forms of media – and they have. We see this with music made by women especially, but not exclusively. The main difference between the positive self-talk that megastar female artists like Lizzo and Beyonce engage in and the bragging that most male rappers do is that the former seem to take pains to also have self-talk that non-crazy-wealthy women can relate and actually aspire to. For male rappers (I think it’s slightly different from female rappers) the fantasy in the distance between your life and theirs is the point. For people like Beyonce and Lizzo, in between the talk of Balenciaces and Tiffany jewelry, there is also like “I woke up like this”, “I love myself, goddamn!”, “I’m a queen but I don’t need no crown”, and “it’s bad bitch o’clock, it’s thick-thirty” that you do not need to live their life to aspire to.

Seeing the enthusiasm with which Beyonce’s affirmation and positivity-heavy new album Renaissance has been received has made me think anew about community and what brings people together today. Beyonce has essentially become a pop culture deity by learning how to elevate herself by making other people feel seen and their experiences elevated. In Renaissance, she turns her gaze to Chicago house and black queer ballroom culture, deftly engaging the lingo and the mood of these spaces, modeling their joy, confidence and radical declarations of self-acceptance and self-love. It is a perfect dance album in the sense that while it is entirely upbeat, songs like ‘Energy’, ‘Church Girl’, ‘Plastic Off the Sofa’ provide needed contrast in mood, an ebb and flow while allowing the record to be cohesive. With songs like ‘Cozy’ where she says things like “she’s cozy in her skin/might I suggest you don’t mess with my sis” or Church Girl where she speaks of a young girl who is “not tryna hurt nobody/she’s just doing the best that she can” you can imagine for a second that she’s talking about you, and about us, so when she tells you to “shake it like a thottie” you might actually get off your ass and do it. This record creates a space where you could hold that confidence and acceptance and positivity to the light, watch the ways it refracts and reflects against their skin, and imagine how resplendent it will this self-love, joy and confidence will look on you.  

Self-love, self-acceptance and self-care are reactions to the way that capitalism renders us machines of desire that are forever unsatisfied, always wanting more, more, more. I am not interested in a liberation that focuses only on myself; Toni Morrison teaches us that we cannot “self” our way to freedom, not least because the very essence of our freedom is to free others. But a community is made of selves, and how beautiful would it be if we all had cups full of affirmations to pour from.

Fireboy Does It Again

Fireboy has done it again. If you’re paying attention, you can’t be surprised. Right from his modern classic ‘Laughter, Tears, and Goosebumps’ debut album which had no features, to Apollo and now Playboy you get a sense that Fireboy has always been more focused on his own sound and showcasing himself and his range than about chasing a trend. He wants to be on top, but he wants to do it in his own way. Thinking of his music – from LTG to now – it’s hard to miss the growth, but you see that he’s very much the same artist. Where Apollo was experimental, Playboy does a good job of showing his range while mostly sticking to a sound. The world-dominating ‘Peru’, both the original and the remix with Ed Sheeran, are both on the album, but I am happy to report it’s not even in my top five. ‘Bandana’ features the excellent Asake in his trademark self-harmonizing choir on the hook and looks back on the journey in music so far. ‘Timoti’ is probably my favorite song on the record right now (this is very much subject to change) because it encapsulates for me what Fireboy says the record is – about a man who is at ease with the gift of his current moment of his success. Songs like ‘Afro Highlife’, ‘Havin Fun’ and ‘Glory’ recall that Apollo era Fireboy who is always willing to try out new sounds. It’s the same guy, just… even better. He is definitely here for a very long time, and I’m all for that.

Also: I’m just now checking out Ehiz’ interview with Fireboy on the album on Apple Music’s Africa Now which I think just dropped. Interesting so far.

What Else I’m Listening To

In terms of other music I’m enjoying right now, I’m really loving NSG’s newest ‘In Da Car’, which is also a play on “indica”. I definitely laughed at some of the lyrics but honestly, we don’t get many solid French-English collabos these days. I enjoyed this.

I’ve been looking forward to Magixxx’ new EP for a minute, because I love his voice and I wanted to get a fuller sense of what his music actually was. ‘Love Don’t Cost a Dime’ with Ayra Starr did well and of course he did good on that Mavin Records Allstars song ‘Overdose;, but there’s nothing like a small body of work to really introduce an artist. I wouldn’t say the record is “bad” but they could literally have been sung by anyone. It felt like listening to an EP of nondescript pop songs you might hear when on hold for customer service. I still think he’s promising, though; he has time to find his sound. I just don’t think this is it.

Lastly, I’m a huge fan of Julz’ work, and absolutely loved his Sounds of My World album that he dropped last year. He’s just hit refresh and dropped the Sound of My World Deluxe, adding seven – SEVEN! – new songs. A feast.

Until next time.

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It feels so good to be writing another newsletter edition! I’m not quite free of my academic commitments; my MA thesis is nearly (very very nearly!) done, and I’m cheating on my one remaining paper besides my thesis to write this. Why? because this is more fun — just don’t tell the person I’m writing the final paper with that I said that :)

Previous editions of The Three here and here.

Obongjayar, the Explorer

A marked departure from his Sweetness EP with the amazing Nigerian producer Sarz, what Obonjayar offers this time with Some Nights I Dream of Doors is a colorful watercolor painting of a record. Here, moody blues bleed into dreamy pink and whites; and beyond the verdant thicket of emotion, a picture as coherent as a river. The songs are by turns reflective and nostalgic, despairing and vulnerable, defiant and confident. It’s almost cinematic, the way the music in Try rises and falls, moving with the same dynamism as his voice. Parasite especially reminds me a bit of Solange’s Don’t Touch My Hair, in the way the defiance of it contrasts so well against its delivery. My favorite on the album is Wrong for It, where you get the sense that when he tells you that “you’re a dreamer, with eyes as wide as the ocean” and gently urges that you to “stop trying to please everyone else”, he’s singing as much to you as he is to himself. Another favorite I Wish It Was Me showcases the thing I love best about this record; its bravery in the face of complex emotions, and it’s desire to mine its depths without moralising. It’s refreshing to see such vulnerability, moodiness and gentleness alongside the swagger of songs like Sugar and Tinko Tinko; it’s the kind of range I want to see more Nigerian artists explore fully.

So much of Nigerian music mirrors our desire for escape; whether it’s escape through migration, through alcohol, through making more money, through crazy parties where we can pretend that there’s no shitty government ,and no SARS, and no black tax, and no electricity. But there’s so much to be said for music that also explores what it means to be a human being amidst it all. The humanity of Doors is its quiet power, the kind that makes it at once personal and universal. 

Victony Thanks God for Life

Victony survived a car accident and seems to have emerged from that experience with a renewed appreciation of all things worldly. For that reason and that reason alone, the man can sing lines like “all power belongs to your bumbum” and “my salvation dey for your body” as much as he likes. Between this and the invocation of “Holy Father” in his breakout single last year, only to rhyme it with how his Lady Gaga’s “got me in my feelings”, the man is fully snatched from the grasp of the ethereal and firmly planted in this world, standing with a full pocket amidst all its treasures. He’s more than earned the right to enjoy all the wondrous things of life, including bumbum.

This EP is a vibe and a half, a perfect blend of r’n’b and amapiano influences. It’s actually wild how much amapiano has influenced our sound, and has become the “what’s that?” element in a lot of the hits dominating our music today. Victony’s a lot of fun, and this Outlaw EP has been such a pleasure to burrow into. This is afrobeats at its carefree, lustful finest.

Aside: I would absolutely LOVE to read a South African’s take on the use of amapiano rhythms beyond the country’s borders. Meanwhile, check out The Native’s big piece on the rise of amapiano from 2021, and this one also from Native on why Nigeria shouldn’t be looking to own amapiano as a genre.

Another aside: It’s crazy how Niniola was one of the forerunners of South African-influenced sound in Nigerian music and is now nowhere to be found when the genre is really taking flight in the country. While it is true that “first to report no be first to win case”, one gets the sense that somewhere between Niniola’s song selection or overall management, there’s something majorly missing.

Funny Women Online

One of favorite things about the internet is being able to see women as we see ourselves, which is to say: sometimes sexy and beautiful, yes, but also something else. Like quirky. Or silly. Or eyeroll-inducing. Or vulnerable. Or funny. 

Y’know, just full human beings.

The notion of women not being funny has always been a thing. The late Christopher Hitchens famously wrote in Vanity Fair in 2007 (twice!) that women just aren’t funny largely because we don’t have to be; and the same publication did a riposte “Who Says Women’s Can’t Be Funny?” the following year. Men, Hitchens’ logic goes, need to be funny because, hey, men are trying to get babes and need as many aces as they can get in that Indiana Jones-like treasure search. None of this logic is original by any means; lots of dudes — famous and less so — have said that women aren’t funny.

Women, however, have always known other women that were downright hilarious. Besides, where women finding men being extra-specially hilarious is concerned, there’s no man on earth as funny as the man you’re trying to get in…

No, let’s not digress. Where was I?

Oh, right. What I think is interesting about this particular cultural moment with social media’s rise, is that women are having intra-community conversations out loud, in digital public spaces. People are different when they feel at “home” in certain company, and that allows you to see them more like how they see themselves. I think that women, having created online spaces where they can share their own perspectives on things in a way that gets affirmed by other women, allows them to be the full kaleidoscope of humanity that they are when their audience is other women. There is no need to only play up only desirability to a female audience. This, as opposed to the carefully curated self designed more for desirability they may serve up when engaging with men.

This means that women finding spaces to be themselves online would inevitably see them finding spaces to be many things, and tell stories that are multidimensional. Including being hilarious as hell. It’s all the more interesting to juxtapose the thriving use of humor by women — and minorities as a general matter — in IG and TikTok skits at a time where we’re told that jokes are too scary to make now that everybody get’s offended so easily.

To be clear, we have always had funny women in entertainment spaces, even before social media was a thing. Ellen Degeneres and Tina Fey did not come to us through social media, after all, but there were so few women breaking through the ranks precisely because the rise of women in comedy spaces was mediated by men. And if a lot of guys simply don’t think women are funny, what you’ll end up seeing in a space that needs acceptance from men is the few exceptions to the rule that a lot of these guys arbitrarily make.

Anyway, the reason I’m thinking about women, humor, and online spaces is because I've been thinking a lot about Issa Rae and Quinta Brunson, specifically the role of social media in their rise. Issa Rae’s “Insecure” wrapped after five great seasons, and the only TV show I’ve managed to finish while I’m doing this damn Masters is Quinta Bronson’s "Abbot Elementary.” Both of these women rose to prominence first by growing their audiences online, then leveraging their online success into creating content for major television networks. That, though, is where the similarity between both of these women end.

“Abbot” is a mockumentary-style sitcom following a rookie second grade teacher in a fictional public school in Philadelphia called Abbot Elementary, and focuses on the group of teachers and hilariously incompetent principal who work there. It shows both the travails of being a teacher while trying to grow and find one’s place in the world with so much heart and humor. It’s as wholesome and hilarious a show as you would ever watch, with such great chemistry between the characters. The show has a mostly-black cast, as well as a young female lead whose main story isn’t entirely about her love life but her larger personal growth. It is the kind of show that one gets a sense that we would never have gotten without social media giving us an opportunity to show that there is an appetite for something different. Social media is far from an uncomplicated force of good in the world, and it is often quite a difficult place to be a woman or minority, but there is also this. And I’m very grateful for this.

Aside: I’m not a Charlemagne fan (like, at all), but I enjoyed this interview with Quinta Brunson where they both talked about being raised Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Another aside: While we’re on the topic of humor and women, I’m really digging SimplySayo’s playful, funny “poems” on her IG. This one’s one of my favorites.

Until next time.

It’s a new Three! As always, thanks for hanging with me, reading and sharing :) Let’s keep it going, shall we?

Programming note: I’m still very much in the throes of Masters’ thesis madness, so this is a rare post. Don’t expect regular posting until at least June or July :)

With V, Asa Switches It Up

I admit that I was pretty apprehensive about this one, so it’s a huge relief to have enjoyed it. It was obvious in the run-up to it that this record would be different, especially when I heard that she had songs with Wizkid and Amaarae on it. I know I wasn’t the only person who was worried about precisely how different of an Asa record we were in for.

You see, Asa has the dubious fortune of having had an excellent, classic debut record, with amazing songs that many Nigerians of a certain generation can sing word-for-word. Even the songs that were not singles were popular; I don’t know anyone who is familiar with that album, even if they weren’t Yoruba, that cannot sing along to ‘Bibanke’ or ‘Eye Adaba.’ Everything she’s ever done after that album – bless her – has been compared to it. Beautiful Imperfections (which I didn’t like) and Bed of Stone (which I loved) were departures from her eponymous debut, but very much in the same trajectory with regards their themes and musicality. Lucid was… Lucid (I didn’t like it all). But V is such a departure that even attempting a comparison is more meaningless than it has ever been. Gone seems to be the soulful Yoruba songs, the ‘be good boys and girls’ songs, the politically-conscious ‘Fire on the mountain’ songs. Asa is a grown ass woman now, with grown ass woman issues, but fully at ease in her skin and enjoying herself. Her sound has changed. Not entirely, of course, and not beyond recognition. But it has. In a lot of ways, the heft of her previous work makes the relaxed nature of this current one seem earned and, as a result, satisfying.

V is definitely an afrobeats record, moreso than anything else Asa has ever put out. But it’s Asa’s afrobeats, so it doesn’t completely let itself go in terms of musicality and thoughtfulness. ‘Love Me or Give Me Red Wine’ — a phrase I also need on a t-shirt – gives into the house-inflected afrobeats Nigerian artists have burrowed into over the past couple years. ‘Show Me Off’ and ‘Believer’ sound like afternoons at the beach with your friends, with an easy two-step in your feet and a cold glass of palm wine in your hand. Even when she sings “you say you love me, still you break my heart” in ‘Nike’, it feels less a heartbroken weep than a wistful recollection over a glass of wine. We even get a gorgeous ode to friendships in ‘Good Times’, and I found myself wishing that more people wrote about friends, and didn’t reserve love songs for romantic relationships alone. This is the third record I've been listening to recently – after BNXN/Buju and Kizz Daniel –  where a collaboration with The Cavemen is a standout track. It’s making me want to revisit their debut album, which I didn’t like at the time.  

V is not all perfect, though. Amaarae can do no wrong in my eyes, but I can’t get with ‘All I Ever Wanted’. It kinda sounded like what I’d imagine a Meg the Stallion x Anita Baker song would sound like, in the sense that it made Asa sound older than any other track on the record. Mercifully, an album doesn’t need to be perfect to be enjoyable. And this one is. Immensely. And what a relief it is to be able to say that. 

With Catch Me If You Can, Adekunle Gold Digs In 

I love AG’s new image, but nothing has been quite as enjoyable as seeing his music make the journey with him. I had said in my review of his previous album Afropop Vol. 1  that the album “as a collective covers both old ground and new territory for AG, but perhaps the main change is the assertiveness and boldness with which he approaches the songs”. That remains true here with Catch Me If You Can. Although the themes he sings about have not changed markedly since his first few records before he became AG Baby, the way he wears his music has. Pre-Afropop, we might have gotten “One Woman”, “Mase Mi” or “More Than Enough”, but we will not have gotten the celebratory “High”, the horny as hell “FYE” or even songs like “Sleep.” I loved that his wife Simi was the love interest in the video for “Sinner”, a song about the biblical story of King David and his forbidden attraction to and love affair with Bathsheba. Given the need many male artists have to project desirability to women (mostly with their money), the decision to have his wife in that video in particular hints at about how centered and at ease he seems to be with where he is. I love to see an artist in full flight and his music is soaring with him. 

Other Music: 

Besides Asa and AG, I’ve been wearing out Asake x Olamide’s “Omo Ope”, Rema’s “Calm Down” (can’t wait for his album!), Black Sherif’s “Second Sermon” remix Burna Boy, and King Promise x WSTRN’s “Bad n Rude”. All of these songs make me very happy. Black Sherif’s collabo with Darkoo is also worth a listen. If you’re into hiphop, Black Sherif and Yaw Tog are my picks out of Ghana right now.

I’m currently having an Msaki moment. Msaki x Sun-El Musician x Diplo’s “Tomorrow’s Silver” is currently on heavy rotation in my gym playlists, as is Msaki x Focalistic’s “Mnatakababa”. They’re both on Msaki’s really good album Platinumb Heart Beating, which is well worth listening to in its entirety.

If you’re looking for something more mellow, check out Tom Misch’s Quarantine Sessions, which is full of beautifully reimagined instrumental versions of songs you probably already know and like. It's the perfect background for a lazy weekend evening. I’ve also just downloaded Robert Glasper’s Black Radio III and am really looking forward to checking out Cruel Santino’s latest record.

The Modern Battleground Is Both Online and Off

The Russian invasion has left many of us rightly aghast in its unabashed attempt at imperialism. It’s been awful to watch helplessly as one man’s decision has thrown millions of lives into a tailspin as people either hunker down or flee as refugees seeking safety. There is a lot of things to talk about here: imperialism, what is even meant by the word “western” that is now uncritically being bandied about, the very real horrors of war, the humanitarian crises, to name only a few things. For this entry, I will only focus on media, because it is an area where Ukrainians — both the government and its people — have used their agency as much as they can. I think it’s instructive to pay attention to how the social media tools we use everyday are shaping our world.

The New Yorker journalist Jelani Cobb asked on his Twitter page why the video above has proved to be such effect political communication, and it made me think about how much political theater has changed. Technologies shape our collective imaginations and experiences in ways big and small, and no one knows this more than governments. In the 60s-90s, the first thing military juntas did was to seize control of radio and television stations during coups. Televised debates and rallies are important to political image-making in politics. It is difficult to discuss Obama’s run for presidency in 2008 or, closer to home for me, Buhari’s presidential run in 2015 without discussing the role of WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook. 

Zelensky used to be an entertainer before he became president, so he is well versed in the use of media and building of a narrative. He understands that even more important than being brave in the face of an external aggressor, he also needs to build a narrative around his actions to drive global support. As such, he is intentional in his use of media. Instead of a polished, sleek background, we get self-facing phone camera footage where the determination of the Ukrainian leadership to fight the Russian invasion illuminates our screens through the bad lighting. Instead of addressing Ukrainians formally and in a suit, he dresses simply, stays unshaven and speaks informally. It is the same passionate patriotism we expect, but rendered in the everyday visual language we understand to be “real,” by a man young enough and “normal-looking” enough that we can almost say that we recognize him. And it works.

Having come of age in a world where major world leaders are so insulated from personal risk that they’re whisked away by security teams at the first whiff of danger, many members of the American military are stunned that a commander in chief would actually risk his or her own skin—let alone brashly announce, when the United States offered him safety, that he needs “ammunition, not a ride.” The U.S. Marine Corps subreddit contains a post titled “Volodymyr Zelensky is about as motivating of a leader as I’ve seen in our lifetime,” with one sample reply reading: “Yep. I’d follow that guy into hell.” The idea of a political leader willing to die with his people has struck many outside the military, too, as unthinkably brave. And more than a little thrilling. Zelensky has become a hero to much of the world—even inspiring citizens of other nations to ask how to volunteer to fight for Ukraine. To the extent that this has been an information war for hearts and minds in much of the world, Ukraine has undoubtedly won.

With social media, we see over and over again how unpolished videos are more impactful than polished ones due to their seeming authenticity. This essay in the New Yorker highlights the role of social media as “the imperfect chronicler of the war” and specifically goes into how and why the flood of videos we see — I cannot bring myself to call it “content” – work so well. 

“A Ukrainian father says a tearful goodbye to his family. A farming tractor appears to tow an abandoned Russian tank. A British man records himself packing a bag, including tea, to go to Ukraine “to rescue my wife and son.” Together these snippets present a montage of life suddenly in wartime. They conjure thoughts of how you yourself might react in such banal, terrible circumstances, equipped with only a phone camera. What else is there to do in a bomb shelter but make selfie videos and broadcast them to the outside world? Zelensky himself has made shrewd use of this sense of relatability, captivating the world with his shaky selfie videos recorded from the street. He used this format to combat rumors that he had fled the country, casting himself as an everyman braving a vast struggle, David versus Goliath.”

Modern warfare does not preclude an “information war,” the fight to shape public perception in such a way that it could get the international community to do what it wants. While Russia’s information war holds that it is liberating Ukraine from neo-Nazis and fascists, Ukraine’s focuses on lionizing its people for their defiance in the face of Russian aggression. Still, in its attempts to paint its people in the best light, it has ensured the sharing of anecdotes such as the one about the Russian soldiers stuck in an elevator, or videos about the Ukrainian’s confidence in a conversation with Russian soldiers. That some of the stories are of dubious origin, too, speaks to a sophistication in the country’s approach to information dissemination online. The (likely fictional) story of the Ghost of Kyiv is not the work of people with an unsophisticated understanding of social media. Nor is this video of a young man in military fatigues smiling as he lets a bird play on him before it flies away.

Western media was already primed to see Ukrainians as fully human even without the social media push that’s helped pile on the pressure for Western support; but Ukrainian government is aware that sympathy means nothing without action. Their skillful use of media has helped build a sustained outcry that has turned global public perception into a weapon to achieve what their weapons cannot.  

Aside: There’s nothing to laugh about re: Russia these days, but these Putin long table memes that were circulating before we knew Russia would actually invade are quite droll in hindsight. They really captured the nervous laughter of the collective moment at the time.

Another Aside: I’ve watched with disbelief and more than a little bemusement how western media has drawn racist comparisons the refugee crisis that’s emerged from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Trevor Noah’s comment on this pretty much echoes mine. You can also check out my Twitter thread where I’m keeping track of all the clips of western journalists saying the most insanely racist shit that makes it pretty clear what kind of refugees they think are worthy of support and why.

Until next time.

Happy New Year! And Happy New Three! Thanks for rocking with me last year. I hope that your new year has begun on a sweet note, and I wish you all all the best as the year progresses.

I said this in October, but again: Grad school has me by the scruff of its neck, but I’ll update as much as I can. Previous editions here and here. Don’t forget to like and share!

What’s Apple Saying with Swan Song?

The way the digital world works nowadays is essentially that it create digital selves, or profiles, for each user. Through Big Data, the profiles will become fine-tuned over time with the data we give through our interactions on digital platforms to shape our online identities. The more things hitherto beyond the domain of that which is countable – like how you feel about a certain kind of post, the kind of films you like, or even your dating preferences – become countable, the more platforms can discern. And in the giving of ourselves comes the creation of better user profiles that will look more and more like who we actually are. That’s why the recommendation feature for Spotify works best the more it monitors what you tell the platform you like, for example.

There’s been lots of conversation about Big Data and its possibilities, so it’s not such a weird thing that we’re getting more films that toy with the question of what happens when a companion self to us is able to roam the same offline paths we do, or when that which was meant to live in the digital grows legs and walks off the screen. I’m thinking of Black Mirror, but even shows like Westworld, in which human-looking androids meant exclusively for the Wild West-themed park designed for human indulgence go off screen and begin to cause harm to human beings. But I specifically had Jordan Peele’s film Us. The family in Us looks the same as the family that lives above ground, have the same mannerisms, and the behaviors of the “real” family determine what the other family does. I know these companion selves, or ‘tethers’ as they were called in the film, were not digitally rendered, but I’m thinking in particular about the very idea of the dangers that could be posed by having another ‘you’ with a separate mind of its own that is both like and unlike your own. In Us, each character in the family had to kill their tether to live, and leave freely. Of course, I do not mean to draw too fine a parallel. There are many questions we do not get answered in Us to enable us to make a neat comparison here. We don’t ever learn the science of how these tethers come to be, who’s making them, and why. Plus, the ‘villain’ in the film was the other self who forcefully stepped from behind the curtain and made it out. It is not quite a sci-fi film, but it does still get at the same fear. 

In Swan Song, however, the data gathered from you to create this new self is not there to kill you – it is there to make you live. The lead character Cameron Turner, played beautifully and tenderly by Mahershala Ali, is a terminally ill man who is looking for a way to continue living without upending his family. The solution is a new technology developed by Glenn Close’s character Dr. Scott where the terminally ill person is cloned into a new body, blood and bones and all, that’s exactly the same as the dying one, but healthier; complete with memories and thoughts both conscious and subconscious. This high-tech procedure and the emotional journey it sends Cameron Turner on happens against a cold, wintry backdrop that could be a default Mac background lock screen. 

In this film, we see technology literally create a new self. In the creation of this self, we see the transfer of memory, both conscious and subconscious, as easily as one might transfer files from a PC to Mac, rendered difficult only by the emotional weight of the memories the original self bears. When the transfer is complete, the only real conflict is whether or not Cameron Turner will have the emotional fortitude to let go and let it be.

In Swan Song’s technological optimism, we do not get a reckoning with the fact that the lead character has essentially opened up his entire life to be accessed by some doctor with a secretive process with which she literally makes new adult human beings that live and bleed. We do not get a sense of the weight and implication of that at all. We’re encouraged not to even think of it, and focus instead on the character’s inner turmoil and his emotional reaction to seeing his digital self slowly replace him. What does she do with all this data she is gathering? There was no attempt to even try to find out, not even in a heated conversation between Cameron and Dr. Scott. But these are questions worth answering in the world we live in today. 

This is a film made by Apple+ so I know not to expect a tech-critical approach to assymetries between users and creators. However, it is important to ask questions because platforms like Amazon and Apple have now begun entering the content creation space, and are key actors in the ushering in of the datafication of our world, and all the attendant consequences of that for our society. It is important to recognize them as political actors (I mean in the sense of having power, not in the left/right sense), engage critically with what they platform and why they might be doing so.

Swan Song was beautiful and tender where it needed to be, but I kept thinking how much more compelling it would have been to scrutinize Dr. Scott and her role. In the film, the agreement is that you can stop at any point and the new self that’s created will not be used. Dr. Scott’s team had said to Cameron that they would stop recording his new self after a brief trial period, but there was no engagement whatsoever with what it means to have access to all those memories and two weeks of footage of his life interacting with his family, buying things, making things, dealing with people. Even shying away from the cost of the “service” contributes to the larger playing down of all possible costs of this kind of procedure.

The film reminded me of the way that so much of the way digital platforms earn their keep is from how we are convinced that the digital traces we leave behind as we zip through the digital world hold no real value. The ‘exhaust’ emanating from the movement of our lives – the throwaway commentary, the photos of places we have been and things we see – all contribute to the monetization of our digital spaces. We ‘consent’ to this labor through End User Licensing Agreements that most of us do not understand. Indeed, the way we engage with digital platforms take their shape from other capitalistic asymmetries not unlike good old-fashioned factories and their workers. It is on this asymmetry, this lack of shared understanding of the value of the data we provide as we like and tweet and share and post, that platforms are built. There have now been several examples that show how that asymmetry has not been without cost to us as a society.

I’m uninterested in a simple “tech is good/bad” (I think technological advancement is largely a good), but I do think it is important that tech companies like Apple are able to engage these types of conversations better. Behind the sunny disposition of tech optimism is the need for people to just stop asking questions and let these companies do whatever they want, but we’re long past that. A lot of our socioeconomic future will depend on our ability to ask better questions, address the asymmetry and manage relationships between platforms and users better.

Nigerian Artists I’m Rooting For in 2022

I should begin by saying that the following is not an exhaustive list. In addition to those listed below, I’m also looking forward to seeing what Mayorkun does, because he was pretty quiet in 2021 and we will likely see a new project from him before the end of the year. I also like Bella Alubo’s new single that almost literally just dropped. I’m really hoping a new female artist soars this year, whether its the openly-queer Nigerian artist Temmie Ovwasa who dropped a new album late in 2021, or even Simi because I’m sure we’re getting something new from her this year. I’d actually really love for it to be Fave, who gave us the really solid ‘Baby Riddim.’ That song has been on rotation on my Spotify, and her sound is so fresh and laidback, I just know there’s more where it came from.

So yeah, not even every Naija artist.

Also, I’m restricting this list to Naija, which already cuts out a whole universe of artists I love. SZA is dropping her new album, and I think Lucky Daye is also blessing us this year. One artist I’m really looking forward to seeing flourish, though, is the British-Nigerian rapper Enny. She is worth your time, and she dropped an EP I’m only just checking out.

That said, I really want these three artists to blossom in 2022.

Fireboy

We’re in for a big big year for this dude. He’s hit refresh on his 2021 hit ‘Peru’ with a dope verse from Ed Sheeran, his third album is loading, and his first US tour is, too. Granted, I was lukewarm on his last album, but one thing I’ll say for Fireboy is that he likes to experiment with different styles and I hope he gets a sick new formula that works better this time. With the success of the Peru remix, I hope this means more international attention and a new record that rises to the occasion. 

Kizz Daniel

I have always thought that Kizz Daniel should be way bigger than he is. The man has been consistent since dropping ‘Woju’ in 2014, and I really can’t think of a song of his that sucks. I’m really glad to see his new album ‘Barnabas’ is doing well, and that he’s touring the US next year. Fingers crossed the year gives what it’s supposed to give for him. 

The Cavemen

Admittedly their first record was not really my cup of tea; I found it too faithful to old school highlife and did not feel like they put enough of their own spin on it. Theirs is essentially the kind of music I want to see live (and I hear they are excellent live), but don’t want to hang out at home with. Still, it is always great to see when alternative acts build an audience and I am happy they are other people’s cup of tea even if not mine. We need more diversity of voices, and with the online space allowing more and more acts to build organic audiences, this is the best time to do it. I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do in 2022, especially if that rumored collaboration record with Show Dem Camp actually drops.

RIP Virgil Abloh

Virgil Abloh died in November 2021, and now that I’m done on a brief break I’m making my way through what interviews and speeches I can find of him. Below is one really great talk of his from 2017 I found that I've watched a couple of times now. I like what it tells us about the man: the intentionality, the vision, the thought behind the work, but then also the ease with which he wears all of these things. I like how he thinks in patterns, never in straight lines. He’s the guy who would start a DJ set with Miles and end with Kaytranada, or throw in Bowie with Four Tet and Swae Lee. He had dexterity, malleability, and saw less obvious connections between things.

Can’t lie, I used to make fun of the quotation marks and even some of his design work (that Ikea reciept rug still makes me laugh). But his impact on the culture, his hunger to express himself creatively and in an interdisciplinary manner will always be awe-inspiring as what he achieved in such a short time.

RIP Virgil.

Me, Elsewhere

The good people over at Isele Quarterly published my short story ‘Today, She Will’ in their latest edition. With all this academic writing I’m doing now, it’s great to be made aware that I’m capable of other stuff. Check it out.

Until next time.

It feels so good to be dropping a new edition. This month, I talk to my friend Amanda Dozie about being (very, very) single, while another friend Edirin writes about her rock-solid rules for dating in Lagos. Previous editions here and here.

Oh, and a quick programming note: I’m in graduate school now, studying new media and digital cultures. As I’m now focused on research papers and doing tons of academic reading, you can expect the newsletter to not be updated much over the course of the coming year. This is a space I love having, though, so I’ll definitely try to update as much as I can.

A Conversation on Living Single

Success in the dating scene is pretty much defined by having a love life that reflects your desirability. If as a woman you’re not shooing potential serious and not-so-serious partners away with a stick, then — logic goes — there’s definitely something wrong. Some of us ride the waves of the dating scene fairly easily because we get precisely what we want from it, whether it is gliding from situationship to situationship, flirting with exciting what-ifs, or even having a couple of Serious Ones. But there are some of us for whom navigating the scene is more difficult, fraught as it could be with cues that we miss, more nearly-there's than there are Bobrisky memes, or even just traumatic experiences that sent us off into hibernation. Sometimes you might have excellent fortune with great platonic relationships, but your luck does not quite extend to finding great romantic partners -- be it for the long- or short-term -- and you can’t figure out why.

My friend Amanda Dozie and I have had several long conversations on our experiences with protracted periods of singleness, and we thought it would be great to share one of those conversations. Here, in a series of texts back and forth, we discuss being single, the impact of our platonic relationships on how we view romantic ones, and what these relationships have taught us about ourselves. My responses/comments/questions to Amanda are bolded.

Hi Amanda! Shall we begin? That’s what Esther Perel named her podcast, and I’m stealing it idc. How’re you doing?

I just hope I’m not named in the lawsuit! I’m well. Going through an intense work patch so this is a timely distraction.

I’m in Amsterdam, slowly acclimatizing to graduate school life. As I’m not quite a full month in, it’s been Ikea runs, library runs and high street store runs. I’m looking forward to being more settled in and having a more normal rhythm to my days.

So this is supposed to be a conversation on being alone. Do you make a distinction between being single and being lonely? Where’s the inflection point for you?

As someone who recently settled into a new city (and country, in general), I can tell you that it takes quite some time to feel ‘normal’ in a city. I lived in Addis Ababa for almost five years and it only started feeling like home the very year I moved away. I’ve now been here in the UK for about 5 months and in some ways I’m still living out of cartons, physically and mentally.

There’s a definite difference between being single and being lonely. The clearest proof of this distinction is how easy it is to feel lonely even when you’re in a couple (or group, whichever your predisposition is); and how one can be romantically single but lead a fulfilling enough life which leaves no room for loneliness.

I will say though that in my marathon run as a ‘singleton’, loneliness tends to ebb and flow. There are seasons of being fulfilled in just being alone, and seasons where you feel like you just might die if you don’t go home to someone. Do you find this to be the case?

Oh, absolutely the same for me. I have many times where I’m grateful for my singleness, but there are also many times where I feel as though I would be happy for it to end. I also know that being in a couple would not necessarily ease loneliness, as so much more important than being paired for me is being seen and understood. My friendships give me spaces where I can be wholly myself and be seen and loved as I am. In a way, I wonder if maybe the beauty of my platonic attachments have made navigating romantic ones harder. Maybe one of the hardest things I’ve learned in dating is that your honesty and openness is not always taken as a symbol that the other party can be open and honest, too; and that what is prized in one kind of relationship can be a cudgel used against you in a different kind.

You've just touched on a number of things that resonate with me. The beauty of platonic friendships which blur into the romantic - friendships which feel like a romance, just without the amorous and/or sexual feelings - is truly wonderful. I’ve always subscribed to the idea that the most fulfilling friendships are those in which the two people are a little in love with each other, without necessarily being physically attracted to each other. I've wondered if being unlucky in love has allowed me to focus on building those deep emotional connections platonically. The honesty you have in a friendship where you're angling for nothing is very scarcely replicated in a romantic relationship where all you want to do is put forward your most presentable (not necessarily best) self. Honesty in romance is also difficult when you have a crippling fear of being undermined or disappointed; you don't want a partner to tap dance all over everything you've laid bare.

What is it about the potential for sex and intimacy that turns us into such liars, anyway? Why do we do that? I don’t think it has to be that way, but we are often too easily led by fear and unwilling to be clear about what we want. I’d like to think that, thanks to the quality of my platonic relationships, I’ve become more impatient about spending time with people I am not utterly delighted to be around, and find it easier to spot relationships that do not nourish me in the precise ways I need.

I can’t say I don’t get the fear of being undermined or disappointed; I’ve definitely been on the wrong end of opening myself up and realising I’ve made a huge mistake. All I’ll say is, that shit is no fun. But I’ve definitely come around to the notion that if someone takes advantage because I have been clear that I care about them, that’s not on me. I refuse to be led by fear in any aspect of my life, and certainly not in this one.

I keep telling myself that, if it were any other thing that isn’t working out, I would pivot away from it and drive my energies into what is indeed working in my life. That’s pretty much how I’m approaching my love life at the moment. My love life is just one aspect of my life, even if there’s currently nothing in it but tumbleweed. I’d like for it to be richer, but I am both aware and slightly discomfited by the fact that things need to be a certain way.

It’s a bit more difficult in practice to remain self-assured, I think, when your norm is not to intimately share your life. Your personality also has a say in how you will finally interact with a romantic partner after long spells of solely platonic relationships. The thing about love is that there’s a reason why it preoccupies an entire global population so- it is the most maddening of concepts. It is not so easy to apply an objective and logical lens to love. The social expectations of love also don’t help; I think they lend even more mystification to an already mysterious feeling. Love and lucidity are not exactly a natural pair. If you put all of this in a blender - ineptitude at the unfamiliar situation, a non-stoic personality, the chemical X of love and the pressures of the performance of love - you have yourself a lot to contend with.

I say all this to say that in all my forays, I found my seasons of love were mostly fraught with the management of what was and what ought to have been, and I often found discontentment in that gap. This is where the solo act is a refuge. When I’m alone, I’m the only one who has to be enough for myself.

I used to think that love and lucidity can’t quite co-exist, but the older I get, the more I disagree. I used to do that thing where I’d just follow my heart, but I can’t lie -- love for me right now must have comfort and ease built in, and I am not in a place where I can lean into something that feels entirely without a solid basis. If what I feel for someone is all heat with a variable that cannot quite name, I automatically view it with suspicion. There is, of course, always an element of the irrational in love, but I also find comfort in being able to name at least some of that which keeps me close. That’s the alchemy I’m trying to unlock. Like you, I find it a lot to contend with, but maybe there is comfort in the fact that I don’t have to have it all figured out. I just need to figure it out in a specific context, with someone who is hopefully deserving of the effort.

Love and lucidity can definitely coexist, but they will frequently butt heads! You’re completely right about comfort and ease- following your heart into chaos is the ultimate yikes. Generally, I think spending long periods being single, especially in your 20s, is a great advantage for future romantic pursuits.

First, you’re less likely to be impulsive and carried away by unrealistic ideals of romance. Secondly, you get to figure out who you are and what you like. Third, and most importantly, if you get “learning yourself” right, you find that you don’t need another person to complete you- the best thing a partner can do is complement and accompany you in this journey of life. This timeless allegory explains what I mean.

There are times when growing alone is difficult, but it’s necessary. My perennial solo act has made me more certain of when a romance is right, both in the feeling and in the execution of it. It’s also made me more generous to the other person, because I don’t so much need them as I want them; and I find that this distinction lowers the stakes a little.

All of that. I’ve been lonely a lot, but I also will not replace my years of being a mostly-solo act, because I too would rather want someone in my life, than need someone in my life. There’s nothing more liberating than when your first instinct is to reach within and give yourself that which you need. It’s a message I’ve learned to reinforce for myself, that I am enough, and everything that adds on must truly be a boon to what and who I am.

Absolutely. And I have to say, it’s tricky to stand by your choice of going solo in a society where singleness is almost illegitimate. Ending up shackled to the wrong person is hardly an original story. Contrary to what it might seem, it’s more difficult to stay single where your primary yardstick is, ‘does this person improve upon the silence?’ But boy, won’t you be glad when you find the person who does! And if you never do, then you’re no worse off. There’s so much life and love to be enjoyed in other places.

Edirin on Love and Relationships in Lagos

I am a 33-year-old female unfortunately wired for sexual relations with men, and I have dated a ton of men in Lagos in the past few years. In fact, I have so many stories that I am even writing a book about dating in Lagos. So when Saratu asked me to contribute to the newsletter, I was ecstatic.

Well, not really, but you get the point.

Dating Lagos men has forced me to develop the ultimate framework* for doing this relationship thing. I hereby present to you, dear reader: these major lessons.

*insert drum roll please*

Just as there are a thousand shades of gray between black and white, there are a thousand different degrees of madness to be encountered when you are dealing with Lagos men.

The best part is the strain allocated to each person is absolutely random. Mr. A might be an absolute asshole to someone who you know, but then a delightful angel with you. There is no rhyme or reason for the strain of skoin-skoin you would get to experience. I used to think that maybe there was something about me that triggered the madness, but the more I spoke to other women**, the clearer it was that this was all by the men’s design. While I was relieved that nothing was wrong with me (and probably you, if you are a woman reading this), it led me to this second, more critical, finding:

When dating Lagos men (and is probably not applicable outside of this) is the fact that your old experiences are not likely to help you in new situations.

Yes, I know. It is crazy, but it is true. But because every single man has over a thousand strains of skoin-skoin and randomly activates his preferred choice for you, it is impossible to solve for and/or optimize for. You just address it when it eventually arrives. This posed a huge learning curve for me, because what is experience if not provide greater illumination with which to approach similar situations?

Learning that I could not apply whatever lessons I had managed to distill from past experiences led me to the ultimate love and relationship advice which seems counter-intuitive but works.

Create a checklist of non-negotiables.

CLING TO THIS LIST LIKE A FIRST TIME SKYDIVER HOLDING ON TO THEIR SKY-DIVING INSTRUCTOR FOR DEAR LIFE. Do not let anything slide. Do not compromise on whatever is non-negotiable to you. For whatever reason. Just don’t.

For myriad reasons you might be tempted to make allowances – this one time for Mr. X, or to tell yourself lies on behalf of this man — because the world knows that when you like someone enough, you lie to yourself on their behalf. But the real magic of having a non-negotiable checklist is that you teach yourself what is important to you and by extension honor those things by letting only people who meet the criteria into your life. The more you allow yourself to only entertain people who can meet your non-negotiables, the better the quality of your relationships. Not just with other people, mind you; but with yourself.

Stick to that checklist, and you’ll find yourself waiting less by the phone like you are expecting a call from Beyonce, and more in control and at ease because your list of non-negotiables will invariably filter all the shades of crazy that Lagos men possess.

I said it was simple. I never said it was easy.

I know the title said love and relationships - I’ve hacked the relationship bit. As for love, I have a lot of that. My girlfriends continue to teach and prove to me that they remain the true loves of my life.

*Results may or may not vary. But on the upside you’d have done the work of knowing what you really want and this list will alert you when you are beginning to consider settling.

** And if you are concerned about knowing women who have had relations with men you know, think of dating in lagos like a Venn diagram. Eventually groups of friends will overlap and there are only so many random Velvett nights fuelled by free champagne before you find yourself firmly in the land of “my friends friend is not necessarily my friend hence he is fair game”. Just so it’s clear- I’m not judging- whatever lets you sleep at night.

What’re You Listening To?

It’s been a great period music-wise. Watching Wizkid and Tems rule the world with ‘Essence’ has been incredibly gratifying, but just as gratifying is seeing Tems soar. I’ve loved Tems work even before ‘For Broken Ears’, but have always been worried that her work may be too moody or not dance-y enough, but I’ve never been happier to be wrong about anything. Her success is a wonderful sign of the coming maturity of Nigerian music, that you can walk the less beaten path and rock it. Her new EP ‘If Orange Was a Place’ is also worth a listen, although I think the first one was better. She seems to have a solid sense of self and an awareness of her strengths, which I really dig. Wizkid and Davido are becoming OGs, and it’s also wonderful to see them do what OGs do: put newer and/or lesser known artists on.

Speaking of folks on their way to being OGs, Tiwa Savage’s new record unlocked something she hasn’t quite done before. Her song with Brandy “Somebody’s Son” is the undeniable hit on the “Water and Garri” EP, but “Work Fada” is the real surprise. Lyrically and production-wise, Tiwa Savage has never done anything like it, and nor have many artists. She even crowned it with a short Nas verse. I hear there’s going to be a sequel to this EP, so let’s wait and see. I’m a fan already.

The one record that’s been on rotation since it dropped in September, though, is Little Simz’ new album ‘I Think I Might Be Introvert’. There’s plenty to like about the album, from to her flow and the diversity of the production and sounds she played with. There were so many smart choices that show she’s as thoughtful as her flow suggests. There’s the clever use of intros to mark mood changes, and then there’s the deceptive simplicity of her flow. I loved how she gave the songs what they needed, like the quietness of her tone in “I See You” and “Woman”, exultant on “Standing Ovation”, and the code-switch on “Point and Kill” that flowed seamlessly with “Fear No Man”. It’s precisely the kind of record you want to see performed live. A feat.

And then there’s stuff I’m yet to check out. Juls just dropped a new record, and I’m a huge fan of his so I look forward to checking that out. Staying in Ghana, Sarkodie has a new album, and I’ve always been a fan so we’re definitely checking that out. Cheque also has a new record that’s on my list because Joey Akan has been raving about it. If you’re a house music fan, Bonobo is dropping a new album (FINALLY!) in January 2022, but he has blessed us with a new single a few days ago. Check it out.

Until next time.

Another month, another Three! Thanks for rocking with the newsletter. Read and share. Previous editions here and here.

Why Olamide is a Genius

Olamide has said in interviews before that he’s mostly unconcerned with the international reach of his music, and it shows; you don’t see him doing international collaborations to introduce himself to new audiences. None of that “Sounds from the Other Side” thing for him; Olamide knows and has always known who he is and only cares to make music for his primary audience. Also unlike people like Davido and Wizkid, Olamide is unapologetic about his “street” appeal, even though his music is enjoyed by pretty much everyone, whatever their pocket size. This frees him from having to apply himself in contexts that his approach to music simply would not fit. While Wizkid and Davido in their most recent offerings often bend r’n’b to their will, Olamide has no such need. Olamide will do just what Olamide wants to do, and that means resisting the pressure to do one thing or the other (rap or singing in this case); in fact, some of his most memorable songs see him doing both.

And why should he aim for global domination? For all its global appeal, American hip-hop does not kowtow to its global or even its increasingly white audience. They still use the N-word with relish, they still reference slang local to where the artist is from, and it is still very much predominantly black. Sure, Nigerian music is getting more international flowers and our artists are now winning Grammys, but it got international plaudits first by being its unvarnished self. Why then should Olamide bend himself into unnecessary shapes?

The freedom he has carved out also expresses itself in his prolific output. Between 2011 and 2016, Olamide released an album every single year. These were not small records, either; the Headies Awards-winning Streets OT had 22 tracks and Eyan Mayweather had 21 songs with no features, His other Headies Award-winning album released during this period Baddest Guy Ever Liveth is one of his most successful, with such massive hits as “Durosoke” and “Turn Up” that got near-constant airplay that year. These records bent genres and were pretty much whatever Olamide wanted them to be. Of course, quality always trumps quantity, so being prolific in itself does not always mean as much as people think it does. When you are as prolific as Olamide and you run your own label so there is no one with oversight over what you put out, there are bound to be as many misses as there are hits. I won’t catalog the misses here, but let’s just say the man is not perfect. But perfection, I’d argue, is not where his genius lies.

Because his eyes are focused on Nigeria and he’s so good at figuring out what the audience wants, Olamide is a great bell-weather for where Nigerian pop music was going. His collaborations with Phyno changed the game for rappers in indigenous languages. Most recently, ‘Science student’ is one of the first wave of songs that nudged in the big amapiano wave we’re currently riding on. Besides giving us hit after hit, his adeptness at navigating the waters of Nigerian pop also means that there’s not many people better to help new artists trying to break through to figure it out (Don Jazzy being top here). Looking at the diversity of artists he has paved the way for, from Fireboy to Lil Kesh to Adekunle Gold, Olamide’s YBNL label is right up there in terms of being a great incubator for upcoming acts. I’m not a fan of his policy to insist that people move on after two albums, but it is still a huge compliment to him that he is willing to set people on a path that does not leave them entirely reliant on him. 

Olamide has shown over that he can create a vision for his own success. And maybe yours too.

A Note on Online Mental Health Conversations

I’ve been watching the fallout and commentary on Naomi Osaka’s leaving the French Open with some interest, because I don’t believe we have ever had an athlete or a popular figure cite mental health as a reason for pulling out of a competition. A lot of the response to Osaka’s statement was based on her citing “mental health”, and the validity of mental health as a reason for opting out of one’s obligations.

More than ever, there are more and more people online discussing their experiences with depression and anxiety. Even in countries like Nigeria where everybody invests in the facade of being wealthier and happier than we are, religious institutions have historically been those spaces where that helped create community where we can be our more earnest selves. It is where we are honest about our fears, our hopes, what is missing in our lives, whether it is money, a spouse, or a child. The shared values in more “closed” spaces have allowed for the vulnerability we see in them. Our increasing secularity coupled with our desire to connect have bolstered the openness of our online spaces. The spaces in which people are choosing to be vulnerable have also become more and more open, and this link between vulnerability and identity persists even in these new secular and digital communities we have built.

Along with social media has come a heightened scrutiny at everything, including the self. We are more aware of others’ achievements than ever, while living in a time that is probably more individualized than ever, certainly in wealthier countries like the United States but increasingly also in places like Nigeria as well. The Yoruba proverb “Ẹni tó láṣọ tí ò léèyàn, ìhòhò ló wà” (a person with clothes but no people is naked) fits here, and it is possible that the nature of our lives has made people more lonely, more insecure, and more vulnerable than we have ever been.

The growth in use of mental health terms to describe emotions and experiences may just be a sign of a people grasping for language that describes these relatively new ways in which we now have to move through the world. It may be jarring for many people in their 30s who did not grow up with social media, and this kind of self-effacing engagement comes more naturally to younger folks than it might to people who are older, many of whom have likely had to grow into it.

As we never know what it is like in anyone’s shoes, nobody has any right to say if someone’s mental health anxieties are “real” or not. I also do not think one need be clinically diagnosed with a mental health condition to be wary of taking care of oneself in that way. Our notions of resilience and strength should expand to accommodate being able to voice when things are not going well and when to fight for oneself. We cannot be so beholden to the cult of resilience that someone trying to name what ails them or trying to create a better environment for oneself can ever be seen as a weakness. Advocating for oneself does not mean that one stops living; much like Osaka, a lot of people who voice challenges also live through these challenges. The attempt and even failure to achieve that goal of making things better is also not an indictment of a person.

That said, mental health terms are often misapplied when used in everyday language. On Twitter especially, but on all social media generally, I’ve seen people use “gaslighting" when the word they’re really looking for is “disagreement”, or using “trauma” to describe every unpleasant experience. I even once saw someone refer to talk of someone not liking their favorite singer as “triggering”. In these cases, it is always useful to remind people that words do mean things.

I also see conversations about how with the misuse of these terms comes manipulating others into giving undeserved sympathy. This is a fear I find much less valid. Mostly, manipulators who use mental health as just one way to change the subject away from their mess-ups are pretty easy to identify and are mostly not given an ‘out’ (not the same thing, but Kevin Spacey coming out as gay when faced with his multiple sexual assault accusations springs to mind). Also, giving sympathy to someone even if we find out later that the person mischaracterized their condition does not reflect badly on us for being kind. A self-misdiagnosis of one’s own mental health does not necessarily have any impact beyond the person doing the misdiagnosing. It is no way similar to the harm caused by actual harmful speech, such as that which often happens in ethnic or religious-driven spaces where language is routinely weaponized against others.

There is still immense stigma associated with having mental health challenges offline, and it is still an incredibly brave thing to discuss publicly. We need more people being able to talk freely about their challenges, not less.

Related: More on Naomi Osaka and on Mental Health

Now is a good time to revisit the great conversation I had a few months ago with Hauwa Ojeifo on mental health and young people in Nigeria.

I’m sympathetic to Osaka on the issue of her withdrawal from the French Open, but I also know that institutions generally are invested in a model that ensures their own relevance and control. They very likely were wary of setting the precedent of wealthy players simply paying to avoid certain obligations. Along with the deal of signing on to a tournament is signing on for mandatory press conferences, and I like that there’s now a conversation about the importance or lack thereof of these media engagements. I enjoyed The UK Guardian’s Jonathan Liew’s reflections on the relevance of press conferences from the POV of a journalist. I hope Osaka takes the time she needs, and eventually gets as confident as Venus Williams in the way she approaches media engagements.

Two Things I’ve Watched Lately

‘Master of None’ Returns

This season of ‘Master of None’ was unexpectedly tender. It follows successful novelist Denise (played by Lena Waithe) and her partner Alicia (Naomi Ackie) as their lives wind towards and away from each other in beautiful ways. I am sure we owe the focus of the show not being on Aziz Ansari’s character to the surfacing of a young woman’s account of his sexual misconduct at the height of the #MeToo moment four years ago, but the shift in focus did not take away from the season at all. The season built on the Emmy-winning Thanksgiving episode, and is in line with the series occasional strays away from its main storyline and lead character.

Much like previous seasons of the show, this season is technically so good; from the beautiful cinematography to the dialogue and the way it ruminates over such topics as love, ambition, and the way the choices we make affect the lives of those we care about. I loved the mundanity of the scenes in the first episode, because I don’t think we get to see queer couples do mundane stuff like fold laundry, be goofy or managing a home together. Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang were very deep in their arthouse bag as usual, as was evident from the sparseness and emotional power of many of the scenes, and some of the really economical ways they told us things without telling us -- like how we got Denise eating a sandwich in a car set to moody ass opera music then her getting in the house to say she has already eaten to show us just how much things deteriorated between the couple after the miscarriage. That particular scene went on a tad longer than it needed to, but it speaks to the way the show tries to not “tell” everything.

The scene where Alicia gets Denise to sign the divorce papers is one of those examples for me of how the show has such great attention to detail (a grainy as hell photo from viewing it on my laptop below). Here, we see Denise’s flannel blending with the curtain and pillows as she slouches against her chair. We see Alicia, a stark contrast in her purple suit, with her hair pulled back, and her powerful body language. Alicia is visually no longer part of that house. Until this scene, we had seen her defer to Denise, appeal to Denise, try to get Denise to do things for her. This was the first time we saw her toe-to-toe with her, and undaunted. This is the energy Alicia takes into the remainder of the season as she does the absolutely insane thing of going through gruelling IVF by herself, with no support system around her. 

I would have liked an explanation for why Alicia had no friends (did she move from the UK to be with Denise?), and why her mother is the lone voice -- literally -- we hear her confide in. I’d have also liked more connection to previous seasons, and found the final episode a bit jarring. Still, there were so much that was well done, like the touching kindness of the nurse during the IVF scans, or the focus of the camera on Alicia as she listens to the doctor, overwhelmed as she learns firsthand how difficult being trying to get IVF support can be when single and/or queer.

Naomi Ackie rose to the occasion in these powerful episodes in her portrayal of Alicia. She played both self-assured and vulnerable with equal conviction. In that first hospital visit, the camera was on her as the doctor spoke about the cost — both financial and otherwise — of the IVF journey she was embarking on. The scene in e3 where she finds out about the viability of her eggs from her first round of IVF was a punch in the stomach even though I kinda figured it was coming. We don’t learn how much time has passed, but when Denise and Alicia’s character meet again and they are both in separate relationships, Ackie’s portrayal of a woman more quietly confident in herself than we saw in the earlier episodes is subtle but brilliant.

But here’s the thing. You guys know those cake trends from earlier in the pandemic where someone has a plate of rice and chicken then they cut into it and -- horror of horrors -- it’s a cake? That’s kinda like what this season was. The season was great, but I honestly was not expecting a super emotional rollercoaster with not a lot of humor in it. I expected thoughtfulness, but also playfulness alongside arthouse cinema experimentation, much like other seasons of the show I’ve come to love. Don’t get me wrong, I love cake. Love it. I just… I thought I was getting rice. 

In spite of feeling a little sucker-punched by the emotional power of the season, I very much appreciated how beautiful so much of the season was. Ansari and Yang now have to give us another season, this time focusing on Dev (Ansari’s character) and telling us how his character hopefully climbs his way back up.

‘High on the Hog’ was masterful 

I’m a sucker for food-related documentaries and stories. From Michael Pollan’s series Cooked to Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid and Heat, I’d watch them the second they come out. Of course I watched ‘High on the Hog’ the day it was released, and I was struck by the beauty of its storytelling and the sensitivity and curiosity with which the show’s host Stephen Satterfield approached the places he traveled to. The story of gumbo in the first episode and its links to the variations of okra soup eaten across West Africa is a beautiful story, almost beautiful enough to make me give it a second chance (Haven’t attempted okra soup since my adolescence). I loved learning about black people’s many contribution to American food and how it confounds so much we think we know, especially in the challenging of our notions of high- and low-brow cuisine, on the role of black people in starting catering as a businesses. 

Seeing the way Yoruba dishes in Benin Republic were cooked made me wonder about variations in the cuisine unique to specific ethnic groups further along the West African coast. What would that dish look like among Agoyin Yorubas, and what prompted those variations? What did we borrow and why? I also really enjoyed seeing what new, young cooks in Benin were doing to remix traditional preparations. It brought to mind Ozoz Sokoh’s work with Kitchen Butterfly, and the emerging crop of new Nigerian cooks reimagining our local dishes. Freedom to play is just as important as respecting older ways of doing things, because something is not truly yours if you don’t feel confident in your ownership enough to mess with it. In this series, the food we eat was not set on an altar behind a glass, but was experienced, shared, and given such vibrant life. I dig that.

Until next time.