Wizkid is really taking African music to the world, or is he...?
“One Dance” most of his music, especially those targeted towards the western audience, have been heavily reggae infused.
WizKid
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![DJ Switch [Instagram/DJSwitch]](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg'%20width%3D'100'%20height%3D'100'%20data-ring-placeholder%3D'1'%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E "DJ Switch [Instagram/DJSwitch]")
I thought to myself, “How will people react to it?” “Will I be a hater?” “Are people ready for the analysis or ‘opinions’ I want to dish out?” In any case, I never got to it until now, and I actually played myself because in a week where RCA Records have laid down a marker on how serious they are with promoting Wizkid’s music to the world, there is no worse time to try to analyze or rationalize anything.
I have however decided to go ahead and just write anyway because I feel as though the thoughts I am about to share are very important to consider.
As a Nigerian that is very involved and passionate about the creative industry in our country, I can say that I do not think there has been a better time to be a Nigerian creative than there is currently. Everything from Music to movies to fashion and art; there is much more support for careers in those fields. The world is now paying much more attention to what we have to say and how we want to say it.
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Major record labels (SONY) are snapping up our top artists left and right to try to establish our sound worldwide and expand the reach of our music, so, all must be well with us and as it stands it is only a matter of time before our culture is fully accepted worldwide as part of popular culture.
Honestly, I am here for all of this progress, and somewhere deep down, I too harbour the hope that our culture, especially our music is very close to gaining a worldwide audience; and it is, just not the way we generally think it is or at the seemingly fast pace we are currently accustoming ourselves to. As per the title of this article, Wizkid (the flag bearer for African music worldwide) will be my case study and I will be using his current situation to make a few points.
I want start by saying, I don’t think anybody apart from Wizkid himself is happier with his progress. As someone who shares the same last name with Daddy Yo, and as a fellow upcoming Daddy Yo myself, and as a rising star in the music business, there is nothing more exciting than seeing Wizkid featured heavily on some of the most popular worldwide playlists on Spotify and Apple Music.
That being said, it is obvious from his huge progress that its either the world is not ready for our Nigerian sound or the major labels don’t think it is time to unleash it yet. I don’t have to go deep into the fact that since Wizkid appeared on “One Dance” most of his music, especially those targeted towards the western audience, have been heavily reggae infused.
From Daddy Yo to his verses on Justin Skye’s “U Don’t Know” and Zara Larsson’s “Sundown” and even his latest effort “Come Closer Ft Drake” For me, it is even more telling that all his recent features with American artists have been fully reggae. I think RCA has made it clear what the direction is that they want him to go so as to break in to the worldwide audience.
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Now, it is important to note that, in my opinion, that is not at all a bad strategy, in fact, I think it is very wise. It is also important to note that I did not sit down with Wizkid and RCA Executives for coffee to discuss the plans they had. I am very much an outsider analyzing based on what is public information. In fact, for me, it’s important for the culture that Wizkid finally breaks into the American market and personally even if he had to rap like Young Thug, I have no problem with it whatsoever.
The point I need to make clear here is that, in my opinion, as it stands, Afrobeat (or Afrobeats, or Afro Pop) is not ready to cross over yet, or rather, the labels are not ready for that experiment yet. What that means for us as fans and stakeholders in the industry is that we need to slow down some of our current celebrations and curb our enthusiasm.
I will use a soccer/football analogy to break down my point perfectly. I apologize in advance if you don’t watch football, please try to find someone who does to explain it to you if you cannot follow.
You see, in club football/soccer, there are the biggest teams like Barcelona, Madrid, Munich, Man United, Chelsea and Arsenal who have the big fan bases, huge amounts of resources and compete for all the biggest titles year in year out.
There are also smaller clubs like Southampton as well whose main goal is just to remain in their leagues and develop young talent. Now, what happens is teams like Southampton work hard to find young talented players at maybe 9-12 years of age, these players develop into solid professional players under Southampton’s tutelage and then eventually they become too big to play for Southampton so they get snapped up by the bigger, richer clubs who can pay them bigger salaries and offer them a chance to compete on bigger stages such as the Champions’ League and play alongside world class players.
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If you have not connected my analogy yet, Southampton is the Nigerian Industry (labels and all), SONY is equivalent to Barcelona or Real Madrid and the American market/audience is equivalent to the Champions’ League, Wizkid is obviously the star player who has quite admittedly grown bigger than the club (Wizkid is currently too big to be signed by any Nigerian label, even if they combined...) Now, in situations where star players transfer from smaller clubs to massive top clubs, the only thing the small club can look forward to is a hefty transfer fee.
In the case of Wizkid, it is equivalent to a star player going on a free transfer to a bigger club because his contract with his small team already expired before he garnered interest from the top clubs. (Wizkid was and is still signed to his own label). In a case where a player goes to a bigger club on a free transfer, only the player gets a bigger payday, his former club gets quite literally, NOTHING.
Let us bring it back to music and Nigeria. What I am trying to say in essence is that what is going on now in the Nigerian music industry is that the Major Labels are quite literally picking our biggest stars and offering them greater resources and a bigger stage but at the expense of the development of our own industry at home.
I think a lot of us have just been caught in the euphoria and have failed to realize that Wizkid breaking in to America, especially with this heavily reggae influenced sound, will not have the required impact on our industry that we hope. Our industry is developing very fast but that is not attributed to the fact that people have a genuine chance to cross over.
For our music and consequently our culture to cross over, the major labels will have to embrace our sound, but not only that, they will also have to embrace the huge inefficiencies we face as an industry and actually work with us to alleviate those challenges and develop our processes and systems further.
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Currently, the labels are snapping up our star players and offering them bumper contracts, but until they commit to work hand in hand with us to develop our industry to world standard, our sound might never seamlessly crossover.
M
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