The Afrobeats Movement: We've Come a Long Way Fam!

The Afrobeats Movement:

We've Come a Long Way Fam!

Written by Efe Omorogbe

One of my minor but regular irritations these days is the unavoidable online encounters with the sometimes hilarious, sometimes annoying bants by younger members of the Afribeats nation. As the culture grows and numerous deserving talents make inroads into the global music industry, a section of fans appear to be infected by the e-syndrome known as "vawulence", brought about by an e-virus which causes sufferers to believe that they can only celebrate the winning strides of their faves by denigrating otherwise impressive achievements of others, especially perceived rivals. The notion that one person's win is a lift for the entire culture is foreign to these fans and it's not very difficult to understand why. Most of them belong to the generation of privilege. For a guy whose initiation into the world of music fandom coincided with the timing of a Chris Brown feature on a Davido hit single and a Tekno's feature in Beyonce's "The Lion King: The Gift soundtrack album, it is easy to believe the mainstream has always been next door. Nothing can be farther from the truth. A lot has changed. In twenty short years, a whole lot has changed and there's the promise of bigger things to come. Just a couple of years ago, Nigerian talents created equally fantastic music but found it extremely difficult to showcase and monetize it. A North American or European tour for the hottest Naija pop acts was mainly anchored on a string of small banquet hall shows in mainly backwater locations, parlour parties and African clubs. The circuit was as far removed from the mainstream (venues and players) as the NPFL is from the EPL.

The boom we're witnessing today is occasioned by an auspicious convergence of cultural renaissance, tech disruption, tenacious stakeholder action, consistently improving quality and irrepressible content. The import of this current reality is never lost on an OG. Young guns can be forgiven for taking small wins for granted but me and my generation of pathfinders do not have that luxury. How could we? Who dash monkey banana? When we put out our first record at Now Muzik, a maxi-single titled "Slick Like Dat" by the underground rap fiend Slick, back in '94, we only had it in cassette. Indie push, no budget, no influential co-signs, we couldn't muster the necessary impact. We kept on moving. It was a similar experience for many others. It was hard for everyone.

Most of the major labels had closed shop, radio stations and clubs generally allotted less than ten percent of spin time to local content and what has now evolved into the immensely popular Afrobeats was in some powerful quarters treated as pathetic byproduct of youthful exuberance unworthy of serious attention. It wasn't that the Nigerian music industry had always been comatose. Quite the contrary. The timing of our entry couldn't have been worse. There was a well developed and thriving music industry in the 60s, 70s and mid 80s - the era of the vinyl - before the second and third waves of tech disruption that was the cassette and later the CD as sound carrier of choice changed the game for the worse. The easier it became to replicate and mass produce records, the easier it became to pirate releases. With deteriorating economic conditions, repressive military dictatorship, non-existent antipiracy enforcement apparatus and a deeply entrenched culture of colonial mentality, the odds were stacked sky high against the creators and promoters of the sound of young Nigeria but the tougher it hit the harder we fought. Brick by brick we built, step by step we, the indefatigable soldiers of the culture, trudged on until the 'nonsense start to make sense'. There were a few epochal moments when I experienced the shift, felt the tide change for real. Let me share this one publicly for the first time. The nightly mob of sellers, buyers and commuters was steadily thinning out but I was smack at Pen Cinema, Agege, Lagos so I conveniently swirled around the now extinct roundabout and headed back to Victoria Island. It was past 11 pm on a week night late 2016, a regular work day until that late call from a Europe based associate spiked things to historical proportions. The guy, head of a division of a major record company reached out and gave me a task. A pretty simple task. "Sit down with the talent, make the offer to him directly and get his feedback". For whatever reason, the exec who has been trying to close this deal needed to be sure the cold shoulder he was getting was direct signal from the artiste himself and not from his team and since I can reach the dude one-on-one, on short notice, that meeting could provide either a chance to get his consent or to get confirmation that he was indeed, uninterested. For me, this was a special night. Not just because there was a handsome brokerage fee to earn if the deal went through but because it was further evidence how well the movement had grown. It was quite exciting and gratifying. I sped through Ikeja on my way to Eko Hotel sighting some of the spots where artistes and Alaba marketers had held meetings less than a decade earlier. Meetings where distribution rights were traded for sums ranging from N5m to N20m full and final payments and we walked away feeling like Neymar. Between 2006 and 2016, N20m would have been about N40m and that was virtually all a hot artist and his or her label could realistically expect to earn from direct music sales. It's important to note that this one-off payment was usually expected to cover the cost of promo and at least two standard music videos. Fast forward to this epic night in 2016. There I was on an elevator ride to the tenth floor on the swanky Eko Hotel Signature wing musing about this juicy offer I was about to make this young Naija-born, Naija-bred and Naija-based music star. I smiled to myself as I thought of how a few which years prior he may have been blown away by stories of N5m payments from Alaba marketers. I arrived at the door. One soft knock and the door was open. The meeting was brief. Pleasantries were short. It was past midnight already. I put the offer on the table and rightly expected it to crack under the weight of the figure in question.

"No recording, packaging or promo costs included. 100% artiste royalty advance", I quipped. He looked me in the eye, deadpan. "The offer is $1m ... aka N260m!" I declared. Wizkid smiled, thanked me SINCERELY and turned it down.

Had I Known Love

Written by: Lin Lane Had I known love, flowers would have bloomed in Spring I would have danced when hearing whippoorwills sing But in my heart no seeds of love were sown No one brought bouquets or called me his own I wear no wedding ring

I could not soar above clouds on love's wing There were no strong arms to which I could cling In my heart, Cupid's arrow would have flown Had I known love

I was never a Queen, beside her King No seductive words pulled at my heart string It beats like others; not made of stone My laments are a pitiable drone My eyes would not glisten, my hands not wring Had I known love