Afrobeats artist Logos Olori.
Screengrab/YouTube/Logos Olori
Nigeria is deeply polarised along ethnic, religious, cultural and political lines – and violence is never far from the surface.
Davido has gone back to work after the death of his young son.
Jean Catuffe/Getty Images
The album doesn’t live up to the hype - but features some decent collaborations.
Nigerian star Tems performs at the Glastonbury Festival in the UK in 2022.
Jim Dyson/Getty Images
Afrobeats truly conquered the globe, influencing music styles, packing out stadiums and lifting awards.
Asake live in Atlanta in the US in 2022.
Paras Griffin/Getty Images
The album Mr. Money With The Vibe, with its amapiano influences, is just 30 minutes long but it speaks volumes about Asake’s talents.
Frans Schellekens/Redferns via Getty Images
Nigeria’s Afrobeats stars love to identify with Fela’s activism and music - but their tributes are becoming opportunistic and empty.
Beyoncé on stage in South Africa in 2018. Her new album is called Renaissance.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100
With Renaissance, Beyoncé is again shaping pop culture, honouring black disco pioneers and Africa’s rise.
Burna Boy performs in Glastonbury, England, 2022.
Joseph Okpako/WireImage via Getty Images
Afrofusion is a music style that existed even before Burna Boy was born.
Nigerian musician Fela Kuti and his band in Harlem, New York, 1989.
Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
Nigerian popular music - Afrobeats - is storming the world’s stages. But it’s just the latest stage in a vibrant century of recorded music in the country.
Orlando Julius Live in Concert in 2015.
Photo by Kmeron/Flickr
The Afrobeat star used music to promote and preserve his Yoruba culture - while entertaining diverse global influences.
Orlando Julius (left) on stage with his wife, the dancer and singer Latoya Aduke.
Photo by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
The man who taught Fela Kuti a thing or two has been all but erased from formal music history. He deserves much better treatment in death.
Made Kuti performs in Lagos in 2021.
Photo by Andrew Esiebo/Getty Images for Global Citizen
Of a record nine nominees, seven are from West Africa. The global rise of Afrobeats music owes its soul to Nigeria’s iconic star Fela Kuti.
Street vendors sell their wares beneath a mural of musical great Victor Olaiya in Lagos.
Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images
Victor Abimbola Olaiya took up highlife music in the late 1950s and combined it with the trumpet to improve on its texture and aesthetic quality.
Nigerian 80s artist William Onyeabor.
Luaka Bop
The search for old or new African sounds is based around a nostalgia culture that is endemic to Anglo-American popular music.