Is Wizkid Playing it Too Safe?

Two weeks ago, Wizkid took his most significant step thus far towards the release of his next album, Morayo: a teaser for a new single, Piece Of My Heart, that features American RnB artist Brent Faiyaz. This offering looks to allow Wizkid to float in the sonic room that he built for his last few projects: lightweight, feel-good music contemplating romance and gratitude at Wizkid’s unhurried pace. After bursting to the scene with the effervescent Superstar and experimenting with increasing genre-blending on Ayo and Sounds From The Other Side, Made in Lagos saw him finally crack the code for making proper exportable music with consistency, so it is no surprise he is reluctant to tinker with a formula he has all but perfected. But now the question must be asked: has Wizkid gotten too comfortable in a safe zone he is now reluctant to leave?

Wizkid has been at, or at least very near, the forefront of Afrobeats, commercially and sonically, for over a decade. At the time of his arrival, the elements of what would grow to become Afrobeats were already very much in place, but they needed to be properly wielded by a superstar who could push the frontiers of what was achievable with Nigerian music. From the moment he entered the limelight, he set his sights on creating energetic indigenous Afropop with respectable vocal ability and silky melodies—the likes of which Wande Coal had begun earlier with the release of Mushin 2 Mohits.

His arrival package consisted of Holla At Your Boy, Tease Me and Don’t Dull, a trio of songs that strung his glittering confidence into slinky, danceable Pop beats. When Superstar arrived, it broadened his creative palate further, including a Fuji-like take on the praise-singing live music of Owambe culture on Pakurumo and a take on AfroRnB with Gidi Girl. He worked through a few directions, but the destination was almost always the same; the dance floor. While he found considerable success with this debut album, Wizkid’s penchant for experimentation meant he never left the laboratory.

He made Azonto from the Ghanaian dance craze that overcame Nigerian music in the early 2010s, putting a Nigerian spin on a highly infectious dance and cultural movement. A year later, when South African House was positioning to be the cutting edge of African Pop, Wizkid was again at the forefront of innovation, looking to include elements of the sound to enrich his already Pop-heavy repertoire. The results littered his sophomore album, Ayo, powering songs like Show You The Money, In My Bed and For You.

Elsewhere on the album, he explored a few other uncommon artistic choices, at least at the time, from the explosive Fela-sampling Jaiye Jaiye to his reinvention of Highlife with the Yemi Sax–assisted One Question. With Ojuelegba, he played with a stripped-down, midtempo Pop, but embellished with instrumentation that ensured its distinct Afro-centricness. That combination turned out to be the unique formula that was needed to produce a much-sought-after cross-continental success. While Ojuelegba showed him (and the rest of the industry) the path to international success, he did not follow it immediately.

First came his third album, Sounds From The Other Side and the SoundMan Vol. 1 EP, both named for how they display Wizkid applying the finishing touches to refine his soundscape for a global palate. The finished product, Made In Lagos, brimmed with some of the qualities he had built over the years—it is heavy on horns and strings like SoundMan was, and the measured, relaxed groove he assumes for most of its songs is a continuation from the successes of Ojuelegba and Come Closer. Most of the spunk and energy of his earlier projects was gone, and in its place, Wizkid leaned into Carribean sounds, working lower-paced anthems of gratitude with just a tinge of hedonistic pleasure. In the decade he had spent in the industry, his sound had matured along with him. 

Post-MIL, Wizkid’s willingness to innovate has tapered to a near-plateau. He took on a little more percussion for More Love Less Ego; dipping into but not completely caught by the Amapiano fever that held Nigerian music captive in the immediate post-covid period, although his restraint should be considered a plus after Amapiano’s over-saturation means that the genre’s use now is anything but innovative. For S2, released late last year, a lot more versatility was expected, seeing as its canonical predecessor, 2019’s SoundMan Vol. 1, was once Wizkid’s thrust for innovation, but Wizkid’s biggest change was working his way back to a Nigerian sound, with Wande Coal and Zlatan recruited to surf on the beats this time. 

Wizkid teased Piece Of My Heart with a caption that promised that Morayo, or perhaps just the song, will be out. Either way, this should be taken with a rather large dash of salt; the singer, whilst being one of the most prolific of creators, is notorious for teasing new music for months on end, and sometimes never releasing them at all. Whenever it does arrive, though, Wizkid should expect more scrutiny than he has been subjected to in the recent past. He has now released three projects which, while being enjoyable to large degrees, display only minute incremental amounts of sonic evolution. He did not exactly dazzle on either of his features on big remixes in the last two years, like Abracadabra and Apala Disco, and when he was tapped up by Asake for his most recent one, MMS, the Starboy could hardly match Asake’s dexterity even on production that was evidently built to his strengths.  

With the Afropop scene back home is as open as it as ever been in the last decade—with Tems, Rema, Asake and Ayra Starr producing exploits at a pace that, in recent times, outstrips even him, not to mention competition from his agelong peer Burna Boy—the Afrobeats forerunner finds himself in a position about as precarious as it was in the days before Made In Lagos released. Then, a combination of genre-bending evolution and smart collaboration was sufficient to not only maintain his place but consolidate on it. Now, the Afrobeats superstar will be in search of the next X-factor, but to find it he may have to step outside the shadows of the iconic Made In Lagos.