Is Nigerian Rap The Problem?

If you were to peruse the Top Albums and Top Songs charts of Spotify and Apple Music Nigeria respectively, you’ll notice something that seems mundane on the surface, but upon closer examination reveals a litany of questions. A week into its release, Gunna’s latest album, The Last Wun currently has two and three songs in the top ten of Apple Music and Spotify NG’s Top songs chart respectively. The top 50 spots on these charts are also spangled with tracks from the album. Likewise, the album holds the top album spot on Apple Music and Spotify NG and continues to drive conversations online. 

Undoubtedly the album’s commercial success in the country is in no small part due to the presence of three of Afrobeats’ vanguard artists: Wizkid, Burna Boy and Asake. Gunna is also not a stranger to Nigeria. In 2023, he—in internet-speak—hopped on the remix of Victor Thompson’s hit This Year. That year he also teamed up with Sarz and Asake for a summery Afropop song aptly titled Happiness. Last December, he showcased the extent of clout in the country by headlining the Flytime Fest. A quick google search will surface clips of fans at the Eko Convention center, bathed in red strobe lights, effusively rapping his lyrics back at him. 

All of these notwithstanding, the album’s success in the country is reflective of a trend: while local rappers continue to cede their share of the spotlight, increasingly turning to Afrobeats or “falling off” entirely, foreign rappers—many of whom barely promote their music in Nigeria—put up relatively strong numbers.

The Nigerian music scene has had an interesting history with Hip Hop. I’m loath to single anyone out as the pioneer of Hip Hop in the country. But Junior and Pretty, a Hip Hop duo who seamlessly refracted the genre through a uniquely Nigerian lens, were among the first rappers to attain major commercial success in the country through songs like Bolanle and Waka Waka, which took over the airwaves in the mid-90s. After them came other generations of rappers in the country. In the early 2000s: rappers like Ruggedman, Mode 9, Eedris Abdulkareem and Lord of Ajasa. After them came the generation of M.I Abaga, Naeto C, Ikechukwu, Terry tha Rapman, Mr. Raw, and Dagrin. And after them: Olamide, Phyno, Vector, Ill Bliss, Reminisce, amongst others. In these eras, while Hip Hop in Nigeria played second fiddle to Afrobeats, it was a dominant genre. Naeto C was able to hold his own in a generation spangled with Afropop stalwarts like D’Banj and P Square; as were Olamide and Phyno in an era dominated by pop acts like Wizkid and Davido. 

Today, there are few analogs to this. Going by the numbers, the only rapper capable of holding his own against his pop counterparts is Odumodublvck. The issue—if we can call it that—is that while his discography is composed of a sizable number of rap songs, many of which are hits, he seems to be increasingly leaning towards a blend of contemporary Afrobeats and Highlife in which rapping gives way to sinuous singing and punchlines are swapped out for melodies. All of this is to say: if the nation’s most successful rapper is singing more these days, what does it say about the status of the genre? The natural next question then becomes: how did local Hip Hop lose its appeal—if this is indeed the case, and what underlying factors might be at play?

For Tilewa Kazeem, a music professional and culture journalist with bylines in publications like Dazed Magazine and The Guardian, the diminished status of local Hip Hop is an unintended ripple effect of Afrobeats global success in recent years. “Back in the day, in the time of Phyno, Olamide, African China, we didn’t have our own identity,” he tells me. “I remember speaking to Obi Asika, and he told me about Junior and Pretty, how when they first came to him, they were rapping in American accents. He told them to rebrand, rap in their local dialects, and tell authentic stories. Fast forward to today, even with the success of guys like Olamide, nobody wants to listen to Nigerians rapping because it’s not ours.”

Wale Oloworekende, the editor-at-large at The Native Mag and a vaunted culture writer, shares a similar sentiment. “I think the issue is not so much about Hip Hop declining as Nigerian music tastes evolving,” he offers. “We are in an age of authenticity and people want to reconnect to their roots. That’s why we’re seeing a resurgence of Highlife and other indigenous styles. The biggest artists are the ones who find a way to merge these (indigenous) styles with more contemporary styles. I think the issue is that Hip Hop has been imagined by New York or Californian standards. That kind of Hip Hop doesn’t have a place in Nigeria today.” 

Durojaiye Ademola, a music executive takes a slightly different approach in his exegesis of the situation. The way he sees it, the decline of Nigerian Hip Hop began in the mid 2010s when the vanguard rappers increasingly began switching to singing in pursuit of increased commercial success. Understandably, the exodus of rappers to Afrobeats in the mid-2010s was for these rappers a desperate attempt at hopping on the “Afrobeats to The World” train which had just started to gain surreal traction. This however reinforced the belief in both emerging rappers and label executives that Nigerian Hip Hop is not a viable commercial enterprise. 

Taken together, these theories offer a holistic thesis on the various causes of the putative decline of Nigerian Hip Hop; they however don’t offer any explanation for why foreign Hip Hop continues to thrive in the country. For this, Kazeem has an explanation. It ultimately comes down to the topic of authenticity. The average Nigerian Hip Hop fan would rather listen to “Central Cee, or a Gunna, or Young Thug. Those guys, Rap is their own sphere. It’s also down to the influx of international labels: “they have also come to water down our understanding of Rap. And now, nobody wants to hear Nigerians rap because it just sounds like we’re faking it.” 

Ademola similarly explains the dichotomy between foreign and local Hip Hop in Nigeria as being down to authenticity. “The reason why foreign Rap songs do well here while their local counterparts struggle is because Rap is not a cultural thing for us. When people listen to Gunna or Lil Baby, they feel exotic; it’s more about a lifestyle that’s not here that you’re dreaming of.” 

As these theories offered by Oloworekende, Tilewa, and Ademola illustrate, the reasons for the decline of local Hip Hop are several. The strongest factor, however, appears to be the problem of authenticity. Part of this is down to external factors. The global ascendancy of Afrobeats, for instance, has cast Hip Hop as something wholly foreign to our culture. Ignoring the decades—stretching back to the time of Junior and Pretty—Nigerian rappers put into domesticating the genre to fit with Nigerian sensibilities. But these days, it’s not uncommon to find a Nigerian rapper cosplaying as a foreign rapper, dispatching verses in a foreign accent and rapping about subjects removed from the Nigerian experience. This is what blights Nigerian Hip Hop the most. 

Zaylevelten, an upstart in the Nigerian Hip Hop scene who is rising with blistering pace, is proof that even a little bit of authenticity can make a world of difference. Going by the way he dresses, or his beat choices, or how he delivers his verses, you wouldn’t be entirely mistaken if you judged him to be an Atlanta-based rapper from the lineage of Playboi Carti. Listening a bit more closely, however, reveals something fascinating: his lyrics are unmistakably Nigerian. He deftly weaves in and out of Pidgin and other local dialects, conjuring authentic Nigerian stories. In Show Me Luv, he channels the Nigerian street lingo for soliciting an act of generosity. In Maye, over a Trap beat that might as well have been produced by super Atlanta producer Turbo, he layers lyrics about internet fraud. 

In conversations about possible ways to revitalize the Nigerian Hip Hop scene, the solution often proffered is to temper the genre with Afrobeats. After all, Nigerians don’t like Hip Hop, proponents of this theory often argue. But it’s not so much that Nigerians don’t like Hip Hop, as it is that the paucity of authentic Nigerian Rap that has led to the genre’s decline in these parts. The implication of this is that for Nigerian Rap to once again find its footing this generation of rappers must be faithful to making music that is at once fresh and authentic, the way their predecessors—Olamide, M.I Abaga, Naeto C and Phyno, amongst others—did.