Wizkid: Long Live Lagos is an immersive documentary that offers an intimate look into the life of 35-year-old Nigerian pop star Wizkid, while also situating his superstardom within a much larger political, social, and cultural framework. Rather than limiting itself to presenting a portrait of a star, the film makes a valiant attempt at explaining how one artist’s rise mirrors the emergence of a global industry around Afrobeats — Nigerian contemporary pop music — which has never existed with this level of structure, reach, or international legitimacy.
We are ushered into Wizkid’s story by Nigerian music royalty, Femi Kuti, immediately grounding Wizkid in a longer musical lineage. As the son of Fela Kuti, the revolutionary figure who pioneered Afrobeat, a genre rooted in jazz, funk, and traditional Yoruba rhythms, Femi’s presence establishes an essential distinction. Afrobeat, as Fela created it, was politically charged, musically expansive, and deeply oppositional. Afrobeats, the contemporary pop genre Wizkid represents, is distinct: pluralized, stylistically fluid, and primed for mass circulation in a globalized digital economy.
Femi’s narration serves as a conduit between these two intertwined histories. With his monologue, he underscores that while Fela was globally recognized as both a musical and political icon, he never reached the commercial heights Wizkid has achieved. This disparity, the film argues, is not artistic but infrastructural. The systems required to propel Nigerian music into the global mainstream — streaming platforms, international touring circuits, global media interest — simply did not exist in Fela’s era.
One of the documentary’s strongest analytical moves is its insistence on placing Afrobeat and Afrobeats side by side, not as interchangeable terms, but as related yet fundamentally separate genres. By doing so, Long Live Lagos demonstrates how a cultural story that began decades ago is being continued, transformed, and expanded under entirely different conditions.
Structurally, the film follows two narratives simultaneously. The first is a present-day countdown to Wizkid’s headline concert at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. Rehearsals unfold as the audience is introduced to his production team, entourage, and family. Running parallel is the more compelling retrospective: Wizkid’s journey from Lagos to global pop superstardom within the rapidly evolving Afrobeats industry.
The opening montage drops us directly into Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun’s world — the relentless, fast-paced streets of Lagos. Long regarded as Nigeria’s cultural capital, Lagos is presented as almost inseparable from Wizkid himself. This is the city that shaped him, and he has left an undeniable imprint in return. His image is everywhere: stickers on public transport, murals on city walls, billboards, highways, magazines. His CDs spill onto the streets. From markets to barbershops, Wizkid’s presence is inescapable. If you are Nigerian, or if you have ever spent time in Lagos, the film suggests, you cannot escape Wizkid.
Beyond chronicling his beginnings and current heights, the documentary highlights the longevity of Wizkid’s career — one that spans multiple eras of Nigerian music distribution. It thoughtfully traces the evolution of the industry itself, from the Alaba Market traditional promotional systems to the rise of music blogs, and finally to today’s digital and streaming-driven ecosystem. At the time Wizkid debuted, artists still relied heavily on CDs and cassettes sold in traffic or markets. As internet access expanded and streaming platforms gained dominance, Afrobeats rapidly entered global consciousness. Within only a few years of his career, Wizkid found himself at the center of that shift.
The film features the expected lineup of cultural commentators — music journalists, historians, managers, and fans — but director Karam Gill largely avoids flattening Wizkid’s story into a familiar rags-to-riches narrative. Instead, Long Live Lagos tells a broader story: of a young man from Surulere, of what success looks like for Nigerian artists, and of what Wizkid’s achievements mean for his countrymen and for the African diaspora worldwide.
A particularly effective choice is the use of both of Wizkid’s managers to narrate different phases of his career. Sunday Aare, who started managing Wizkid in 2009, and Jada Pollock, who came aboard in 2017, provide complementary perspectives that help chart his evolution across eras of fame, sound, and strategy.
Gill’s most singular addition to the familiar music documentary format is the inclusion of a fan: Matthew Temitope Solomon, an ordinary man who also grew up in Surulere. Solomon’s perspective offers a grounded lens through which we understand why Wizkid resonates so deeply. An aspiring musician himself, Solomon’s attempt to travel to London for the Tottenham show becomes an emotional subplot. While the film remains vague about how he manages the financial and logistical feat — raising questions about how organic his involvement in the film is — his visible awe under the fireworks and stage lights captures something truly special, something essential. His joy underscores what Wizkid represents to a generation raised on Afrobeats: possibility.
The documentary repeatedly frames Wizkid as a symbol of ambition for young Nigerians, particularly those from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Through interviews with music experts, the film also interrogates the term “Afrobeats” itself, criticizing how it is often used as a catch-all that flattens Africa’s vast musical diversity. While clearly defined here as Nigerian contemporary pop music, the term’s global usage is shown to obscure the genre’s cultural specificity and lineage. It also constrains Nigerian artists. This context helps explain Wizkid’s frustration when he asserted in early 2024 that he resents being referred to merely as an Afrobeats artist. The film further connects this tension to colonial legacies, particularly Nigeria’s relationship with Great Britain, and how those histories continue to shape cultural categorization.
Nearly 15 years into his career, Wizkid had already become one of Africa’s biggest stars, the global ambassador for Afrobeats long before his crossover breakthrough. Essence — his 2021 hit featuring Tems — is treated as a defining moment in his global career, and when the film captures Wizkid performing the song at his sold-out Tottenham show, with 60,000 people singing along, the scale of Afrobeats’ global ascent is unmistakable.
Yet Long Live Lagos does not ignore the complexities of Wizkid’s present. While One Dance opened doors and Essence blew those doors off their hinges, younger artists like Tems, Asake, and Rema — artists shaped by the path Wizkid helped carve — have at times surged past him in momentum. His post–Made in Lagos albums, More Love, Less Ego and Morayo, are strong but less culturally dominant than the former. This, combined with Wizkid’s famously reserved public persona, has fueled speculation about a loss of momentum.
This documentary might have offered deeper access into his world on his own terms, yet, Wizkid remains elusive. He barely speaks. We see him rehearse, spend time with family, and participate in a handful of confessional moments, yet his words are sparse and emotionally restrained. Even in a two-hour film dedicated to his artistry, he remains distant — more institution than individual. His halting sentences and muted affect, described by Jada Pollock as simply his personality, limit the film’s emotional intimacy.
Still, the documentary’s final message lands clearly. In the closing moments, a Nigerian fan at the Tottenham show exclaims, “We’re doing stadiums now!” That line encapsulates the film’s core message. Wizkid’s career runs parallel to the rise of Afrobeats as a global industry. By the end, Wizkid: Long Live Lagos reveals the full ecosystem surrounding Nigerian music today: one in which Nigerians can thrive not only as performers, but as managers, producers, publicists and creative directors — emphasized by a delightful cameo from The Cavemen.
For all its emotional distance, Wizkid: Long Live Lagos succeeds as a cultural document. It carefully places side by side the foundational strides of Afrobeat and the global boom of Afrobeats, honoring the past while chronicling the present, capturing a moment where individual success and collective cultural progress are inseparable.
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