In his review of Olamide’s self-titled album, writer and culture historian Dami Ajayi notes something sour about the Afrobeats/Afropop class of 2012: a creative plateau. Approaching 15 years in the limelight, the Class of 2012—or more accurately, the 2010s—encompassing Wizkid, Davido, Olamide, Burna Boy, and Tiwa Savage—appear to have hit an insurmountable peak. They can still craft hits, quite all right. But like the Good Doctor opined in that review: “There is nothing he [read:they] has to say that his core fans have not already heard….Their music won’t get better; we will be lucky if it does not sharply decline.” New wine in old wineskin, refreshing if you need a drink—which the audience desperately does—but unlikely to provoke a sense of new life.
Afropop is constrained to the same cycle that other pop sounds have, where pleasure in all its forms is the central preoccupation. Everything else happens around it, even grief. So, when an artist spends a decade mining the quarry of jouissance, it is inevitable that they one day strike jewel-less rock—not unless they somehow undergo a late stage revival. If they’re lucky enough, they won’t have to bother about that, as even the second-rate stuff will sound good to their audience, who have grown with them, whose priorities have changed alongside, and who would be hard-pressed to make a sudden U-turn, attempting extensive sonic experiments in subsequent releases.
Critics will rage all they want, but the audience cares less about their stasis. They will point you to the charts, to crowds singing along entranced at concerts, to relevance in social media debates and stanship circles, and to the onrush of solicited features from stars in the international galaxy of singers. Until someday, they also begin to take note of the stasis, at which point commitment to a lifetime of support supersedes the urge to critique. And then, when they can no longer hold out against the larger critical crowd, the audience will jump ship in alignment with this same decline pointed out long before.
But sometimes, this script flips on its head, and the audience just happens to be wrong about what’s right: highlighting the wrong example to prove the right lessons. Undue criticisms of Davido’s Timeless and Tiwa Savage’s Water & Garri EP as artistic declines come to mind. Most recently, fans’ comments about Wizkid’s appearance on Jorja Smith’s single, Alive, have emerged as the latest in a series of accurate diagnoses using misinformed symptoms. Since the single was released yesterday, 2 July 2026, conversations on X and Instagram have been predominantly negative, laced with acerbic reviews of his verses. The perception is that Wizkid keeps doing the same thing repeatedly, with Alive being the latest instalment in the “She tell me say” universe. However, these comments about the song couldn’t be any further from the truth.
Alive is fusion R&B, characteristic of late-career Wizkid. In writer Chibuzo Emmanuel’s Culture Custodian essay “Wizkid’s Promise is Pleasure,” he inquires into the Surulere-born singer’s recent musical direction—where pleasure is both escape from grief and the destination itself—and concludes that “in his [Wizkid’s] hands, pleasure becomes a useful tool—a bulwark against life’s tediums or an antidote to pain.” For the better part of this decade, this has been Wiz. A party-going, Casamigos-popping, ọmọge connoisseur of sorts, whose verses about losing his mother on Asake’ MMS also includes a promise of enjoyment in the nighttime. Looking further than the possibility of purposeful hedonism as escape, Wizkid has tended towards more tempered Afropop and R&B since Soundman Vol. 1. Every single project since then has been marked by sparse up-tempo records, shedding the EDM-base of Superstar.
But even more importantly, in making Afropop and Dancehall-driven R&B, Wizkid hasn’t always struck a balance between exceptional songwriting and melodies, and laidback—bordering on lazy—delivery. Made in Lagos, his best attempt at this cross-breeding so far, includes Gyrate. More Love, Less Ego has Deep, Pressure, and Plenty Loving. Morayo succeeds for the most part, with heavier Afrobeat influences but a song like Lose still can’t help but sound tiring. We recognise this. When you pay attention to his performances, you observe the same artefacts: emotionless delivery, dependence on descriptions of his lover’s interests and actions, and those occasional falsettos, fuji runs, and slurred patois to create the illusion of dynamism.
Alive has none of these flaws. It lacks the banality of his onomatopoeia-ridden Afropop outings—MONEY CONSTANT and Jogodo (with Asake). It is topical in the same manner his better performances have been—think braggadocio on Sarz’s Getting Paid, escapism on Asake’s MMS, or that fantastical verse-of-the-year contender on Odumodublvck’s BIG TIME. Despite singing about romance, his lyrics aren’t a fatigued hodge-podge of Greatest Hits one-liners. Well, it’s not exquisite penmanship either, but at least he’s able to construct a narrative around “having a lot to lose” if his secrets get out; as original as one would expect from a 30+ man who has no interest in seizing his lover’s phone like Rema on Woman. There’s visible effort expended on his delivery, especially on the breathy whisperpop first verse that calls back to Frames (Who’s Gonna Know?) and A Million Blessings. Even the less energetic second verse pairs with Jorja Smith’s backing vocals just fine. X users would rather this man run Chris Brown-style vocal calisthenics on a song requiring summertime energy. Perhaps, it’s the muted log drums that have them wanting brash Wiz back.
If fans want to criticise Wiz’s lazy penmanship and phoned-in verses, there’s an entire mini-discography of features stretching across the globe to pick from. He was washed on Billionaire’s Club, save for that strained falsetto at the tail end of his verse. And someday himself and DJ Tunez will pay for their war crimes on STATE OF MIND, a production carryjob if you ever heard one. Alive should not be found dead in that bracket of abhorrent records, even on its worst days. If this writer had to guess, reactions are just groupthink pile-ons coupled with a general aversion to not-so-sensuous R&B. Compared to Slow (feat. Anaïs Cardot) or his feature on Ayra Starr’s Gimme Dat, you realise that there isn’t much disparity. Right diagnosis, wrong symptoms.
You’ll know this is the case when Wizkid releases his seventh studio album, SEXY, later this year, as announced at the Cova Club, Paris pre-release listening party on 25 June 2026. When listeners inevitably declare support for the hit records with amusing lyrics and renege on their previous stances. Or when they, yet again, pick out the wrong examples to highlight what is, in fact, a flaw in Wizkid’s current arsenal. It’s the way of Afropop fans. Love it or hate it, you’ll still sing along with them when Flytime brings Wizkid around for the Detty December shows. Because at the end of the day, himself and the Class of 2012 can only do so much as they approach elder statesperson status.
0 Comments
Add your own hot takes