Number 1 African Bad Girl and former First Lady of Mavin Records, Tiwa Savage has built a longstanding musical career which has sparked conversation, created undeniable impact and redefined the meaning of a pop-star, in the context of African music.
In recent years, female Afrobeats artists have made huge strides locally and internationally. From Ayra Starr to Tems to Qing Madi, Nigerian women have been able to launch and grow musical careers that stand out in the often oversaturated Nigerian music scene and effortlessly rival those of their male counterparts. While we delight in the success of these new artists, we must never forget the artists that paved the way, most especially the trailblazing Queen of Afrobeats who laid the groundwork that made many of these budding careers possible. Debuting around the same time as peers Davido, Burna Boy and Wizkid, Tiwa Savage’s career trajectory rivals that of her male counterparts and yet, she does not appear to enjoy the same level of recognition and reverence.
Female artists are often shrouded behind an “Invisibility Cloak” that normalizes a masculine dominated world and even Tiwa Savage’s career, including the contributions that she has made not just to Afrobeats, but to the Nigerian music industry at large, has fallen victim to this. is. The first African woman to win the ‘Best African Artist’ award at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2018, she was also one of the first Nigerian artists to be featured on ‘The Colours’ show, where she performed her song, Attention, in 2019, leading to a stream of other successful performances by Nigerian artists, notably Oxlade’s Ku-Lo-Sa in 2022. Yet, she is often left out of the conversation when Afrobeats legends are being discussed.
Her story starts in 1996. Tiwa Savage began lending background vocals for prolific artists such as George Michael, Kelly Clarkson, Chaka Khan, Mary J. Blige and more, when she was just 16. Music has always been one of her epic loves, the medium by which she candidly and catchily reveals her desires. Although she was born in Lagos, Tiwa moved to London with her parents at the age of 11, earned a degree in Business Administration at the University of Kent and then won a scholarship that allowed her to train at the Berklee College of Music, Boston.
Her training set her up for a career in songwriting, and for several years, she worked with a variety of established Western acts including James Fauntleroy, Frank Ocean and Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, lending her pen and her ear for music. By 2010, however, her thirst for solo recognition had reached its peak – she loved writing music, but she wanted to be able to perform these songs herself. A meeting with then-A&R for Interscope Records Tunji “TJ Billz” Balogun set forth a change in direction; “I met Tunji and he told me about the growing Afrobeats scene back home in Nigeria. He thought I was wasting my talents being a songwriter & a backing singer and pushed me to move back to Africa. At first I thought it was a bit of a step backwards but he was adamant that this was my future. He knew it was what would set me apart from the rest.”
Admittedly, this was the dominant path at the time. Several prominent Afrobeats artists had moved back home to further their musical careers after their education abroad; Naeto C, Banky W, D’Banj and Don Jazzy had all headed in this direction in the 2000s and were rewarded with mainstream success. At the time Tiwa followed this blueprint, however, virtually no female artist had done so successfully, probably because the primary sound embodied by the artists that moved back home (aside Afrobeats) was hip-hop – a decidedly male dominated genre. Tiwa’s pop, r&b leaning sound was sort of an anomaly, with Seyi Shay being the only other artist on a slightly similar path.
In 2011, she released Kele Kele and Love Me, showcasing her vocal prowess, hit-making ability and flirtatiously charming demeanour. The pop leaning tracks stood out from the electronic, production heavy hip-hop influenced tracks that flooded Nigerian airwaves at the time, courtesy of her male counterparts and shot her into the Nigerian mainstream. The tracks also vastly differed from the kind of music mainstream listeners were used to hearing from female artists. Waje had songs like No Tomorrow and So Inspired and Omawunmi, If You Ask Me and Warn Yourself, all tracks showcasing soulful, rich vocals with messages which differed from that of Tiwa’s – while these were feel good, motivational songs with empowering lyrics, Savage’s songs embodied a playful sensuality that was lacking in the music coming from female artists of that time. Just like her male counterparts, she was more interested in releasing tracks that could be club favorites rather than empowerment anthems.
By the time she returned to Nigeria in 2012 to fully kick off her career as a recording artist, Afrobeats was on the rise locally and the young music industry was full of promise, if largely male-centered. Davido had released Dami Duro, Flavour had dropped Ada Ada, Burna had released Like to Party and Tiwa had to fight to earn her place amongst the ranks of these artists. She signed to the newly formed Mavin Records and made memorable appearances on compilation album Solar Plexus.
Backed by the powerful Mavin machine and bolstered by the success of her previously released singles, Tiwa dropped her debut album Once Upon A Time in 2013. With her airy, ultra feminine tone the R&B influenced project saw her explore a variety of sounds across the album’s 21 tracks, including Don Jazzy assisted smash hit Eminado, spiritual paean Olorun Mi, folk-pop love song Ife Wa Gbona and the sultry, discourse sparking Wanted. This was an impressive debut by any measure, but instead of focusing on the musical versatility and thematic diversity displayed by the solid body of work, her artistry was reduced to sexual objectification.
Women in the music industry have had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts to gain even a fraction of the recognition that is so readily bestowed on the men, and this is made even more difficult by the standards of morality imposed upon women by Nigerian society. Standards which, it must be noted, are not applied to male artists who frequent nightclubs, father countless children (often out of wedlock) and use their music to boast about fraud, infidelity and their sexual prowess, using women as punchlines.
The music videos for Love Me and Wanted predictably resulted in a wholly unnecessary moral panic, leading to the former being banned by the National Broadcasting Commission. The videos had blogs and the press in a frenzy, and the general public; especially Nigerian women who are often the gatekeepers of the misogynistic society, up in arms. Words like ‘raunchy’, ‘explicit’ and ‘showing too much skin’ were thrown around and emphasis was made on the fact that she was married. Although Tiwa braved the criticism and asserted her right to bodily autonomy, this backlash served as a massive distraction from the work she had put out. This brings to mind the Toni Morrison expression about bigotry serving the function of distraction, keeping one from doing their work and wasting one’s time by requiring repeated explanation for one’s existence. It obstructs everything else, takes over one’s story so that the discourse becomes one’s only narrative.
Over a decade later, the Nigerian music industry is now home to a flock of female artists who wear their bodies and their sexuality confidently, and defiantly. It is not remiss to say that the industry simply was not ready for an artist like Tiwa Savage at the time she debuted, and her self expression, while acceptable in male artists, was not commonplace with female artists. Around the time she released the music video for Wanted, Davido had released Gobe, Iyanya had released Sexy Mama and KCee had released Pullover – all innuendo heavy tracks referring to women’s bodies as punchlines, receiving little to no backlash.
Although off to a shaky start, her artistry spoke for itself and she continued to experience a steady rise. Then came controversy in her personal life which once again placed her under public scrutiny and had her career hanging in the balance.
Following the release of her sophomore album R.E.D. in 2015,which was a self-assured ode to the strides she was making in her young career as well as a direct response to naysayers,she had an emotionally charged sit down with Pulse in 2016, where she accused ex-husband/ex-manager, Tunji Balogun (TeeBillz) of stealing, infidelity and drug addiction. These personal struggles took a toll on her career, which had to take a back seat to crisis management, image rehabilitation and protection of her son. The success of R.E.D. was also clouded by divorce speculations and mass interest in her personal affairs. Nonetheless, she used this period to re-strategize and later that year, she signed a management deal with Roc Nation and reinvented herself with her bubblegum pop 2017 project – Sugarcane. While her pre-Mavin debut was Afro-pop centred, with heavy Western influence, her Once Upon A Time era was more traditional Afrobeats leaning and R.E.D. explored more Pan-African sounds, Sugarcane saw her make her way back to pop heavy tracks with the new synth heavy production undertones which colored the new era of Afro-pop thanks to the work of producers like Spellz and Maleek Berry which she laced with her first love: R&B.
This versatility is consistent throughout her career and while it helps her stand out, it also makes it incredibly difficult to definitively categorize her as a purely Afrobeats artist. She is able to move from trend to trend, from sound to sound, matching the energy of whichever artist she is working with, while maintaining her signature airy tone. She is the queen of remixes – a collaborator, consistently on trend and instantly turning cameos into song-elevating performances. The list is endless: her dazzling appearance on Patoranking’s Girlie O (Remix), her elegant touch on Ladipoe’s Are You Down, her sensual turn on Jidenna’s Spy Candy, showing off her falsetto alongside Wavy the Creator on Body Deep (Remix), playing the confident anti-romantic on Young Jonn’s Ello Baby, her braggadocious verse on Asake’s amapiano laced Loaded, her instantly viral appearance on Spyro’s Who Is Your Guy? and much, much more.
The sheer expanse of her musical ability meant that there was only so much that Don Jazzy led Mavin Records was able to offer her and in 2019 she made her amicable exit, signing a record deal with Universal Music Group, marking the end of her 7 year run with the Afrobeats giant. For Tiwa, who started her musical career in America, this was full circle, she was fast outpacing the local music scene and needed to create international impact. Although Mavin Records was instrumental to the growth of her career, her unique sound and versatility far outweighed the support the record label was able to offer her; Mavin’s reach was primarily regional and her fellow signees (Wande Coal, Dr. Sid) have notably had little acclaim outside of Africa. Davido had signed to Sony Music in 2016, Wizkid in 2017 while Burna Boy inked a deal with Warner in 2017. Tiwa was the only woman who achieved the same feat at the time, but because she didn’t have the “global hit” that her contemporaries did (think Ye, If, Come Closer), it was easy for her to be left out when the globalization of Afrobeats was being discussed.
With her new record deal, she now had access to producers, sound engineers and featured artists that fit into the R&B sound she had loved from the beginning and it was in this spirit that she dropped 2020’s Celia, leaning into the Western sound with tracks like Temptation with Sam Smith and the Davido assisted love song Park Well. She continued this R&B run with 2021 EP Water and Garri on which she experimented further with her sound, with help from a range of artists including alternative artistes like Amaraae and Tay Iwar, R&B legend Brandy as well as American rapper Nas who she worked with on R&B hip-hop crossover Work Fada.
Last year, she ventured into visual storytelling with her movie Water & Garri (not to be confused with her 2021 EP of the same name) and its accompanying soundtrack. The 10-track project stretches across a range of sounds and collaborations, old and new, taking us on a journey of musical evolution. This year, she has eased listeners into her new era with single You 4 Me, a silky R&B track which samples Tamia’s 1998 slow jam So Into You and sets the tone for her new project, which, according to her 2023 interview with Dotty Show, will be fully traditional R&B. As she moves further away from traditional Afrobeats however, her core fanbase – the Nigerian audience which started with her in 2011 and has followed her since then is increasingly alienated. This audience is not used to R&B in the Nigerian mainstream, and while her experimentation and global reach might result in new fans for her, older fans who came for the Afro-pop sound she embodied in the 2010s might be unable to follow this change in her sound. While new Afrobeats artists like Tems and Qing Madi might be able to get away with the fundamentally Western R&B and soul sound, Tiwa might not be able to do the same because their fanbase which is mostly younger and more international from Tiwa’s Nigerian fanbase. Her level of versatility is lacking in her male counterparts who are more readily associated with Afrobeats especially in recent years (think Timeless, Made In Lagos and Twice As Tall) and what this does, is make it even easier for her to be left out of the Afrobeats legends conversation.
Tiwa Savage has been able to break barriers, brave controversy after controversy and reinvent herself time and time again, constantly collaborating with talent within and outside the bounds of Afrobeats. First Lady of Mavin Records, now global star, she is committed to musical experimentation and is determined to continue evolving. Her legacy is embodied by the flock of confident, expressive female artists who she opened the doors for and echoes through the R&B laced Afro-pop which is so common in the Nigerian mainstream today.
She is the embodiment of versatility and raw musical talent, a musician through and through. If musical careers were to be presented as resumes, Tiwa Savage would be immensely overqualified for mainstream airwaves. Considering her gift with instruments, her experimentation with film, her songwriting ability and her vocal prowess, we would be hard pressed to name another Afrobeats artist with the range. Who else can deliver the Yoruba laced rap-leaning verse she served on Mavins’ O Ma Ga and then turn around and go ad-lib for ad-lib, layering harmonies with Brandy (the “Vocal Bible”)?
Ever omnipresent in the Nigerian music scene, she moves from trend to trend, effortlessly playing with sounds in a way that can only be executed by a person with a vast archive of musical knowledge to pull from. Notwithstanding attempts at erasure, her career is a testament to the importance of self-assurance and defiance in the face of arbitrary rules and for this, we must give Tiwa Savage her flowers.
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