rolling afropop / afrobeats 2018

i just think its more about who its marketed to ... fans of tierra whack & frank ocean are more likely to like odunsi than wizkid ... but fans of drake are more likely to like wizkid ... this is more about audiences + marketing imo

I didn't listen to the whole Odunsi album, but it was def dull. That said, I think deej is right here even though I'd never heard of this dude until recently. I'd add that Odunsi singing in standardized English has to be a factor too.

fwiw i genuinely like some odunsi songs, just as solid R&B music ... of course i listen to it next to idk "Banomoya" and you're like, lol, but its still good. i havent heard the new album though

What deej said may be true to some extent, but I’m not sure the marketing angle is the right way to go. The only way anything is really going to happen is if you bring the real thing. Marketed-towards-US Wizkid didn’t happen, Made-in-Lagos Wizkid might, and everyone would be better and happier for it.

Same thing with the standardized English: look at the success of reggaeton and, again, Kpop (in case you missed it, BTS is #1-album and top-10-single-level huge in the US and elsewhere singing and rapping predominantly in Korean) .

btw, funny old thing: Odunsi is not on this Best Nigerian Albums list that NickB posted on the 2018 EOY music lists thread (Show Dem Camp is though):

http://www.dailyadvent.com/index.php/2018/12/12/exclusive-list-of-the-top-10-nigerian-music-albums-that-blew-our-minds-in-2018-number-5-already-got-a-grammy-nomination/

I assume Kizz Daniel would have been on it if he hadn’t dropped his album after the cut-off date - it’s better than the Mayorkun, fun as that one is. I feel LAX deserved to place too.

I think making it an issue of “authenticity” is problematic tho ... isn’t odunsi seen as, like, more authentic in the sense of he’s a regular guy/ anti-showbiz / “real talent” ? That’s as much “real” African music as the stuff we find more interesting musically & more successful commercially

I mean problematic in the sense of needs unpacking not “aura of morally bad”

I’m not questioning Odunsi’s authenticity, I’m pretty sure he’s making the music he wants to make. I was looking at it from the US industry’s perspective, since you brought it up, and I think there’s (new) lessons to be learned from Kpop and Latin pop when it comes to crossing over with “foreign” genres in the late 2010s.

Unsung father of Alté? Or of everything wavy/vibey/groovy?

I realize that I may not have expressed myself all that clearly, but I was specifically referring to the r&b-kind of wavy/vibey/groovy, which is why I singled out Kuvie on the Ghanaian side (both as a producer and on his own album).

Burna’s “afro-fusion” has always been much more heavily infused with reggae/dancehall than with r&b. And while Odunsi calls his music “afro-fusion” too, citing Burna and Blackmagic as major influences (as well as older artists like Wale Thompson and Angelique Kidjo), and I can hear the Burna, especially in his older stuff, the heavy r&b focus makes his version of fusion a different kettle of fish imo.

Someone like Juls (again on the Ghanaian side, by way of the UK) is closer to the Burna aesthetic, I think, to the point they’ve actually worked together (Burna and Odunsi have this in common at least), but I’m not sure that Juls arrived at his sound through Burna.

― breastcrawl, Wednesday, December 12, 2018 7:57 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To be clear, alte was coined to describe an emerging subculture reaching far beyond music.
I think this is the best distillation you'll find anywhere of what that entails.
https://becomingyeva.com/alte-lagos-all-you-need-to-know/

Colloquially its simply a delineator of perceived countercultural difference e.g. I get called alte for wearing barbour jackets and having a dog.

In as far as it does relates to music and visual style, Burna Boy was a fair representation of that bohemian, cosmopolitan aesthetic for a while before the movement took hold.

Burna has played with a lot of sounds (to very mixed results in the earlier years) and while his delivery/vocals have typically favoured reggae/dancehall it's probably wrong to frame his music exclusively in such terms when R&B influence has primacy in a number of his most prominent tracks; "Like to Party", "Don Gorgon", "Pree me"...

"Soke" in particular represents what I see as an awakening point both in the crystalisation of Burna's own sound and laying the groundwork for a kind of decidedly non-danceable wavy/vibey/groovy R&B that wasn't presumed to be in high demand.

I def have noticed ppl in the industry here seem to see Odunsi as more viable than lots of 'mainstream' african stars ... idk if its classed bias or alt branding or what but it feels both extremely predictable & not necessarily bad but potentially bad

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Wednesday, December 12, 2018 8:29 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How much of this would you say is just a function of it being easier to sell things to industry people that they already feel they understand?

This has nothing to do with anything, but I just want to say how much I love Sauti Sol and how much I love this thread for telling me when there's a new single out.

Finally checking out the Mr Eazi album and this one with Burna Boy is superb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHztnu5WM-w

pvmic, but I also dig the one with Chronixx

Two groovy tunes from Naija for the holidays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUKZeOjsuw4

Maleek Berry • Doing U

(his “Wait” is good too)

...and this one features Wizkid and it’s excellent, but I’m posting it here because Reekado owns it: “oya, turn up tha... /mtcheww/ speakers!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p6zc1wbg3Y

DJ Tunez ft. Wizkid & Reekado Banks • Turn Up

Keep forgetting to post Joey B’s “Stables” (one of OkayAfrica’s Ghanaian selections) here. It got some traction on the EOY lists thread and has now been nominated for ILM’s EOY tracks poll:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Ej0aTITk4

Joey B feat. La Même Gang • Stables

In a surprising development, DJ Sumbody now has the number one hit in South Africa. The link posted back in September is now dead, so here's the official video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CwMuQUr4Do

DJ Sumbody feat. Cassper Nyovest, Thebe & Vettis • Monate Mpolaye

In a surprising development, DJ Sumbody now has the number one hit in South Africa. The link posted back in September is now dead, so here's the official video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CwMuQUr4Do

DJ Sumbody feat. Cassper Nyovest, Thebe & Vettis • Monate Mpolaye

Critic Jason King mentions Burna Boy in his essay in the Slate critics roundtable

Though Africa has largely fallen off the American news radar, the music rocketing out of the continent remains straight fire. Projects by GuiltyBeatz, Aka, Fatoumata Diawara, Seun Kuti, Femi Kuti, Emmanuel Jal, Burna Boy, Muzi, Tal National, and Ammar 808 are all worth streaming. My favorite contemporary record this year, however, was I’m a Dream, the sophomore set from Gambian-Swedish chanteuse Seinabo Sey.

https://slate.com/culture/2018/12/2018-music-both-directions-at-once-coltrane.html

...as well as GuiltyBeatz. “Akwaaba” is his #10 song of the year.

Another Slate roundtable contributor Rawiya Kameir mentioned afrobeats and dancehall:

There was a similar rejection of artifice across the Atlantic, in the dynamic, compelling world of Afropop. It’s been thrilling to watch as some of the genre’s stars abandoned the shiny, transparent attempts at American crossover of recent years. Instead of paying top dollar to collaborate with household-name rappers or drenching strummed kora with arpeggiated 808s, many leaned into traditional Naija sounds and motifs. It’s not that they hadn’t found success beyond their borders—Wizkid’s “Soco” and pretty much any recent Davido single blared from cars outside my Brooklyn window all summer—but maybe simply that the efforts, largely unreciprocated by American artists, no longer served them. Burna Boy’s excellent Outside seems to have lasted, even though it was released way back in January.

https://slate.com/culture/2018/12/pop-music-earnestness-kacey-musgraves-mitski-snail-mail.html

New thread for 2019:

rolling Afropop / Afrobeats / Afrodance 2019

Goodbye 2018 and good job everyone, I think we did good and had good taste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QxY7afI0tQ

Actually, there's no reason this thread shouldn't continue being used for a while

My friend sent me this (Racheal M - Mpalampalampa) from Uganda. Always liked this rhythm. She's 12.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jECyKs-l1ok

Ok let's do it

A Pass - Didadada (groovy, from Uganda)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM19YRkJYhs