Rolling afrobeats thread 2014

Thanks, man.

i have no problem w/ the yoruba comp except i'd cut maybe 4-5 tracks. but a lot of the major jams are on there

and thnx guys, sadly it seemed to do only medium traffic so not the game changer id optimistically hoped for

No US coverage I have seen yet from Sasha Frere-Jones at the New Yorker; Ann Powers or Bob Boilen at NPR; Carl Wilson at Slate & Spin, most major newspapers (some NY Times coverage to I think).

Also, if everything D'Banj gets out of all his networking is a hidden credit on a Kanye comp and a video with Snoop, this might take some time. I agree w deej though: this should be the future of Western popular music.

However, I can't say I'm not intrigued by Dorobucci's total chart domination this summer (it just reached Afribiz #1 and still gets 30-50 daily spins on Lagos radio stations). That's one of the songs that imo would have the least chance of crossing over. It's definitely a jam and I love it but I have not tried to convert people by playing it. Any thoughts on why THAT song in particular became so huge?

If, as is widely believed, the Good Music saga was the main source of tension between D'Banj and Don Jazzy then it was almost certainly a net negative, as their split right as D'banj was at his zenith with Oliver Twist was catastrophic in terms of lost momentum and crossover opportunities.

It's a bit like if Jay and Dame broke up, but Dame was also Just Blaze and Ye.

Dorobucci is insanely catchy. Don't know if there's much more to it than that but then its hardly surprising that a song with such limited crossover appeal is doing so well within Nigeria itself.

Don't get me wrong, I sing it every day. But I notice that I'm not playing it too often to people who aren't already familiar with this stuff/these grooves. Any idea why the highlife remix hasn't caught on though? I like it almost as much as the original.

Dorobucci has an insane amount of stars on it, right? Also, is catchy. I went to a party and when the band stopped playing and people were trying to figure out what music we should hear, I mentioned I had a song on my iPod which was the biggest hit in Nigeria. And everybody wanted to hear it. When I played it, people sort of stood around and smiling, not entirely sure what it was. Then I put Antenna on, and the dancefloor exploded.

That's pretty illustrative. Antenna is pretty straightforward calypso fare, easy for most to dance to, but I can't imagine a way of dancing to Dorobucci's cross-rhythm that isn't explicitly 'African'.

Yeah that sounds right. Anyway, did we talk about Shaydee's Chakam yet? I love it.

http://youtu.be/1ouE6IzNJKQ

Had never thought much of him solo but I'm liking that. Could (should) be his breakout track

I think Tiwa Savage and WizKid both have pretty significant crossover potential, Davido too although it seems like the only one making moves as an artist in the west is WizKid. He keeps popping up on american pop star's instagrams. I blame Akon

No US coverage I have seen yet from Sasha Frere-Jones at the New Yorker; Ann Powers or Bob Boilen at NPR; Carl Wilson at Slate & Spin, most major newspapers (some NY Times coverage to I think).

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, August 27, 2014 8:33 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't seen any coverage period outside of Africa itself and the handful of UK-centric trendpieces that fundamentally misunderstood it kinda? like they thought "afrobeats" was the "latest trend" instead of "massive global urban center emerges on national stage" but w/e

most american hipstros who would be into this stuff seem fundamentally unable to discern between relative quality in a given moment of any geographic region and just treat it a la Diplo as all "raw material on which to build my DJ sets at hip urban centers"

not that I've even heard THAT happen w/ this stuff yet

is there any indication this stuff has boomed further beyond africa (and african communities elsewhere) than it had a couple of years ago? from what i can tell belated low level interest from the chattering classes apparently seems to have increased a bit but other than that it's the same conversation

idk didn't seem like the chattering classes have paid much attention at all stateside, so i dont really have anything to measure it by

the whole thing will explode once Pooley wins the ilm year poll.

Yeah!

No crossover US radio play and no album pitched to US critics

Well, I'd say Am I Wrong was quite afrobeats-like, no? I mean, in a crossover sort of way. It always seems like something that would be a bit cultish to me, like k-pop. But k-pop has had smash-hits, obviously.

I'd say this one is with the djs. If you start working some of these songs into "other" types of sets it might roll from there. A lot of it is eminently danceable and good vibes all around.

T.I. Is on the new P-Square single btw, but rhytmically it's a pretty straight disco number.

I dont understand why ppl care about interzone or disclosure when nigeria is clearly running the table on dance music in 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjo_72ERSZU

D'ADSHAS - Ekomosi ft Upper X

Also i try not to link my stuff generally but just bc I felt like it was kind of broadly slept on & bc it points to a way in which nigerian pop broke through in the states this year here's the Fader piece:
http://www.thefader.com/2014/08/01/say-yes-how-a-michelle-beyonce-and-kelly-gospel-record-points-to-pop-musics-nigerian-future/

Michelle Williams got a number one gospel record w/ a nigerian-inflected destiny's child reunion single produced by harmony samuels (ariana grande's "The Way") who has also produced jams for Tiwa Savage like the incredible "Love Me x3" which, as brainwasher once said to me, would obv be a hit if it was a rihanna song dropped in the states:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oSY4CYfXV4

rise, rise aloft on wings of challop gold

More a troll than a challop

I was out at a club in brooklyn last night---more a traditional bk hip hop/dancehall type joint than a "hipster dance club" type spot--and they played yemi alade's "johnny" (into that uk funky joint I forgot about, "party hard") which is the first time I've heard nigerian music in my world of no longer so young people

damn andrew wk still getting play

that anecdote p much encapsulates what i restrained myself from saying in response to ur goading tho, ie hi we been on that d'adshas funky dancehall tip in 2009

now you'll find the general ldn populace has shifted from african warrior to https://soundcloud.com/rs4house/gladiator-ft-kadey-james

i'm rly not trying to deny the vitality of this music at all however, just saying these lines of attack are misguided and never have been ur forte

i dont actually know what is popping in london ~obviously~ and if anything i think ~hip~ (not that hip) america is overly anglophilic when it comes to this stuff anyway but you have to understand that your biggest exports in the states right now are disclosure and kiesza and shit like that.

feel like this has more to do w/ the uk's discursive presence or w/e than w/ the uk actually being some kind of vanguard of music future

Really enjoying this thread, but can I ask the possibly stupid question of where one can download / buy these tunes? A lot of them seem to be stream/vid only...?

google play is where i cop most of them - or itunes but google play seem to be a bit quicker in getting them out there. These low bitrates on the free stuff are seriously scandalous though. I neeeeed this new Wizkid remix of You Garrit in proper quality: http://www.hulkshare.com/djrans4d/orezi-ft-wizkid-you-garrit-remix

yeah, i can't stand low bit rates. would love to play some of these tunes out but shitty quality mp3s won't cut it.

New Wizkid! https://soundcloud.com/legendury-beatz/oje-feat-wizkid

feel like this has more to do w/ the uk's discursive presence or w/e than w/ the uk actually being some kind of vanguard of music future

As I keep saying in this thread it has to do with a load of the big names in the scene having spent time in London (and in some cases actually living here) and having been exposed to 08-09 UK funky at the time. It's one of the major building blocks of a lot of this music - obviously there is a load of US rap and dancehall mixed in as well but they are global pop ligua franca in the way a mostly-overlooked UK subgenre of five years ago isn't. Its presence in a lot of this music is disproportionate to its impact in the UK or anywhere else.

(Okay as I have kept saying in previous afrobeats threads...)

the people i've talked to don't think that uk funky is quite as key in its development as you do. Not to say you're wrong per se, but one of the DJs I spoke with hadn't even heard of it.

and i say this as someone who explicitly asked about a relationship between uk funky and this stuff—maybe he was simply not interested in giving credit to the UK for the evolution of the sound, or maybe he's unaware of how many producers spent time in the UK during its heyday, but he thought of that stuff as afropop made by immigrants in the UK, not not a genre unto itself that inspired current afrobeats.

yeah as mdc says this was discussed on previous year's threads. it's an unknowable mystery quantity tbh, on one hand it's easy to instinctively believe funky wasn't a big deal (if any) for the creators and that the idea is a textbook critical overdetermination but on the other the resemblances really are often too startling to scan as coincidental

just some ancestral bloodline juju i guess ¯\(°_o)/¯

to get back to the og point tho i still dunno if deej was rly claiming that current us anglophilia actually is iho inhibiting possible avenues of reception for afropop or if that was just lashing out at whatever

i mean if it's any consolation we'd rather you didnt have larry fitzmaurice either

oh nah i wasn't saying anglophilia hurts our reception of afropop, if anything it improves the odds

i wouldn't think that [and i can go back and read the discussion re: uk funky i suppose] the resemblance is 'coincidental' as much as one would argue that its manifestation in the uk is like a satellite of something that was happening concurrently but idk.

im curious what tsrobodo thinks

Do Lagos djs use the same 4 MB tracks that the rest of us get or is there some secret underground community basking in 320s and wavs? These shitty versions seem so unnecessary.

It's also true that this (broad) sound has been emerging for years, long before Oliver Twist brought the discussion on here, it was emerging in 2008 and maybe before and that cross-pollination would have influenced funky as much as vice-versa. I'm not saying it's the main component and certainly not that it's present in all afrobeats records, but it's clearly not coincidental. There are azonto records that literally reference UK funky tracks, Donaeo pops up all over the place, lots of these videos are shot in London, but likewise the African influence in UK funky was greater than it is in most other UK dance genres. It's all cultural exchange.

This is ancient history now to a big extent and certain sounds are so much in the DNA of a lot of this music that I doubt it even occurs to the majority of producers or songwriters.

i honestly couldnt point to any substantive evidence that afropop/hiplife had a musical influence on funky's emergence or development... what direct interaction with africa there was was from south african house, mostly swish stuff like kentphonik and also very seldomly a ruffer bit like dj cndo 'terminator' (and 'township funk' duh)

also i don't really think of azonto coalescing at all until 2011 or so? (happy to be educated otherwise). funky had more or less run its course by then

tempting in retrospect to look at ramzee 'ghana riddim' (q1 2012) as an effective handover moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP0MyfxT2y4

The ppl I talked to root the afropop sound in early 90s pidgin English rap records followed by late 90s r&b and faux jiggy 90s rap. Nigeria also has a much larger population than the uk...saying this as someone who was drawn to afropop for it's similarities to uk funky, it still strikes me as reasonable that the continuity would be the presence of an immigrant population who kept in touch with popular music from home even though that music at the time may have had a less developed industry? Or less penetration on the national stage? I say this also because the nigerian immigrant population would be much more in touch with their culture at home than the diaspora of descendants of slaves who were ripped from theirs and whose cultures had to be created through that kind of distortion

Idk just seems feasible to me that uk funky would be an especially visible, market-ready version of a style of music already existent but this is somewhat devils advocatty

a typo after my own heart

er not a typo yknow what i mean

idk ur talking about a broader (naija-centred?) afropop (which i don't doubt has had a street pop element since the 90s) whereas rightly or wrongly i guess i'm more stuck on the idea of 213 azonto kicking off or reifying a fresh take of its own which has then spread across