"See I like Beyoncé, but she dey with Jigga / I like Nicki, her yansh is bigger..." // D'BANJ - OLIVER TWIST // afrobeats in the charts

love that track! apparently atumpan is also a high school english teacher irl, which makes it even better.

in case anyone hasn't heard it, d'banj's previous single is also excellent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KIHJOLeyFk

Emmanuel Eboue ‏@TheRealEboue
Good to know Spurs won't be going champions league. Small boys they don't know the thing . Hahahahaha

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Blimey I had no idea that D'Banj was in the top 10, terrific song anyway, although this is my favourite of his:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWilwqonZ0Q

Can't be bothered with the laboured controversy (yawn unifying US and dancehall DNA throughout loads of this etc etc) but glad someone's pointed out the two-way traffic between funky and the Nigerian artists at least, probably others as well, cf this from a couple of years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c821wvSqrAc

Also lol at Donae'o popping up in the video for no apparent reason.

Heard this one on thesinglesjukebox a couple of weeks ago. As I said there musically reminds me of Paul Johnson’s Get Get Down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDwxhHwJ66M

RE: UK Funky/Afrobeats

Dotstars been on this thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MfEFe7Cbrk

always imagined this would fit nicely into a funky set (of yore, maybe not nowadays)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaduM38SFsM

Quite old and based on SA house more than Naija/Ghana i think, but this is an anthem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVJ2MdTc2o

another old one but fits i think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP0MyfxT2y4

but Donaeo must be in his absolute element right now, I'm really pleased for him. He's come a long way!

A couple of years ago I heard 'Party Hard' on a dancefloor in Kampala and 'African Warrior' playing in some some random bar that was otherwise playing Nigerian and Ghanaian pop and the big US hits and it was a real penny-drop moment.

This ("Oliver Twist") was at first impossible to check out and then inappropriate to listen to for various personal context reasons for the past 6 days but OH SURPRISE it is in fact my favourite thing ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ1GYHZ_cTs

^^^ This is a couple of years old and corny as hell and has absolutely zero thematic development but is totally irresistible.

can't believe no one has posted this Azonto smash from Ghana here yet, could be the next "Oliver Twist" perhaps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTJ3bwDIyWc

more Azonto goodness:

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

and how about this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR5ItzlDhJc

killer track from Nigeria - a bit old, but new to me, and definitely still fresh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS9O7AIA7g8

^ follow this person's lead (re azonto)

yeah them EL tracks are biggles. I believe he produced that daft Eddie Kadi/Funny Face tune I posted upthread too.

Looking forward to giving this a listen soon
http://djneptizzle.com/download/

more Azonto:

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

^^ my undisputed #1 song of the year ^^

neptizzle is a fascinating character who i'm surprised the media havent really caught on to - a vietnamese dude from hackney and former grime dj who seemingly randomly picked up on afrobeats in 2007 and has become an international star

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4P-gOrdeZk. This is on that Neptizzle mix, very nice.

you can listen to EL's double album here: http://elrepgh.bandcamp.com/.
4 out of 25 tracks in, it's pretty great!

i was just listening to it as well... it's on Spotify, so fast!
(but really, putting that "this is crazy chale" thing in every single intro gets a bit annoying)

That Neptizzle mix is amazing, I can't stop playing it! There's some proper hard tracks, like the Dee Moneeey I put up above, or 'Bossu Kena', and some beautiful, sugar-sweet ones as well, like 'Big Momma', 'Onyame Ehyira', and 'Sweetio'. There's just something about the colorful synths, syncopated beats, autotuned african vocals, and the relentless, catchy fun of this that really does it for me.

Love the Neptizzle mix so so so much.

yes!

What's this about Bert Jansch? Ok. Leaving thread...

http://db8nv44adlng0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Empire-State-of-Mind-album-art.jpeg

based on the singles this album is shaping up to be really good! wizkid, banky w & scales

love everything about this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7_bpL4zSLw&feature=share

yeah that one's a belter

rhythmically fairly unique from what i've found too

(save el's 'kaalu' maybe-ish)

yeah, you mean with those 4x4 kicks coming in and out?

I am also pretty in awe of how stylish these dudes look tbh.

i love that neptizzle mix! what are the chances we can get marcus mixing afrobeats? he would be killing it.

"obuu mo" is absolutely my shit.

at the risk of being thick, what defines this "scene"? Like, what distinguishes "afrobeats" from other stuff? I don't want to be the genre police, I'm enjoying it, but it just feels like uk-funky influenced house?

rhythmically fairly unique from what i've found too

really?

the neptizzle mix just keeps on giving:

http://youtu.be/AktSWz4Gowg

i've gotta say i'm looking up these tracks from the neptizzle mix on youtube and i'm kind of astounded. every song i've looked up seems to be single with an HD video. it's like uk funky never died just moved to ghana and got popular! is this stuff actually influnced by the uk funky scene or it just happens to sound similar? so much of this stuff would fit perfectnly into a golden age marcus set.

i love that neptizzle mix! what are the chances we can get marcus mixing afrobeats? he would be killing it.

― hardhouse banter (tpp), Thursday, 21 June 2012 22:20 (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

ya tell me about it, i tried realising this big vision of a mix i had in my head but it turns out the required mak10/maximum type ninja skillz do not come easily to the relative traktor n00b :(

i mean none of the afro dj's i've heard have been actively bad exactly but idk it could just be so much more in the right hands

Despite the obvious similarities, I think its easy to overstate the UK Funky connection tbh.

As for DJing, Neptizzle seems pretty tight, Abrantee not at all. How much does it really matter though? Slapping the tunes on dancehall style seems enough for me.

yeah you could make a vague case for cross-pollination i suppose (uk funky djs were touring africa for a while right) but i'm firmly seeing it as a natural indigenous mutation of the usual hiplife via the azonto "dance" injecting the speed and purpose (sometimes a new name is all it takes) to make it dancehally

but i do agree a lot of the ghanaian stuff can be startlingly funky-esque. like i give world music tourism brutally short shrift and i feel as if this stuff has naturally come to me and my londoncentricism (rather than me towards it)

dancehall djing isn't "slapping the tunes on"!! ur bang out of order

cool ur boots man, I just meant short transitions rather than long mixes. Obv selection is key!

I think this thread has been mainly azonto so far so lets have some naija

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oa5KVZtAnU

right well yeah but even within short transitions you see the difference i'm making between neptizzle and co riffing through the tracks quickly and a then potential mak 10 grime style intensity bringing the best out of the material

seen

what pirates are playing this stuff incidentally. Maybe there is already some ninja djs out there playing this stuff we don't know about yet?

actually, this guy Wavy J is a good dj. Not Mak 10 levels or owt, but his AFROBEAST mixtapes are well mixed. Other than Abrantee and Neptizzle I haven't heard any other afrobeat djs tbh.

http://soundcloud.com/wavyj

i know its quite old, but did anyone see this horrible, mean-spirited and utterly stupid article in the Voice?
http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/step-back-afrobeatreggae-still-rules

ugh^

nice video this but the second track of her EP is better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h-ptJ-nZ7g

ut i do agree a lot of the ghanaian stuff can be startlingly funky-esque. like i give world music tourism brutally short shrift and i feel as if this stuff has naturally come to me and my londoncentricism (rather than me towards it)

Yeah this makes sense. Like this is a total assumption and possibly way off-piste but I'd guess a fair proportion of these guys come from relatively wealthy backgrounds and will have spent time in London including going to clubs and absorbing music from over here, including funky.

I mean that's not even taking into account the sort of cross-pollination you get from Youtube etc. Dunno about the Ghanaian artists but Don Jazzy, who's produced a shitton of Naija stuff has been living in London for a decade.

hadnt seen that voice article but i feel like that's not the first time i've come across butthurt jamaicans wait let me rephrase that detected a resentful antipathy from that side

basically a belated realisation of how faddishness works after years of telling themselves all manner of nice things to soothe why the early to mid 00s limelight went away. insert your own proud wifebeaten tart with a heart analogy

again i think it's partly a misapprehension born of sometimes inadequate, sometimes novelty-ish presentation; you never know how serious robbo ranx is with this stuff (can be slyly very cutting in the margins of geniality) but recently on his show he'd been pressganged into having (the pleasantly pointlessly avuncular) dj edu guesting as part of 1xtra afrobeats week and it was a crying shame listening to edu's miserable attempts to convince robbo with the most uninteresting blatantly dancehall-derived stuff, like dudes speaking in ja patois and so on, everything to back up the suspicion of afro as shonky facsimile dancehall. a revelatory opportunity missed

not that it particularly matters what robbo thinks of course. the most interesting thing is that edu was convinced dancehall was sounding more like afro! (with particular reference to konshens 'stop sign/gyal a bubble part 2' iirc). oh how you could hear robbo silently bristle at that

really hating the way that daytime R1 DJ's seem to be treating Robbo Ranx and this track as some laughable onetime breakout.

Here's my top 50 azonto songs for the year (or really since the abrantee mixtape). Might be a few from last year and the order is fairly arbitrary after the top 10 or so but whatevs. Also no Naija cos i don't really have enough knowledge.

1.Guru - Lapaz Toyota
2. Keche - Aluguntugui
3. EL - U Go Kill Me
4. Zigi ft. Amanda
5. Keche - Sokode
6. Kwaw Kese ft. Black Prophet - Let me do my thing
7. Guru - Karaoke
8. D-Black ft. Joey B - VERA
9. Yaw Siki - Wupe Dodo
10. EL - Obuu Mo
11. Fada Gran pa - To da centre
12. Obour - One people
13. Joey B - Azonto bomb
14. Sarkodie ft. EL - Dangerous
15. D-Black - Ha mi shoulder
16. Flexy Da Don - Tsofi sausage
17. EL - Kaalu
18. Mr HmHmm ft. Joe B - Non-fa
19. T-Blaze - Wa Sei Bebia
20. Greenfield ft. EL - Carry dey go
21. Fuse ODG - Antenna
22. Stay Jay - Twaame Lala
23. Stay Jay ft. Tiffany - Shashee Wowo
24. Eduwodzi ft. Stay Jay - Yenko Nkoa
25. Guantoa - Asore Party
26. Gasmilla - Innit
27. Funny Face & Eddie Kadie - They doubted
28. Humble Dis - Corner corner
29. Guru - Akonta Fried Rice
30. Stay Jay - Prepaid girl
31. Buk Bak - Kolum
32. Nadjat - Gbaa Alert
33. Bluebox ft. Bottlez - Spedede
34. Castro ft. Sarkodie - Swagger
35. Sun Rich - D33d3w Dot Com
36. Tiffany - Akyee wo
37. EL - On a long tin
38. Joe B ft. Guru - Dongor
39. Eyi Rap ft. Va - Serkle
40. Nyame K - Pay her
41. Edem - Over Again
42. Yaw Siki - Jeggings party
43. Black Kat ft. Zador - To Dey be to dey
44. Conzy - Megye hit
45. Gizo - Makofa Aba
46. Da Little ft. Limit - This London Girl
47. 4x4 & MarcusBeatz - Casanova
48. Fifi Selah ft. Stoneboy - Survival
49. 4x4 - Moko Ni
50. Fuse ODG ft.Tiffany - Azonto

Great list, Benny. That's some of the very best music of the past year imo. I can't wait to listen to the ones I haven't heard yet.

(btw, #3 U Go Kill Me is by Sarkodie (featuring EL).

...wish I had enough knowledge of Naija pop to make a coherent list...

xp oh yeah, should also read 'Zigi ft. Sonniballi - Amanda' at number 4

My top three: Gbaa Alert (Nadjat), Chop My Money (P-Square), Oma Ga (Tiwa Savage). Lots of co-signs with Benny's list, e.g. Obuu Mo, Twaame Lala, the two big Guru tracks...

The latest from Keche is another good one: Body Lotion.

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

Dr. Slim - S3k3 (Seke) (feat. Double)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_n51HQPBKI

"Let Me Do My Thing" is amazing, was the highlight of yr Ball J mix, Benny. Gonna take a while to get through yr top 50, thanks for all yr work in this thread!

yeah the vocal performances on that song are incredible. There's an radio interview with Ball-J floating around on the net somewhere and he singles out that song, saying that it was the craziest studio session he'd ever done.

Quite digging this London-based crew from Nigeria
https://soundcloud.com/studiomagicmusic

Apparently this dubstep influenced track is making waves in Nigeria

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DGdB_ccyipo#!

more info here
http://www.thefader.com/2012/09/05/lungu-lungu-too-much-senrenre/

Sony Music Entertainment is proud to announce the signing of Nigerian megastar D’Banj to its RCA Africa label. The breakthrough deal also includes a multi-album, worldwide exclusive contract with emerging Nigerian singer-songwriter star Kayswitch and a strategic partnership with D’Banj’s Nigerian record label DB Records, who’s catalog includes artists and producers such as J.Sol, Jay Sleek and DeeVee.

http://www.citifmonline.com/index.php?id=1.1189988

Maybe I missed this ilxer posting his list here that includes the below cuts (or maybe he didn't)

http://thecorner.co.nz/2012/12/14/the-corners-2012-year-in-review-50-best-international-singles/

D’Banj – Oliver Twist
Tiwa Savage – Kele Kele
Sarkodie ft EL – U Go Kill Me
Kwaw Kese ft Black Prophet – Let Me Do My Thing
Nyame K – Pay Her
Guru – Lapaz Toyota

I know it's old now but I flat out adore Guru's "Anything Goes".

That Ball J mix is great Benny, you always dig your mixes! I admire artists that have a fully formed unique sound, and can create a whole range of different tracks from a few simple elements- in Ball J's case those crazy technicolor, tropical, carnival synth stabs. With Azonto and Naija, Jersey/Philly Club, Jackin, and Funkystepz, 2012 been such a great year for music.

"The debut Gospel Porn album by the most politically incorrect Christian Rap group of the times"

http://foknbois.bandcamp.com/releases

I haven't listened to it yet, but there's a new (i think) Abrantee mix: http://www.okayafrica.com/2013/01/10/afrobeats-dj-abrantee-mixtape/

^ looks a bit crap, think I'll just be googling the few tunes I don't know from the tracklist. Conor Maynard Afrobeats remix? No thanks.

Couple of good Kwaw Kese cuts:
https://soundcloud.com/akwaabamusic/wossop-remix-feat-kwaw-kese

Shoelace (feat Buda) - this one produced by Krynkman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAEXXmcOoaM

"After the long drama and talk about his infamous boxer shorts at the Big Brother House, Keitta has finally released a new song that address the entire situation. The song is titled 'One Boxer' and was produced by Krynkman, aka Amadaa aka Nshorna Music. It's Azontomania...One Boxer!"

http://youtu.be/ZODE68sSmyA

How about we start a new Rolling Afrobeats thread for 2013? There's bound to be loads of exciting new Azonto, Naija, etc etc stuff this year (obviously!) Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel the current thread title is becoming increasingly irrelevant and confusing, and it would be nice to be able attract more people. Good idea or not? Mainly looking at you, Benny B, since you've been by far the greatest provider for the thread :-)

yeah this one has become a little unwieldy. I'll start a new one.

cool :)))

new thread for 2013: Afrobeats 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6zixMk7gnQ

has someone posted this yet? It's the jam

obv not

Yansh yansh yansh yansh
Yowsah yowsah yowsah!

that's great, reminds me I meant to post this beautiful azonto tune a while ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWsuzm650qw

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

does anyone write about this stuff in a way that contextualizes it at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiHh2-6jmnU

this jam actually makes me think of

The Ibadan Sound: Jerome Sydenham, Dennis Ferrer etc.

Oops:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiHh2-6jmnU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Lv7PedBIU

Lil Bucie

this dude Heavy K makes some jams, damn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhD_c9O1L2s

Rolling Afrobeats thread 2014