Performative or Genuine? Unpacking the Motivations Behind Pan-African Collaborations in Afrobeats

In addition to the rise in collaboration between Afrobeats artists and western musicians, there has been increased ‘Pan-African’ collaborations with older, more traditional African artists. Are these collaborations motivated by pursuit of international accolades or genuine creative expression?

Ololade ‘Asake’ Ahmed, the self-proclaimed ‘Mr Money’, set the music industry alight in 2022 with a relentless run of chart-topping hits. The release of ‘Omo Ope’ in February 2022 was the beginning of a truly extraordinary journey captured aptly in the article ‘Them Never Seeing Me Coming: The Captivating Rise of Asake’s Music’. Despite the wide acclaim, his detractors were quick to point to what they perceived to be a repetitiveness in his sound, described by some as ‘a predictable blend of Fuji and Amapiano’ in the middle of the artist's run. Despite Asake showing us his artistic range with songs like ‘Trabaye’, ‘Dull’ and ‘Nzaza’, he seems to have resumed this year with a renewed desire to clear all doubts of a repetitious sound with his first release, ‘Yoga’. Here, Asake steps away from the Amapiano sound, giving us a harmonious and novel blend of Mauritian sega music (sampling Michel Legris’ ‘Mo Capitaine’), Senegalese griot sounds and his trademark Fuji flow. The song was further enhanced by its accompanying video, a rich and colourful masterpiece shot in Senegal by Asake’s usual co-conspirator, TG Omori...