A Cat With Nine Lives

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, The Age of Afrobeats. Buy the issue here.

It is true. Afrobeats has taken a different turn in the last one decade, thanks to the global big shots like Davido, Wizkid, Burna Boy, Fireboy DML, and more lately Rema, Asake and others who have brought it many feathers of paean. It is a genre with eclecticism of melodies and sonics, making the world listen to African stories in different tunes, styles, and voices. These hit makers have mastered octaves and notes addictive for a global audience. Even within its short timeline and global assertion, several key moments have occurred in Afrobeats and Davido has been a key contributor. The 30 BG leader has numerous hits beginning with ‘Dami Duro’, followed by a streak of others such as ‘Aye’, ‘If’, and ‘Gobe’, to mention a few. With constant global headlines, charts, and multiple laurels including BET’s, MTV’s, World Award Music, and three nominations for Grammy 2023, Davido has cleared his name as an African music titan, a cat with nine lives, ‘elemi nine plus’.

Ede, with its flourish of greens, the aura of rainforest and brown rusty roofs of houses that spill into the red earth of Osogbo from the south might be the place where you begin the story of the Nigerian Afrobeats enigma, David Adeleke, with stage sobriquet, Davido. His grandfather, an Ede-born, Ayoola Adeleke, was a Second Republic senator, during Shehu Shagari’s buffer period (1979-1983) after the military power shuttle. Known for his merry-heartedness and enthusiasm for revelry, Ayoola Adeleke frequently hosted company and community revellers, minstrels, loyalists, and musicians in his illustrious compound. A possible theory, therefore, is on the ground, rooted in this familial patronage of local artists and singers. We may conclude simply that the fierce artistic impulses of Davido came from this background. We can further solidify this assumption if we go by Davido’s constant remark of the mother’s footprint on his musical life. Davido had claimed in his Big Boy interview in May 2023 how enamoured he was by his mother’s interest in gospel music and the number of albums on her shelf. The Clarke-educated business magnate, Veronica Adeleke, spurred his interest in music early. Where music is the staple of the home, building a social capital as an artist becomes easy—partly accounting, unsurprisingly, for Davido’s eventuality as an Afrobeats melody lord—the doddering step would later change the face of the Nigerian Afrobeats industry. But that is not all...