Flowers for Wande Coal?

Afrobeats, now strangely reduced to describe the recent Nigerian music boom, is in stasis; or its movement—Afrobeats to the world—has ‘hit a new conundrum,’ as Joey Akan, music journalist and Afrobeats Intelligence podcast host, puts it. Afrobeats’ explosion, circa 2019 till the dusk of 2023, was, after all, a result of an age’s restless demand for new things; in music, it was for a new sound, bored by what had come before and segued into triteness. But this appetite emerged, unfortunately, in a time where data, short attention spans, and the constant need to refresh the newsfeed dictated taste. Running on this machinery of speed, Afrobeats, it appears, lacked re-invention: Asake extended its lifeline with the Amapiano style, which could also be seen as the cause of its slump because, after him, nothing bangs better. But Afrobeats’ recurring sound and energy have remained monotonous.