Hip-hop is dead, and the Industry killed it.

Coming off a very successful sold-out J. Cole concert in Lagos Nigeria, we’re faced with the never-ending twitter question “Why don’t Nigerians support our own artistes?”

No matter how you want to look at it – and no matter how tired you are of hearing this question – we have to actually have a proper moment of introspection to really get the answer to this question. Do we NOT support our own acts? Or do we not just have a big hip-hop culture in Nigeria?

Growing up, I wasn’t the biggest hip-hop head cause given my background (omo pastor) I wasn’t really allowed to listen to such vulgar music. However, when I got into my teens that was the beginning of life as I know it in terms of music. That was when I found out about these 2 great young American Icons – Lesane Parish Crooks & Christopher George Latore Wallace – I divulged their albums like the class projects I was supposed to be studying for and fell more in love with the art of storytelling and bars. Then I moved on to other legends of the craft like Eminem, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, DMX, OutKast, Kanye West, even fucking Coolio (one of the earliest songs I can remember knowing the complete lyrics to – and I still do till today – is Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise). I was so deep in love with the art form it was amazing.

At this point, my mind was open to hip-hop music and ready to absorb it from anywhere. Then one day I saw a video playing of this song called “Cry” by a Nigerian artiste called Modenine and I was SHOOK. Prior to that I had ZERO idea Nigerians were even into hip-hop. And I don’t mean the *cough* Eedris Abdulkareem *cough* type of hip-hop, I mean proper story-telling with a good flow type of hip-hop. No there had to be more. I started deliberately searching for Nigerian hip-hop artistes and I came across this short black boy who had just released a smash hit called Anoti. So you mean our people can actually rap? Like rap rap? Shiiiiiid. “Seek and you shall find…” it says so in the scriptures, so I went searching. This was back in the Bluetooth and Infrared days so it wasn’t as easy back then to get all these information as it is today, but I was determined. My mind was opened to a new world of hip-hop in Nigeria and it just kept growing. From Naeto C to Ikechukwu to Sinzu (#SinzuIsFree), I just kept downloading. Then the CEO (Chief Executive Omota) just came and shut everything down with this fresh new gritty street sounds. I’m yet to hear a better opening on a Nigerian song than

“Omo Naija ni mi,

Naija lo bi mi si,

Naija mo ti n bere si n k’ABC

Omo Naija, mo le f’enu si Pepsi”

I’d be lying if I said hip-hop wasn’t a huge genre in Nigerian airplay back then.

Fast forward a couple years later, I went to uni, came back, and then hip-hop has gone underground. And this is not a diss to the amazing afropop wave that was birthed during that period, but the afro-wave really buried hip-hop. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit sad and disappointed when my favorite rappers all started singing. Not that their songs were bad, I actually do enjoy a lot of them, but what happened to the bars? What happened to when rappers were hyped to go on a Jimmy’s Jumpoff to deliver an amazing freestyle? What happened to the culture? Now it seems like everybody is looking for the next sound or wave to ride. And who’s to blame? The fans? The artistes? The industry? The DJs?

Then someone like J.Cole, Skepta, or The Migos comes to give us what we’ve been missing for a while and then, everybody now runs to hide under the “we’re not supporting our own” umbrella. Or better yet, when Nasty C drops an amazing verse and the whole of Nigerian twitter starts coming up with excuses as to why we can’t have someone like Nasty from our own end.

It’s time for us to stop accepting mediocrity from our artistes all in the name of being patriotic and “supporting our own” and demand they step up to the levels of their competitors worldwide. Any Nigerian artiste that can give me half of the catalog that Jermaine Cole has would sell out in Nigeria too. You can quote me on that.

I guarantee you, even if Nigerians are so lost up in the afropop wave, they would have fans from South Africa, Ghana, the U.S., the U.K.

I’m tired of making excuses for our artistes when I know that they’re capable of actually creating amazing content. Case-in-point Folarin “Falz” Falana. He’s such an amazing artiste, and a very skillful rapper – when he chooses to lose that slightly annoying accent –, and he had a quite successful show last December. So I fail to get the whole brouhaha about the lack of support of rappers in the industry.

So who do we blame for this non-culture of hip-hop? I strongly believe the onus of blame lies within the industry and not the fans. The fans are willing to support provided it’ll be worth their time and money. However, in order for us to support, we need to be aware of the artistes. We can’t support what we don’t know or have never heard. A&R’s need to do a better job of putting the great artistes – like Boogey, Paybac, Bridge, Kyrian Asher… just to name a few – in the same spotlight as we have our afropop singers. Nobody is saying they need to be competing with the Davidos and Wizkids of these world, however I feel the industry needs to do more to support the hip-hop crowd. I shouldn’t have to be searching far and wide to find dope artistes while the radio is saturated with mediocrity. We can’t be a behemoth of music in Africa & the world at large and still have a dying hip-hop culture.

A point to note is that hip-hop doesn’t just mean “boom-bap” lyrical rap, however it means the whole genre. So just as we need to hear the Boogeys and SDCs, we also need to hear the Milli’s. We’re in the 21st century and we have to remember a huge audience is kids born post 2000 who grew up during the rebirth of the trap wave and are looking for something like that locally to support. If upcoming and future artistes see that the industry supports hip hop, they can keep working on their craft and together we can push this hip-hop culture forward.