According to Davido, Nigerian culture is experiencing a renaissance.
In a recent interview in Paris, the 32-year-old Afrobeats artist told AFP, “We’re very popular, not only in music,” citing the growing influence of his nation’s films, cuisine, and fashion on the global market.
He responds, “I like it,” even in the face of accusations that American musicians are beginning to copy the sound of Afrobeats.
However, the Nigerian-American artist, who considers himself a global citizen, believes that the continent’s destiny depends more on its domestic population than its powerful diaspora.“Everyone always has the American dream,” he told AFP. “Every kid that grows up in Africa wants to visit America. That’s cool. It’s okay to visit, but don’t leave your people and go there.” For his fellow Africans facing the worst economic crisis in a generation, those words may be difficult to accept. In recent years, the Yoruba word for “escape,” “japa,” has become a national slang term for emigrating to greener, richer pastures. Davido, born David Adedeji Adeleke in Atlanta, somewhat straddles the tension between a growing, bustling Nigeria with a population of over 200 million, and a world that is finally waking up to the so-called Giant of Africa.
He assertively states that his new album, “5ive,” “is going to touch every part of the world,” in an interview with AFP prior to its release.
For the French, we have music. We have music for the people of the Caribbean. “We have music for everyone,” he stated, including African Americans.
“It resembles a comprehensive, worldwide package album.”
Eight million people tune in each month.
With over eight million listeners per month, including King Charles of Britain, Davido is driving and influencing the global Afrobeats movement.
However, Davido is also an African music product.
He recounted with enthusiasm, “I grew up in an African household where we were always throwing parties, music was always playing in the house, and my parents were playing music in the car to school.”
As a teenager, a cousin in the industry took him to a studio, where “for the first time, I saw somebody create music… African music.”
“That’s when I fell in love with it,” said Davido, spotting a grey conical woollen cap and jewellery dangling over a black T-shirt.
A few years later, he was mixing and mastering his own tunes by the age of 16, taking inspiration from artists such as P-Square, a Nigerian duo that drew some of their hits from American influences such as Michael Jackson.
Davido now sees artists’ musical influence flowing across the Atlantic in the other direction.
“It’s a privilege for another culture to try to imitate what you’re doing,” he told AFP in response to a question about critics who accuse American artists of trying to mime Afrobeats’ style.
“In Nigeria we do hip hop too. We have rappers that rap. We have people that do R&B.”
“Music is a universal language. So I don’t see any problem with that.”
Davido counts among some of his popular tracks “Unavailable” and “Aye”.
– ‘African music has changed narrative’ –
For all his worldly outlook, Davido said he has not lost focus on Nigeria.
“We’ve been going through hard times,” he told AFP. “Nigeria is a very rich country with so much talent, so much grace, so much opportunity.”
“I was asked a question saying, why don’t we sing about (Nigeria’s struggles) in our music?” he recalled. “I was like, man, that’s not the type of music my people would really like to hear.”
“I have sung about it in the past. But I’m very vocal about it more in Africa than in America.”
As he prepares to embark on a world tour — including stops in Paris, London, New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles — he knows where at least part of his success has come from.
“African music has changed the narrative of how Africans are looked at around the world.”
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