Best Naija Pop Album/EP in 2022

My short list: Asake, Rema, Wizkid, with R&R as the current frontrunner

The Omah Lay and BNXN are excellent too, and Burna could have been shortlisted with some trimming—there are probably as many minutes of good music on Love, Damini as there are on Mr Money

Rema over Wizkid and Omah Lay for me. This makes perfect sense as a trinity to me.

Interesting to see how afropop has moved towards becoming an album-genre isn't it.

I agree with breastcrawl Never Forget is probably afro-SOTY, with the killer charm of Kenkele-In my Mind not far behind. Special mention also to Something by Gyakie for having my favorite chorus of the year (a bit the equivalent of Dunnie the year before).

right now it'd be Rema for me but i've listened to that album a lot more than anything else this year

Oh and Finesse, arguably the biggest hit of the year.

Interesting to see how afropop has moved towards becoming an album-genre isn't it.

yes! this is why I made this poll—it feels like a genuinely remarkable change

I'll definitely vote for Asake but all of these are great-to-awesome.

rema or asake but wizkid is nipping at their heels

good poll, rob! for me it’s between Rema, Asake and Wizkid, with Omah (and perhaps Basketmouth?) somewhat behind in their slipstream.

the Asake thing is a work of art.

_Interesting to see how afropop has moved towards becoming an album-genre isn't it._

yes! this is why I made this poll—it feels like a genuinely remarkable change

an extension of this is the whole touring thing. Afropop has become an integral part of the international touring ecosystem as well. it has simply exploded after the pandemic years. in the past four months we have had the following artists playing Amsterdam, most of them selling out the (mainstream) venues they were performing in:

Tiwa Savage
Kidi + Kuami Eugene
The Cavemen.
Rema
Cruel Santino
Adekunle Gold
Fireboy DML
Oxlade (his was a more like a PA, I believe)
(The Brother Moves On: not afropop, different circuit, but still)
King Promise
CKay
…and Wizkid will be here next week!

so yeah, I want to highlight CKay (who I saw two nights ago) because I forgot to mention his album when rob asked for suggestions for this. it’s pretty good as well - not that I would vote for it, but like the Omah album it goes for a specific vibe and stays the course. I like the kind of modern kizomba vibe of the songs with lusophone and francophone duet partners.

Asake is currently my aoty, so voting for that. breastcrawl otm, but I think this year it seemed like a tipping point, where there's enough good afropop albums as collection of songs, so now everyone has to find out ways to make their release stand out as an album. I think More Love, Less Ego is a lot more cohesive than Made In Lagos, for instance. My ballot will be quite dominated by naija albums, I think.

Burna Boy is headlining Roskilde next year in another sign of afropop taking over the world :)

rema is probably my favourite but i haven't listened to all of these yet

me neither tbh, though I did get around to checking out TBH (To Be Honest) the other day

I revisited Boy, Alone yesterday and now I think I'd include that in my shortlist for sure; it's not as immediately grabby as Mr Money but I think it might be deeper

ultimately though, this is Rave & Roses for me

wanna give a special mention to the excellent obongjayar album some nights i dream of doors. prob not “naija” or “pop” enough for this poll but def one of my fav albums this year

let me make a case for Victony’s Outlaw EP. Victony is another of the new emo-boys. he specializes in featherlight Naijapiano (most of the time) with razor-sharp emotive vocals and (self-)harmonies.

he made one of my favourite songs of 2021 with Rexxie, “Ego”, an unsung classic, and had his breakthrough late last year as the singer of the glorious hook (and more) on Mayorkun’s Nigerian number one hit “Holy Father”. this year he released superb single after superb single, and then dropped his EP in May.

(btw, even you think you don’t know him, there’s a good chance you’ve heard him: he’s on “Different Size”, one of the highlights on Burna’s Love, Damini)

the EP starts with two slow tracks (“Chop & Slide” is very good), and then it’s banger time - the four hit tracks: ”Apollo” (produced by P.Priime), “Kolomental” (Blaise Beatz), “Jolene” (KTIZO), and the biggest, the brilliant “Soweto” (a Tempoe joint), plus non-single “All Power” (KTIZO). in most of these he’s on the verge of being completely overwhelmed by his feelings for a nearby beauty and then clings to some evocative word, investing it with senseless new meaning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPBRGWUgQsA

in the EP stakes, I love this one at least as much as the BNXN project.

I like a lot of new afropop but I don’t think it’s nearly as exciting or adventurous as it was in the initial early-mid 10s explosion … felt way more diverse then … also it bought the albums around 2014 or so were good then too, tiwa savage, wizkid, burna all had good mid 10s albums

Well, it all used to be a bit faster, dance oriented and underproduced, for sure. Whereas quite a bit of the newer stuff has settled in for confident tastefulness. What’s your thoughts on the Asake album, deej?

Thanks for that Victony post bc, Soweto is very nice and I will check out the rest.

deej is right about the diversity of the mid-10s, and I do think of that period as a golden era, but I didn't truly love a full-length naija pop album until Outside in 2019. Maybe I'm mired in unexamined rockism, but I think the trade-off of adventurousness for consistency and a general baseline of quality hasn't been a net loss.

OTOH, I voted for Rema and it's definitely the most varied option here, production-wise. It's undeniable that some of these albums stick to a single sonic palette throughout—as I've posted before the Asake almost sounds like one continuous song.

I like the asake a lot, smart idea to be like 'what if amapiano was shorter'

As an impatient ama listener I definitely agree with that (and "one song" wasn't a criticism tbc, it's part of why I think that album is impressive)

I'll probably always prefer the open-ended "artist/genre figuring something out" phase over the fully formed "artist/genre having figured it all out" phase.
That being said, Made in Lagos and More Love, Less Ego are vastly superior to Ayo in nearly all things that matter, even though it's hard to beat the breathless rush of a Show Me the Money or an Ojuelegba.

feel pretty confident in saying that african giant and made in lagos are two of the best albums of the last 20 years in any genre... so it's hard for me to feel like afrobeats' arc towards album orientation is anything other than unambiguously great when left w/ albums that feel that titanic from a pure quality perspective. but those records & the genre's general turn towards tasteful R&B also play more to my personal taste than the more club oriented origins of the genre.

eventually something will come along and shake things up -- perhaps that's asake. but i also think it's a matter of what lens you view all this music thru. for instance you could make a case that burna, wizkid etc sanded off the edges of their sound/afrobeats in general as they found themselves being embraced by a mainstream western audience. but by the same token you could also say that burna, wiz & other african artists totally reframed our idea of what contemporary R&B could and should sound like, even as their music hewed to general notions of tastefulness. as we talked about recently, you can make a strong argument that african artists breathed new life into american R&B

i think in the context of this discussion it's interesting to think about the fact that burna boy came back this year w/ a wizkid collab -- at the height of wizkid's fame -- that harkened back to the percussive, dancier roots of afrobeats & the song flopped so hard that it didn't even make burna's album. and instead he scored by far his biggest global hit w/ a flip (albeit a clever & crowd pleasing one) of an early 2000s american R&B song. it feels like those two things encapsulate a lot of what we're talking about here in terms of how the genre has shifted

Really well put Jordan and agree that afropop continues to be creative on the r&b side (which also aligns with my taste). At the same time, there's no dilemma, it's true that the dancy side has taken a step back and the genre has lost some sense of urgency, and that feels more like an artistic choice than a necessity of the genre evolution. Or do all genres tend to soften when they mature and that has escaped me.

It's mostly to do with Ojuelegba becoming the breakout hit, in my analysis. After that the tempo went down and laidback won out over frantic partying. Which opened a lot of doors and defined a room to explore - at the expense of other artistic choices. Part of what's exciting to me at the moment is the countering influence of amapiano, which is very much a wild, unsettled genre, where anything can happen within a certain bpm range - as long as you remember to bring the shakers.

Yeah although I wanted to say that despite the amapiano connection, it hasn't been enough to really resuscitate the partying. I'm not saying it has disappeared completely either, it's not black and white, Rema for example has a very satisfying fusion of sensibility and hitters. I guess Asake is trying to be wild and to offer a new point of balance, shame that it's rubbing me off the wrong way and that I find him annoying.

Great posts J0rdan, though yeah I also wondered: are you into amapiano? I agree with Nabozo that the ama influence hasn't resulted in much dancey naija, but I wonder if that dance->rnb trajectory is changing. I also don't know where to locate the dancehall influence in this narrative; maybe it's foundational, part of the DNA that isn't subject to trends?

It's mostly to do with Ojuelegba becoming the breakout hit, in my analysis.

2014 seems kind of early to me; Soweto Baby, e.g., came out more than a year later. Also maybe it's just me but I tend to think of Ojuelegba as something of a road not taken (afrobeat revival pop?), rather than a precursor. Meanwhile, in 2018 you have Fake Love, Fever, Soco, etc.—definitely a big turning point for Wizkid at least, though perhaps that makes it less the seed and more the full flowering. Skimming some old playlists, Runtown's Mad Over You stood out as a possible harbinger of moving away from dance

The Ojuelegba remix was 2015 at the earliest. That’s when it started to happen. It all took time but by 2016 afropop was mostly 100 bpm.

oh right lol I forgot about Drake

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5931da319726246adc7c53eb/2:1/w_2560%2Cc_limit/9e72c0a4.jpg

Or do all genres tend to soften when they mature and that has escaped me.

― Nabozo, Thursday, November 24, 2022 3:08 AM (five days ago)

an overarching theme in kelefa sanneh's book is about how genres "soften" and "harden" (using my words here not his) over time in reaction to whatever of those two happens to be dominant at the time i.e. R&B going from quiet storm to new jack swing to neo soul or the ways in which country has pinged back and forth between soft/mainstream records & artists and hard/outlaw/cowboy ones (being general here). so i think it's likely that a new wave breaks into the afrobeats scene that moves the genre in a different, less tasteful R&B direction, and i bet it will prob happen soon. maybe that's artists like asake and seyi vibes that have a harder edge to them... maybe it's a shift to "alternative" music/artists (i.e. curious what direction new amaarae music goes) rather than a harkening back to the harder percussive dance production of a decade ago. or maybe the influence of amapiano does move things back towards that. but i bet we're already at or just passed the peak of the sound encapsulated by this poll really dominating the genre

Rolling Stone has Cruel Santino’s Subaru Boys: Final Heaven at #40, the Asake album at #39, and More Love, Less Ego at #26 in its 100 Best Albums of 2022 list.

I saw that, pretty remarkable. Definitely surprised to see the Santino on there, but I also can't remember anything about it. I guess I should revisit?

I played it once, remember liking and being intrigued by it, but forgot to return to it

new* profile on Asake in (The) Native (Mag)

it’s “new” in that it was published just now. however, it was written three months ago, before the album came out, and apparently no one thought to update it. weirdly, it totally omits producer Magicsticks, not even a namecheck, and worse, his “King of Sounds and Blues” tag is attributed to Asake himself. still a very interesting read.

it’s counterbalanced by this earlier review of the album, which does focus on Asake’s remarkable partnership with Magicsticks:
https://thenativemag.com/featured/asake-mr-money-vibe-review/

whatever you may think of Joey Akan, this interview he did with fellow Port Harcourtian Omah Lay is beautiful and offers true insight - and it’s only two hours long!

https://afrobeatsintelligence.substack.com/p/17-omah-lay-embrace-your-demons

oh, you want a shortcut? here’s the brand new video for “Soso”, one of Boy Alone’s highest highs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6eE3c70hgg

having gone through everything, rema & asake are clearly the top 2 & i'm still giving the edge to rema

I guess I dont see the dichotomy of dance >>> R&B bc in the original 10s formulation already contained lots of R&B; it just feels like a narrowing, rather than a move from one extreme to another

which yes I agree lots of postiives have come from it, to be clear. the genre isnt dead or something, lol, its hugely successful and creatively great etc. just a little samier

It's more a question of focus, I think. When I first heard of 'afrobeats' it was as the next thing in London clubs after funky and other kinds of post-dubstep had gone out of fashion. Now 'naija' pop means Nigerian stars taking over the world more or less on their own terms.

deadline rapidly approaching!

so will you vote for The Fader’s number 29 album of the year (Boy Alone) or its number 18 (Mr. Money With The Vibe)?

unfortunately, votes for number 49 (Black Sherif’s The Villain I Never Was - also because Ghanaian) or number 8 (!) (Cruel Santino’s Subaru Boys: FINAL HEAVEN) will not be accepted.

https://www.thefader.com/2022/12/13/the-50-best-albums-of-2022

pulled the trigger for asake. really the only thing that was holding me back in that regard was that russ verse smh

wish i had more time to dive into some of these before the deadline but i voted for rema, a great front to back record w/ a vision for its sound that stands apart from the other albums on this list (as do others on this list in their own way, but rema more aligns w/ my personal taste)

xp
Interesting! The Fader has really declined, imo, so it's kind of a nice surprise to check in at the end of the year. A better site that covered their taste parameters would be so welcome.

I do like that Santino album and regret not including it (though it seems p clear this poll is a Rema v. Asake showdown--lol xpost). I also had never realized that the cover of Boy Alone is a photograph until seeing it big there. Definitely a poll where I wish we could do some kind of ranked voting

Definitely a poll where I wish we could do some kind of ranked voting

Definitely a poll where I wish we could do some kind of ranked voting

― rob, 13. december 2022 18:48 (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, seeing as nearly all of these belong on a year-end 25, you could rank them there ;)

good point...though albums don't nominate themselves

I like the whole thing, but the Santino might be worth a listen purely for the chance to hear Koffee sing "We're taking/ psilocybin"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

the cruel santino album is really good

I started worryin', worryin' about a lot
I went to the hospital with no remorse
And then I met a doctor:
“Tell me what is happenin' to this poll?
Am I bein' attacked by Asake?
It's not makin' sense, what do I do?”
I said, "Doctor, I'm not feelin' fine
Tell me this could be a sign”
And he said, "It is time", I gave birth and voted Rave & Roses

weird that out of all these great *big* albums, this one isn’t receiving any plaudits in the EOY lists.
it’s long, but - unlike the equally long Burna - there isn’t a track too many. if you’d make me, I’d say, okay, let’s lose “Time N Affection” then - my least played track until today, “Hold Me”, has today turned into a new favourite.

Time n Affection is one of the best songs!

It is weird. I guess everyone agreed with OkayAfrica: 2022 Was the Year of Asake, which I understand but there is something lazy about, e.g., praising the Wizkid album and overlooking Rema

realizing i hadn't heard basketmouth yet, put it on. "listen" ft. wande coal is a fucking banger!

it’s a great album - the best of these after the big four (R&R, MMw/V, MLLE and BoyA) for me.

there is something lazy about, e.g., praising the Wizkid album and overlooking Rema

he just didn't have the profile of wiz, burna etc in america/with critics for whatever reason. i've told lots of ppl about that album even ppl whose taste i really trust and basically no one had heard it or even seemed to recognize that it had been released or that they should care about it. then again, i'm not sure i would've gotten around to checking it out had it not been for the proselytizing on this very message board

rema did get that fader cover in like 2019 when basically no one in the u.s. had heard of him

xp
yeah I'd be curious to figure out why that^ happened but the Asake blew up super fast, but I have no idea how

huh, I had forgotten about that. he didn't even make their list, right?

an odd data point: Pitchfork reviewed the Rema (7.2) but hasn't yet reviewed Asake or Wizkid

the wizkid thing is weird but they slow drip reviews this time of year to keep the site populated through the end of the year so i bet they'll get to it

yeah I'd be curious to figure out why that^ happened but the Asake blew up super fast, but I have no idea how

asake is just fresher. i think he also has a real personality and unique style whereas rema feels more like run of the mill afropop (in light of the album i would disagree but i understand why superficially ppl might see him that way). i'm more interested as to why he seemed to lag behind wiz, burna & davido in the US even tho in africa it seems like he was seen on their level?

I seem to remember that there was some sort of critical backlash against the rema album because africans somehow found his lyrics to be too simplistic? It struck me as v weird at the time.

i think it might just be that rema doesn't seem to be signed to any international labels like the others are so i'd guess that there just isn't quite the same level of promotional infrastructure behind him as the others, especially in the usa?

like cruel santino showed up on a few critic lists and he's far more niche (to the point that no one here really paid too much attention to him) but he does have an american label deal

rema is signed to mavin which has a deal w/ virgin which is distribution as opposed a frontline label. the promotional apparatus is definitely smaller but virgin is a big fish in the distribution pool and have had plenty of famous/successful artists on their roster so i'm not sure that fully explains it. i also don't know how much american labels were/are really doing for afrobeats honestly

that feels right on the one hand (to ufo’s point), but on the other hand: he’s got a worldwide hit, including in the US. “Calm Down” has been on the Hot 100 for three months now. he should be on people’s radars.

as for the lyrics thing longneck mentioned:
he explicitly addressed that in “Are You There?” - and it’s also one more thing he has in common with Wizkid. Wizzy has long been plagued by the same criticism in Naija, during the first part of his career in particular, and it has flared up again after MLLE dropped: only singing about sex, repetitive and simplistic lyrics, bla bla. there’s a bit of a backlash going on right now, in part self-inflicted (that’s Wizkid, not Rema)

Even Burna caught some flack for his lyrics on Love, Damini, iirc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Voted Asake (my aoty) but happy with the results.

yeah this turned out to be a little less suspenseful than I thought, but good work everyone

Yeah good work, and great idea for a poll. We probably need more voters if the year-end-poll won't be as boring as the 2010's one :(

[OkayAfrica’s review of Victony’s Outlaw.

(no mention of “Soweto”, sadly)

Boy Alone does Tiny Desk (with a little help from his friends):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHjczZIxr_0

quite the victory lap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdujYTi6lZs

i really enjoyed that halftime show, tems in particular who i had not actually seen sing live before

the new naija sound translates really well to arena/festival scale

and we already know this but rema is a fucking superstar