Rolling Afropop 2023

Opening up this year's game with Ghana and another nicely shot video. I need to get that hat. I couldn't find it on YT at first until I realized that in my head his artist name was Kwaku the Traveller.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtJQX53Syec
Black Sherif - Konongo Zongo

Assuming that South African House and Amapiano will go under one of the other threads

Otherwise the song I've been listening to the most at the beginning of this year is Ruger - Asiwaju.

Thanks!

You're welcome !

Since it's early in the year, maybe it's a good time to post some of the big songs that we missed in last year's thread. This one goes back to a 2017 sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0qiBMe8MRw
Patoranking & Diamond Platnumz - Kolo Kolo

From Kenya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H059rrXKX1s
Vic West - Kuna Kuna

The EP was mentioned by The Breast but no song posted

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPBRGWUgQsA
Victony & Tempoe - Soweto

I wrote a post about Victony on the Naija Albums poll thread, the Soweto video was very much included.

mentioned by The Breast

Pure Akan is one of Ghana's best rappers, combining indigenous storytelling traditions with old-school US rap influences. his two albums, Onipa Akoma (2017) and Nyame Mma (2021), are classics.

he just dropped a new song with Efya, called "Yete Apor". I think I love it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUoIHJnrNgY

(btw, initially he called himself just 'Akan', but from 2020 onwards he rebranded as 'Pure Akan', I'm guessing to avoid confusion with singer Akon. it's a road Buju could have taken as well, 'Basic Buju' would have been just perfect)

another one from Ghana

"2Am", Fameye's new single is just too lovely. it's produced by LiquidBeatz, with whom he also did last year's excellent Songs of Peter album, which I now regret even more not nominating for the EOY. theirs is one of those special artist/producer partnerships (much like Asake + Magicsticks and Ruger + Kukbeats in Naija):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy8ZsrcF9ws

wau

https://thefader-res.cloudinary.com/private_images/w_1800,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:best/ANM23---POSTER-TEXTURE_1_thcznw/burna-boy-and-wizkid-to-headline-afro-nation-miami-2023.jpg

Favourite so far is the Vic West - Kuna track. Real earworm there

Not sure if this has been featured before but it came on after Kuna Kuna and it's really good:

BREEDER LW X MEJJA - "GIN AMA WHISKEY"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bul2_AwOqHY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j7Fa2PCMow
Kizz Daniel & Empire - Cough

That's an interesting one

le Sénégal vous souhaite une très bonne année !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm5bJos1H7w
Attack ft. Bass Thioung • Wichakh

I'm feeling that one

not sure if I had encountered amapiano touches in Senegalese pop before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_koRwPVvNfs
Mia Guisse • La Vie est Belle

That's really nice!

Went on a little Coupé Decalé rabbithole the other day and found some nice stuff.

This is Shado Chris - CPLM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=412Z_SZCreU

just calmly posting Senegalese bops as I normally do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT1yrrDb83c
Akhlou Brick • Man lagn bouga

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewZRajbJDzo
Akhlou Brick ft. King Kheuch & El Menemo • Deff Effect

no video as of yet for this one unfortunately, but it's another rhythm killer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkRG31milRc
Dip Doundou Guiss ft. Hussain Dada • #BBDD (Bo Bëggé Degg Dëg)

I made an hour-long mix of some of my favourite Afrobeats/Afropop tracks from the last couple of years, including a lot of faves picked up from these threads. Hope you enjoy it Ilxors :-)

Charlie Stoic - E Choke!: Afrobeats and beyond

Khuli Chana - Buyile
Burna Boy - Last Last
Tetu Shani - Spend My Money
Breeder LW ft. Mejja - Gin Ama Whiskey
Omah Lay - I'm A Mess
Alex Muhangi - Something Good
Ruger - Girlfriend
Rosa Ree - Mulla
NSG ft. MHD - In Da Car
Vic West ft. Fathermoh, Savara, Brandy Maina, Thee Exit Band - Kuna Kuna
Dunnie - Overdose
Muzi - Need Dat
Pongo - Doudou
Prettyboy D-O - Police n Teef
Tulenkey ft. Ice Prince & Falz - Proud Fvck Boys (Remix)
Laycon - All Over Me
Sarkodie ft. Prince Bright - Oofeetsɔ
Obongjayar - Tinko Tinko (Don't Play Me For A Fool)
Fave - Scatta Scatta
Skiibii - Daz How Star Do
Dai Verse x Buju - Sweet Daddy
Rema - Bounce
Lasmid - Friday Night
Midas The Jagaban - Party With A Jagaban

https://soundcloud.com/charliestoicdj/echoke

Years later “Jerusalema “ has reached the Black southern soul and r’n’b American audience:

Friday night driving in my car in Washington DC area the DJ doing a late night special mix on the commercial station that plays r’n’b and some rap ( old school not trap) played a version of “Jerusalema “ and then Beenie Man “Rum and Red Bull.” Then the next night I was at a club seeing a southern soul band ( current southern soul with keyboard and congas and not just retro) Hardway Connection. After their 2nd set , the DJ played “Jerusalema “, and lots of the crowd ( many Black women) started to line dance to it.

Plz visit my new thread … not afropop more afrobeats

Thraed of Nigerian Cruise / Freebeat

Tyla has signed to Epic Records and released a single produced by Tricky Stewart ("Been Thinking"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7jSoCzxC0I

le Sénégal vous souhaite une très bonne année !

📹
Attack ft. Bass Thioung • Wichakh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeIT8OHwtd0
Asake • Yoga

Do you know what else than the ILM year-end poll is ongoing ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frBT2Jx2cvA
2Point1 - Stimela

Minimalistic Kwaito, anthemic House vibe, and Amapiano, it has it all. The cowbell is killing me (positively).

xp
that's really nice! maybe a bit too idk stately or something, but it works as a deserved victory lap

Stimela is a good time

You're right I think with victory lap. Shameless retro and good vibes too, but rather refreshing with its country vibe (they're from Free State).

Oh I meant Asake wrt victory lap. I don't know anything about 2Point1

lovely Ruger trifle with DJ Neptune - this is “Bienvenue”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lN1W3Y_Qv4

“Stimela” is a big banging Decemberrrr favourite, I approve

"yoga" is great, nice to hear him slow it down a little bit

Shock in South African news as rapper AKA was shot dead outside a restaurant in Durban yesterday night. He was 35.
He dies a year after my friend who introduced me to him with one of his favorite songs, Fela in Versace. They now share very similar dates of birth and death. Destiny really botches things up. Shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1CRoYZeD0Q
AKA - Fela in Versace

Beauty Dlulane, who heads a parliamentary committee on arts and culture, condemned AKA's murder, describing it as a "hit". She called on authorities "to protect South Africans from this new scourge of what seems to be contract and revenge killings where performing artists and DJs seem to be targeted".

this is chilling, especially coming less than three months after the assassination of DJ Sumbody, also when he was on his way to a celebration

In more uplifting news, veteran soca star Machel Montano is doing a Friday February 17 carnival show in Trinidad with Wizkid, Rema, Ayra Starr, and a bunch of soca acts and others

Doglatin: Great mix! Loved most of these songs already and several I’m listening for the first time.

Anyone longing for the old days of afrobeats can hear Ayra Starr's take on it. Which has Awilo Longomba haunting in the background. It's good. But yeah, give us an album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLucolSS-Wo
Ayra Starr - Sability

Thanks so much Moka! Yeah a lot of the selections are fairly obvious but I just wanted to stick to my tried and true faves from the last couple of years or so. Glad you enjoyed it!

I'd love to hear Rema on the remix of Sability.

Sability is cool. I feel like I don't have much of a sense of Ayra Starr as an artist yet though (poss my problem not hers).

I like this barely-there Zinoleesky track "YanYanYan" that runs on charisma fumes (I had no idea what he looked like until this video...I'm straight but wau) and threatens to turn into a v good ama song in the final seconds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMChLgtZ1J8

rob is in love!!! that’s so cute!
I agree that Zino definitely has a way about him

lol, I don't want to get weird here, but that is one striking looking human feline hybrid being

No homo please, this is not the Beatles thread damnit !
JK, it's not weird rob, I have the hots for Omah Lay myself.

Coming back to AKA because there's a scandalous backstory.
First, I normally never watch something that graphic, but I was shown the video. It must be from the surveillance camera of the restaurant from which AKA is seen leaving with his friends. It's very clear how it happens. A guy on the pavement signals to the killer that the group is coming. The killer takes his relaxed time to cross the road (busy traffic), circles around to avoid suspicion. AKA and his friends are still hugging and saying goodbye when he dashes and shoot AKA at close range, before re-crossing the road and disappearing into the night in a matter of seconds. We looked at each other with my partner and agreed this guy must have killed a lot of people.
Now, if the killing is dramatic in itself, what about the backstory ? Suspicion immediately fell on the family of the ex-girlfriend, young model Anele Tembe who it's rumoured AKA pushed off the balcony of a hotel room two years ago. In a letter that has resurfaced from June last year, the family and their lawyers are pressing the national public prosecutor to press charges against AKA. They were denied, and the official story is that she committed suicide. The family makes its position very clear that they are convinced it was murder, and it's known that South Africa justice system is corrupt. AKA leaves a young daughter behind, not from the model, but from DJ Zinhle.

xp

similarly it's not a secret I'm hopelessly devoted to Oxlade's striking sounding vocal instrument:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz8sJBDSzvM
Michael Brun ft. Oxlade • Clueless

JayO - 22 ... from the UK but feels as of a piece w/ afrobeats influenced R&B as anything else... his last single was also remixed by victony. this had been going on viral on tiktok for at least a month before coming out yesterday so it may end up being a hit, we'll see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwyKHN-znrA

Amaarae? I don't know what I would add to those two. I can't stop listening to the Burna Boy album, but it's not his best, and who else has really delivered a consistent album?

Those Victony tracks are fire

Rema guested with Ice Spice on Saturday Night Live on her second song

one of my friends is obsessed with "water" so i pointed him to some of her other songs ("getting late" esp.) to make sure he knows she's, you know, developing a catalog and isn't just amounting to one hit song. he seems legit excited abt her. international star tyla incoming!

From every video and performance I’ve seen of her, Tyla definitely has that IT factor to make it big with the right push.

I did a "which afropop song will break through next" poll with my students a while back and they all agreed water was irritatingly catchy to the point of being boring. They did vote for it though.

It’s number one now on Billboard US afrobeats chart

Water doesn't do half as much for me as some of her prior stuff. Not sure I'd describe it as "irritatingly catchy", I'm not hearing much hook here

It's kind of all hook to me. Just a bit low on fun.

This song from November 2022 just popped up in the YT channel and that definitely should be posted and maybe also on the r&b thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I9ufTCxQ20
Adanna Duru - Pop!

Listening to Lady Donli “Pan African Rockstar “ album. Some of it sounds good

Loving this jazzy SA sensation:

Oscar Mbo & - KG Smallz - Yes God (feat. Dearson) (Mörda, Thakzin, Mhaw Keys Remix):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bFIkEDffuk

Grammys nominees for Feb 2024 awards

Best African Music Performance

Amapiano
ASAKE & Olamide

City Boys
Burna Boy

UNAVAILABLE
Davido Featuring Musa Keys

Rush
Ayra Starr

Water
Tyla

Good choices.

critic and substacker Brad Luen nitpicking Asake--

Asake: Work of Art
Popularizing amapiano with Afrobeat(s) characteristics, he’s become the hottest hitmaker on the Nigerian charts. At album length, it becomes more apparent that the songwriting per se barely exists (poor Joshua Minsoo Kim, Pitchfork’s best critic this year, was reduced to making claims about Asake’s “intimate storytelling” to justify an 8.0; should’ve reserved that for NewJeans), though his pidgin can sound Biblical to speakers of other dialects: “heavily, we are getting lit”. But he’s a skilled vocalist, handling varied rhythms and code-switching at will, and he has no shortage of newish-to-pop sonics. Standout “2:30” is the start of a run that tunes the donk into funk almost as avant as DJ Black Low’s, a trick hard to overuse, like the all-too-brief snippets of store-brand highlife and unlike the massed chorales. The closing “Yoga” samples Mauritian(-Australian) singer-percussionist Jason Heerah and suggests a way forward for Asake that involves more engagement with African traditions. Honestly, though, there’s still much room, if little incentive, for him to improve on what he does now. Grade: B (“2:30”, “Yoga”, “Great Guy”)

i don’t care what this guy thinks

wtfffffff

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0HuZH0P1mL/

i'm gutted. one of the best shows i've seen in years.

Thakzin 3-step music bridges afro-tech house and amapiano

https://x.com/misterminsoo/status/1728997781254336783?s=46&t=u2ZSlsY3trRV36IPP6jNDQ

https://www.snl24.com/drum/celebs/news/have-you-heard-of-a-new-genre-called-three-step-this-dj-tells-us-where-this-sound-comes-from-20230921

Felo Le Tee/Mellow & Sleazy: The III Wise Men (New Money Gang)
South African amapiano trio, affiliated somehow with DJ Maphorisa (Themba Sonnyboy Sekowe), although the producer names that appear here areTshelofelo Mokhine, Phemelo Sefanyetse, and Olebogeng Kwanaite (plus Mlotlasi Phoshoko on one track). Beats are inscrutable enough they take quite a while to settle in, and will be hard to distinguish from future efforts. But pretty good for now. *- Writer Tom Hull from his year end list

Jon Pareles , one of The NY Times music critics, has Nkosazana Daughter “Uthingo Le Nkosazana” album in his additional top 20 albums of 2023 he also likes

Jon Caramanica of NY Times has Asake “Work of Art” as his number 1 album

take that brad luen!

ah fuck does this mean that asake is not going to take brad luen's advice to engage more deeply w/ african traditions......

Lol!

Omah Lay’s Holy Ghost is positively gorgeous:

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

And ODUMODUBLVCK’s Blood On The Dancefloor is something too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr5YwkazQbw

what albums/tracks have been favourites this year, i've done a terrible job at keeping on top of this thread

Tyla (amapiano crossover)

made a thread for tyla since the album's on its way

Apart from the usual suspects (Co-star, Pretty Girl, the Asake and Burna Boy albums etc) I still listen to Adekunle Gold - Chasing Peace of Mind and Davido - In The Garden. I don't get why Unavailable became the big hit, I love that other song to bits.

At this stage, a lot of the less poppy, more instrumental, and dare i say it 'donk-flavoured', amapiano reminds me of the experimentalism of vintage dub

Vibekulture Sa & Mcdeez Fboy - Duck Vibes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CySpcmCx6o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ7zd5A6lQI
Oxlade - Katigori

From the year I'd say:
- Anything Victony is on
- Ditto Buju / BXNX
- Crayon & Ayra Starr - Ngozi
- Byron Messia - Talibans
- Fireboy DML - Yawa
- Omah Lay - Reason
- Reekado Banks - Feel Different
- Leigh-Anne - My Love
- Adanna Duru - Pop!
- 2Point1 - Stimela
- Abigail Chams & Marioo - Nani?
- Sho Madjozi - Chale

That's a start.

I'm enjoying seeing this girl grow, she's a raw talent, gives off Gyakie/Tems vibes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqdyB5k1sJI
Qing Madi - Vision

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj9mwag091U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YJXW0uwHrU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-PkIzv-Qt8

i really need to keep up with senegalese music properly because it has the best drums in the world

me too, i always have the same reaction! thank you for posting these.

Couple other things that caught my ear from Senegalese charts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haBMfY0z5M8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKboYK87ROg

ooh "ni la deh" is lovely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9e3AogOOz0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5RChlIETwA

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

i really love "surprise"

Tangal might be the first one I'm really connecting to. But yeah striking how their style is at the crossroads of so many things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hALNVDRN4_U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmioOXClM2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg81-Iv_guU

ok that's exhausted my youtube digging of the last few days

Really feeling the 3-Step stuff today

Wow, that list of Senegalese music kinda just got better and better. Might vote for Tégguil sa Tank when EOY listmaking begins.

If dog latin or anyone else wants to do a posting spree of 3-step videos it would be must appreciated. What little I've heard, I've liked.

Also, new Teni album out last month, for the people who enjoyed Wondaland! It's not as good, unfortunately :(

Narah Diouf I see was mentioned last year for a track , and I like that 2023 track “Teguil sa Tank” with Bilou XIV also.

https://sondela-recordings.bandcamp.com/album/rising-strong

I have no idea what to call this, it's afrohouse and Thakzin is involved.

Honestly, there's a lot more going on here, kind of big room-ish electrohouse? But it doesn't suck?

Also it's weird to see the old UK Funky people involved in this, Dubplate Malice releases afrohouse on his label and Perempay and Davinche just released something on Sondela a couple months ago.

Asake and Amaare made Fader best 2023 albums list

last month's cruel santino ep is wonderful, especially "ftr" which combines mbalax drums (finally that sound is moving beyond senegal/gambia!) with rage synths which is an incredible combo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGhEzL3e72o

Oooh, new Cruel Santino music! Thanks :)

Flavour's Big Baller is a banger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf40zo26TIE

Tyla “water” was 17th on the Uproxx music critic poll for songs.

Amaarae 14th on Uproxx critics poll for albums

I just wanted to do a final post to acknowledge the death of Zahara on 11 December 2023. She died from liver failure age 36 after years of battle with alcoholism. She was a Xhosa girl from a village outside of East London who made it big. Life and music labels didn't treat her too well, but her voice shined powerfully. Maybe those stories make me emotional, but I have to repress tears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1CMWnxfFys
Zahara - Ndiza

And one more for the road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEV_4xBrMJU
DJ SBu feat. Zahara - Lengoma

Someone should start an Afropop 2024 thread please.

Done

Rolling afropop 2024