Let’s give Skepta his flowers…
Joseph Junior Adenuga or Skepta as most of us know him, is a British-Nigerian musical artist commonly known and appreciated for the role he’s played in growth and expansion of the music scene in the United Kingdom. Undoubtedly, Skepta is a living legend musically and for those who have a slightest knowledge of his impact, he is heavily appreciated as well, especially in the black community that he helped lend a voice by changing the narrative around the entire Grime scene, which was once seen or perceived mainly as a genre that only promoted violence and illegality, much of that has changed through Skepta’s influence, I wouldn’t skip a beat to call Skepta the United Kingdom's Kanye West.
Skepta’s career has always been about challenging narratives, doing things people said couldn’t be done, while we are in constant awe of his lyrical prowess and his ability to make his presence felt on every record — the feature of Skepta that I like the most is his appreciation for detail and I personally believe that amongst other things it is one of the more significant things that has propelled his career to the level it’s at now. Skepta’s artistry is very unique because of how passionate he is about his craft, a lot of times we fail to remember that Skepta is also a record producer, so most of your favorite Skepta hits were also produced by himself. Through his dynamism Skepta was able to influence Grime to be more than drill tunes, by bringing in more passable conscious lyrics, Skepta tore the seal off grime which has allowed people to play around with it without feeling censored that it wasn’t “proper” grime, he made different cool.
Now that I have refreshed your memory on his legacy, I still feel that there is a massive shift happening now that made me think “let’s give Skepta his flowers”. Last week Burna Boy retweeted facts on his most recent album ‘African Giant’, while celebrating its one year anniversary boasting of close to a billion streams across all platforms (Davido’s AGT also achieved the feat recently as well) for the Grammy nominated album. Though Skepta was born and bred in the UK, he has always had a soft spot for his heritage and has always been clear and open to what Nigeria means to him. Over the last 5+ years the Afro umbrella of music has grown so big and so quick in such a short period. African music has always been good, it just lacked the exposure, recognition and appreciation from the global landscape that it deserved. So why am I saying all these? Where am I driving at?
Whenever the discussion of the massive growth of the Afro scene comes up lots of names are mentioned, but we hardly ever heard of the role Skepta played in all these. In early 2015 the airwaves still had ‘Ojuelegba’ by Wizkid in heavy rotation, arguably one of his biggest hits in his career, the song caught the attention and affection of Skepta at the time who was in a phase of his career where he was exploring the U.S music scene and collaborating with a number American artists and then out of blue Drake released a version of ‘Ojuelegba’ with him and Skepta on it to OVO radio, Drakes first foray into the Afro scene, and the immediate reactions were obvious to the fact that it was clearly a Skepta influenced release.
Although the Ojuelegba remix didn’t get the traction that I felt it deserved, it was an important event that preceded great things to come. Roughly a year later Drake dropped ‘One Dance’ featuring Wizkid and Kyla, and the rest as they say… is history. Drake’s ‘One Dance’ would go on to become one of the best selling singles of all time, charting at number 1 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (Billboard), 3 on US Billboard Hot 100 and getting 8x and 6x platinum in the US and UK respectively. ‘One Dance’ was famously snubbed the Grammy after receiving a nomination, but its job had already been done.
Since that song, there has been an increased interest in the African music and sound, major record labels started snatching up the biggest African acts to deals, Wizkid and Davido (under RCA) at Sony Music, Burna Boy at Atlantic Records, and Universal Music going as far as setting up regional offices in West Africa and specially in Nigeria, with their Nigerian themed imprint already signing some of the hottest prospects to their label like Odunsi, Wurld, Tay Iwar and Alpha P (who was part of a musical duo with Afro-sensation Rema before they went solo) and adding established acts like Tiwa Sawage, Mr Eazi, and Tekno (part deal with Island). Foreign artists trying to capitalize on the new founded interest of popularity of the Afro music scene resulting in an influx of international collaborations. Last year, Beyonce featured Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tekno, Mr Eazi, Yemi Alade and Tiwa Sawage. That says it all.
But Skepta’s influence didn’t stop there, in 2018 Skepta linked with Wizkid again for ‘Bad Energy’ another massive song with a huge cultural impact, and this time the world got a chance to really feel Wizkid, because unlike ‘One Dance’ Wizkid was allowed to fully express himself (Wizkid did the reverse feature with ‘Come Closer’ which was better balanced) and the tune as we all know was heavily rinsed by people that enjoy Afro-beats on some IYKYK vibes. Appreciating Skepta for support of the Afro-scene and as you should be able to understand his massive bias for Nigeria actually goes beyond music. Like I said earlier, he’s the U.K’s Kanye West. Skepta has also involved himself deeply into the fashion world as we’ve seen over the years (I’m not going to go into much detail though) and why I associate him so much with Kanye West is that once you look at him without the lenses of “he’s a rapper” “he’s a musician”, I think you’d come to appreciate that he is a creative.
In full understanding of the type of attention the song was expected to get, Skepta made sure that he’d utilize that attention in the visuals positively and I’ll break it down if anyone missed it, the video was directed by Meji Alabi a London based British-Nigerian who has produced videos for a lot of artists internationally with most of his work for Nigerian artists, in the video every ‘extra’ was actually intentional as they were mostly Nigerian Lagos-based creatives that included; Teezee, Odunsi, BOJ, Fresh L, Santi (cruel santino), Falana, the entire creative collective behind WAFFLSNCRM, Wavy the Creator, PrettyboyDO, Zamir, and more. Most of those people are doing well now and even helping others in the process, Santi ended up getting signed by Love Renaissance (LVRN) and I’m not so clear on the details but I believe his long time collaborating producers GMK and Genio Bambino are somehow benefiting from that deal. Long story short, the impact of Skepta especially from the Nigerian perspective has been critical to Nigerian music industry in it’s recent growth spurt and he isn’t appreciated for that enough. So here you go Skep 🌹
