
Photo illustration by Dami Mojid for THE REPUBLIC.
THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / MUSIC DEPT.
How ‘Ojuelegba’ Took Wizkid to the World

Photo illustration by Dami Mojid for THE REPUBLIC.
THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / MUSIC DEPT.
How ‘Ojuelegba’ Took Wizkid to the World
Ojuelegba, the metropolitan suburb of Surulere that connects the mainland and island areas of Lagos, is famed for possessing many of the traits that make Lagos the insomniac, unsettled city it is. Vehicles brazenly compete for lanes as road laws become merely a suggestion, a multitude of people traveling to different destinations form a dense human traffic, while the horns and shouts and music from different sources coalesce to give it its own resting volume, a pulse. Wizkid describes Ojuelegba as a ghetto in very literal terms, and yet, when the time came to pen a tribute to this tempestuous place, the town of his birth, he was gentle, tender even. His 2014 song, ‘Ojuelegba’, would go on to pull millions of streams and a bevy of accolades, shifting not just the course of his career, but the entirety of Nigerian music’s direction.
When ‘Ojuelegba’ was released, Wizkid was only four years into the industry, but it was clear that he was there to stay, and that he was still to grow even bigger. Already he had cut his teeth with international tours in the US and the UK; short of iconic locations like the O2 and Madison Square Garden, but about on par with what any Nigerian in music had ever achieved. He had rolled in a Next Rated award at the Headies in 2010, his debut year, and made his reprise with Artist of the Year 2012. He was also releasing a sophomore album after Superstar had achieved tremendous critical and commercial success. In the context of his humble upbringing, he was the one in a million, the one who had escaped the slum to enjoy the better life the people he grew up with had communally dreamt of.
A LEGENDARY BEAT
It is 2014. Legendury Beatz, the sibling production duo, sit behind the boards for ‘Ojuelegba’. Their role is clear: to provide a platform on which Wizkid can project his journey from place of birth, being as aspirational as possible; painting the gloomy reality of a young, ambitious boy from many years ago without letting it darken the focus on the abundance of a mega star who had made it out. They begin by borrowing a riff from Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg’s ‘Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang’, leading it into a beat that is now almost as recognizable as the song itself: smooth, percussive, and comforting. Triumphant horns accompany Wizkid’s refrain on the chorus, projecting his infectious joy as he asks, ‘Are you feeling good tonight?’, and proclaims, ‘This thing got me thanking God for life’.
Interestingly, it was this song, in which he paused to take stock of his journey so far, that would be the fuel to power an even more surreal lap, this time from Lagos to the world. As Wizkid put it later, ‘I knew it was a good song, but I didn’t expect it to blow up the way that it did.’ At the time, the vibrant, South African House–influenced flavour of Afropop was all the rave, and Wizkid himself was an artful pioneer, with party-charging songs like ‘In My Bed’ and ‘Show You the Money’ in his artillery. These tracks, together with the energetic, Fela-inspired ‘Jaiye Jaiye’, made up the opening trio of Wizkid’s sophomore album, Ayo. It was clear that the singer was investing a lot of stock in music for a high-energy, low-attention audience.
Wizkid, however, especially in 2014, was not one to place all his eggs in a single basket, no matter how popular anyone thought it was. He recognized at the time how powerful South African House music was at moving feet and hearts, and he acknowledged, even, the relatively shorter route the genre provided at the time for its creators to international appeal. Yet, with Ayo, Wizkid (despite serving the known appetites of the industry) was curious to explore the extent of his music. Looking back, it was why it could not attain the heights of his album debut, Superstar, despite having plenty of its own good moments. It was less sure about where it wanted to go, because Wizkid himself had a few directions in mind. He drew from South African Gqom for ‘Show You The Money’, ‘In My Bed’ and ‘For You’, complete with intermissions of beat drops. He put together a scintillating Yoruba-themed party for ‘Mummy Mi’, an ode to his mother that also gives a nod to Fuji; and of course, he gave a groovy, mid-tempo recount of his journey from the slums on ‘Ojuelegba’.
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THE HEART OF LAGOS IN A SONG
‘Ojuelegba’ shares a connection to Fela’s ‘Confusion Break Bone’, which paints Ojuelegba’s busy, uncoordinated tempo as a microcosm of the Nigerian state; a picture of human and vehicular traffic arriving from all four roads at an intersection and no traffic warden to control them. Wizkid’s recollection is a lot more forgiving and ultimately less impersonal, being the work of a man who was raised in the place and saw an entirely different worldview from Fela. What was to the Afrobeat’s sire a nameless, faceless mass, was to Afropop’s prince, his own kith and kin. A people, his people, fighting to subsist, and perhaps even succeed, despite the drudgery that pervades such a shantytown: ‘Ni Ojuelegba o, my people dey there, my people suffer, dem dey pray for blessing, for better living.’
Wizkid relates with them even more acutely because he, not that long ago, was one more in that mix stumbling daily in search of means to a better life: ‘Them know my story, for Mo’Dogg studio, I been hustle to work.’ Now on the other side, he ponders the sheer improbability of the journey he has just completed, finding in the end no real formula to his fortune except incredible luck, or as a religious person would account for it, the hand of God. ‘I can’t explain, I can’t explain, no, no,’ he still sings in disbelief, while urging others to trust in God for their own upliftment: ‘Adura lo le se o/ Call on Daddy, adura a gba.’ Even when he looks back at the people he’s left behind, it is with rose-tinted glasses that assume, somehow, that everyone can find similar success by following the path of prayer and hard work.
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FROM OJUELEGBA TO THE WORLD
It is difficult to ascertain when ‘Ojuelegba’ became the juggernaut that would drive the entire album to intercontinental, never-seen-before heights, but it was definitely not at its release, as some now suggest, and definitely before Drake (and Skepta) jumped on it for a remix a year later. Wizkid would go on to feature on ‘One Dance’, Drake’s Afrobeats-inspired megahit of 2015, a move that, in the light of the Canadian rapper’s recent woes, may look to tie into the culture vulture allegations, but which at the time was a significant milestone for Afrobeats. Wizkid’s feature itself was barely even there, consisting of a few lines of muffled adlibs, but it meant much more: a Nigerian artist was on the biggest song in the world, a track with undisputable Afrobeats parentage. When they linked up for their third collaboration in four years on ‘Come Closer’, netting over a 100 million listens on Spotify alone, it was evident that Wizkid’s foray into the world of lo-fi Afropop would define his next era.
The song’s success not only reshaped the limits of what was possible, commercially and in reach, with Nigerian music, it gave a blueprint to achieve it, sidestepping the vain recipe for cross-cultural travel that executives were using (and failing with) to push Nigerian music internationally. That is, foreign production to fit into popular genres like RnB, Pop, and for some reason, Hip-Hop, with big American features that looked out of place in Nigerian songs. ‘Ojuelegba’ proved that the only way to push our music to the world was to retain all its essence while making some genre-bending compromises, mostly a slightly reduced tempo and deeper lyricism, to create a truly global sound; acceptable by all, but unmistakably Nigerian.
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THE AFROBEATS BLUEPRINT
It took a few years, but eventually the entire industry got on board with the strategy. Davido spent 2017 in a back to basics movement, after the subpar outing that was the Son Of Mercy EP. Davido’s work with slow-burning pon pon music for ‘If’ and ‘Fall’ brought him some of the greatest success to his crossover forays. A year later, it was the turn of Burna Boy, until then a relatively ‘unknown quantity’ (though not for a lack of quality, as his debut album, L.I.F.E. had proven to those who listened). ‘Ye’, off Outside, was his watershed moment, and there are a few parallels to be drawn to Wizkid’s ‘Ojuelegba’ from four years before. ‘Ye’ possessed a callback to Fela. This time an interpolation of ‘Sorrow, Tears and Blood’, a theme of struggle documenting the gulf between the average Nigerian’s regal desires and their current poor standards of living, and, of course, music that held the essence of the African sonic experience, in instrumentation and intonation, while taking a more mellow pace than traditional Afropop. It coasted to even greater heights, amassing far more streams than any Nigerian artist had achieved at the time, and opening the gateway for Burna Boy to take his seat alongside the elite. Any successful product, in any field, consciously or unconsciously influences the creator and competitors alike.
Wizkid’s footprint in music has grown so much since then that younger fans may be tempted to leave ‘Ojuelegba’ out of a conversation of Wizkid’s grandest moments. It pulled in less than a fifth of Wizkid’s streams for his 2020 release, ‘Essence’, after all, and had even less of its stateside cultural impact. And the Starboy’s achievements have only multiplied in the last ten years, to include record-breaking sold-out tours, a Grammy award, and an undeniable place in global music, none of which can be directly traced back to the 2014 release. But like the first domino that topples to set off a chain reaction, ‘Ojuelegba’ was the precursor to it all, the launchpad for Wizkid, and Afrobeats by extension, to soar onto the global stage⎈
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