Burna Boy, Wizkid, and the Afrobeats Generation That Changed Everything

In 2020, Wizkid released Made in Lagos. It debuted at number one in Nigeria, Ghana, the UK, and across Africa. It featured a collaboration with Tems on Essence that became one of the most streamed songs in the world. Justin Bieber heard it and asked to remix it. The remix went to number one in the United States.

African music had arrived. Not as a novelty. Not as world music in a corner of a record shop. As the sound of the moment.

But this did not happen overnight. It was the result of decades of work by a generation of artists who believed that African music deserved to be heard on its own terms.

The Generation That Built Afrobeats

Afrobeats as a modern genre grew out of Lagos, Nigeria in the early 2000s. The city was a creative explosion. Mobile phones were spreading. The internet was arriving. A generation of young Nigerians who had grown up listening to both American hip hop and their parents' highlife and juju music were creating something new.

D'banj was one of the first to break through internationally. His 2012 collaboration with Kanye West on Oliver Twist introduced Afrobeats to a global audience. P-Square, the twin brothers from Anambra State, were filling stadiums across Africa. Iyanya's Kukere was playing in clubs from Lagos to London.

But it was the next wave that truly changed everything.

Wizkid: From Surulere to the World

Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun was born in Surulere, Lagos in 1990. He started recording music at 11 years old, pooling money with his friends to pay for studio time. By 15, he had released three albums with local groups. By 2011, he had signed with EME Records and released Holla at Your Boy, which became a massive hit across Nigeria.

What made Wizkid different was his instinct for melody. Afrobeats is a rhythmic genre, but Wizkid understood that the hook was everything. His songs were built around melodies that got inside your head and stayed there. When Drake heard him, he flew him to Toronto and they recorded One Dance together. It became the first song to reach one billion streams on Spotify.

Wizkid did not change his sound to appeal to Western audiences. He made Western audiences come to him.

Burna Boy: The African Giant

Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria in 1991. His grandfather was Fela Kuti's manager. Music was in his blood from the beginning.

Burna Boy's sound is harder to categorise than Wizkid's. He mixes Afrobeats with reggae, dancehall, hip hop, and the Afrobeat of his grandfather's era. His lyrics are political in a way that most Afrobeats artists are not. He calls himself the African Giant and means it literally. He is not trying to be accepted by the world. He is demanding that the world accept Africa on Africa's terms.

In 2020, he won the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album for Twice as Tall. In his acceptance speech, he said: "I want to tell every African, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, you can do it." He was not speaking metaphorically. He was speaking from experience.

Tems, Davido, and the Women of Afrobeats

Temilade Openiyi, known as Tems, was born in Lagos in 1995. She released her first single in 2018 and within two years was collaborating with Wizkid on Essence and Drake on Fountains. Her voice is unlike anything else in Afrobeats. It is deep, smoky, and completely distinctive. She won a Grammy in 2023 for Best Melodic Rap Performance as a featured artist on Future's Wait for U.

Davido, born David Adeleke in Atlanta in 1992 but raised in Lagos, has been one of the most commercially successful Afrobeats artists of his generation. His 2011 single Back When introduced him to Nigerian audiences and he has not stopped since. His 2022 album Timeless debuted at number one in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and the UK.

What This Generation Means

The Afrobeats generation did something that previous generations of African artists had not quite managed. They made the world come to them.

They did not move to London or New York and adapt their sound to Western tastes. They stayed in Lagos, in Accra, in Nairobi, and made music that was unapologetically African. And the world followed.

This is the spirit that Afropop Socks was built on. The idea that African culture does not need to apologise for itself or adapt itself to be accepted. It can be exactly what it is and the world will come to it.

When Burna Boy walks onto a stage in London or New York or Paris, he is wearing his African identity like armour. That is what the cultural story cards in every pair of Afropop Socks are about. Not just explaining what Kente cloth is. But saying: this is who we are, and we are proud of it.