Photo Credits: Adraint Khadafhi Bereal

‎After her 2015 mixtape, But You Caint Use My Phone, Erykah Badu did not release any musical project. After a decade of waiting, it is unsurprising that when she announced her collaborative album, early last year, with one of  Hip Hop’s most influential producers, The Alchemist, fans were strapped to their seats before the tracklist, cover, or title was out. 

‎Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment, is a 16-track project with star features ranging from Earl Sweatshirt,  Kamasi Washington, Westside Gunn, to Steve Lacy. The recording of this album bounced from Dallas to Los Angeles, and after many cryptic teasers Before The World Blows saw a digital release on August 28. 

Erykah Badu, known for her afrocentric expression and her big contribution to the neo-soul genre, is always an exciting act to watch out for. Her last mixtape project was a 30-minute RnB/Soul bop inspired by Drake's 2015 Hotline Bling. She made a Hotline Bling remix titled HOTLINE BLING BUT U CAINT USE MY PHONE MIX before expanding the idea into a mixtape. The mixtape was about how everyone is always connected due to the accessibility of the cellphone. After this mixtape, Erykah Badu would go on to sell out arenas for 10 years before her recent album. 

The Alchemist, Alan Maman, is one of the big names in hip-hop, having produced tracks for main hip-hop artists like Kendrick Lamar, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Eminem, MF DOOM, Earl Sweatshirt, Ghostface Killah and many more. His signature sample-heavy beats made him popular to underground rap acts. His discography is a wide range of interesting genres; alternative hip-hop, jazz rap, and lo-fi. He produced Meet the Grahams by Kendrick Lamar during the 2024 feud with Drake. And was the runner-up for Producer of the Year by HipHopDX, an online magazine for hip-hop news.

Two influential people in hip-hop collaborating on a record was sure to create electric buzz before and after the album release. Erykah Badu's contribution was more than vocals and a self-directed visual to the track, Witch Doctor. 

In a video posted on Instagram, Erykah Badu spoke about her production abilities saying, "My ears are lethal. I have a gift." She has always talked about not wanting to be limited to being the queen of neo-soul. In the same Instagram upload, she continued to say, "I just want you guys to know I ain't just a singer. This is my production." The Alchemist had provided some beats for Badu and she programmed it into what is now Before The World Blows. 

About their collaboration, The Alchemist said in a conversation with Apple Music that it "enabled him to be like a motorcycle sidecar instead of riding in the cockpit." Erykah Badu also revealed in the conversation that she has written a poem with the title Before The World Blows. The now-released album had been given a placeholder title because the album title took a while to be figured out. 

A throwback to one of her appearances in Tamron Hall Show, Erykah Badu sat before the interviewer in a statement red hood (or hijab) and bold, eclectic jewellery. She said the difference between a recording artist and a performance artist is: a recording artist perfects a moment, while a performance artist creates a moment. Before The World Blows is a seamless integration of Erykah Badu being a recording and performance artist. 

In an NTS RADIO live show, Erykah Badu is seen singing passionately in a trashy blonde wig, a distinct look from the Witch Doctor video, and creating a soulful performance with The Alchemist. The producer duo/hip-hop trendsetters would embark on a North American tour with hip-hop group De La Soul that was formed in New York in 1988 and St. Louis rapper, Smino in 2026-2027. ‍

Cover Credits: Adraint Khadafhi Bereal

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There has never been a better time to be African in global culture. Across music, fashion, film and entertainment, African creativity has moved from being something the world occasionally discovered to something it actively seeks out. 

From Burna Boy headlining stadiums, Wizkid selling out arenas, Tems appearing and co-writing on some of the world's biggest records to Ayra Starr and South Africa’s Tyla turning their distinct sounds into a global pop language, as well as Aya Nakamura —despite being largely French-speaking— becoming one of the biggest African-born pop stars on the planet.

One thing from all this is evidently clear: the world is paying attention. This makes East Africa's relative absence from that conversation increasingly difficult to ignore. 

Not absent entirely, of course. East Africa is not short of musicians, filmmakers, designers, writers, photographers, artists or digital creators doing excellent work. But why are they largely missing from the spotlight? 

Nairobi, Kigali, Dar es Salaam and Kampala remain some of the continent's most interesting creative cities. Sauti Sol became one of Africa's most respected contemporary groups and former member and lead vocalist Bien has gone on to build a solo career beyond the confines of the band. Diamond Platnumz turned Tanzanian Bongo Flava into a regional force. Visionaries across the region continue to produce work that deserves international attention.

So,  talent across East Africa isn’t up for debate. Instead, the lens is on how it rarely becomes a global cultural power – a contrast that may explain why calling this a “flop era” feels both laughable and strangely accurate

We can all agree that the term “flop” is deliberately dramatic. East Africa is obviously not culturally irrelevant. But if the last decade has represented a historic opportunity for African culture to establish itself globally, the region has arguably been slower than its potential suggests to convert creativity into sustained influence.

Talent alone as we know it has never been enough. What separates a talented artist from a global star is often the machinery surrounding them: management, PR, publishing, distribution, international partnerships, touring infrastructure, investment, legal support and an ecosystem that knows how to turn local success into an international business.

West and Southern Africa has spent years building much of that machinery around its biggest exports. East Africa still largely seems to be figuring that out as it goes. One artist breaking through can be and is exciting, but an industry consistently producing artists who break through is something else entirely.

Look at music. East Africa has sounds of its own. Bongo Flava, Genge, traditional tunes like Taarab, Indie/Afro-soul and a growing range of hybrid sounds have travelled beyond their countries of origin; yet the biggest hurdle is an ecosystem that hasn’t been capable of making that momentum sustainable.

And the same problem appears outside music. East African fashion has produced designers whose work is sophisticated enough to belong in international conversations. Yoshita 1967’s LVMH Prize win this year by the designer Anil Padia affirms that. Our filmmakers be it Wanuri Kahiu, Dilman Dila, Toni Kamau and more are telling stories with global resonance. Our writers have published stories that deserve to be read beyond the continent as do photographers and visual artists' works that are documenting a region whose cultural identity is increasingly compelling to the rest of the world.

Yet somehow global recognition still feels like an event rather than an ecosystem.

A creative gets featured in an international publication, invited to an overseas festival or collaborates with a major foreign brand, and the moment is celebrated as an exception. We rarely stop to ask what infrastructure exists to make the next ten such moments easier.

Perhaps that is part of the problem. East Africa is very good at producing moments. We are less convincing at producing movements. There is also something peculiar about how we understand ourselves collectively. Nigeria has become almost synonymous with Afrobeats. South Africa has successfully attached amapiano to a global cultural movement. 

Still, what does East Africa mean to the rest of the world? Kenya is not Tanzania, neither is the latter Uganda or Rwanda. Our differences are part of what makes the region culturally rich, but our creative industries still operate largely within national boundaries. 

An artist who has built a following at home can struggle to turn that momentum into a regional career, while a designer, filmmaker or musician looking beyond their own country may find clearer pathways through international markets than through neighbouring ones. We have the talent, the audiences and the proximity, but the infrastructure connecting those pieces remains surprisingly thin. 

Then, there is our complicated relationship with international validation. Sometimes, it feels as though East African culture only becomes valuable to us after someone outside Africa confirms it is. A Vogue feature makes a designer suddenly important. A foreign festival invitation makes a filmmaker suddenly prestigious. An international collaboration makes an artist suddenly “global.”

Of course, these opportunities matter. International recognition can open doors that local markets cannot. Nevertheless, there is a difference between building global relevance and waiting for somebody else to certify your relevance.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o didn’t have to retain a Eurocentric identity to become an internationally successful author nor did Tyla have to stop being South African to become global. Their identities were not obstacles to their global appeal; they were part of it.

East Africa similarly has plenty to export but we have to believe in it to make it. Our diaspora could also be doing more to bridge that gap. East Africans living in London, Toronto, New York and elsewhere represent communities with cultural, economic and professional connections to home. The global success of African culture has repeatedly demonstrated how powerful those communities can be – not just as audiences, but as marketers, tastemakers and consumers. Festivals and concert platforms such as Afro Nation and Afro Plus Fest have shown how diaspora communities can help create demand for African music and culture far from the continent, turning cultural familiarity into a viable international market. East Africa has that diaspora resource too. Perhaps, we haven't been strategic enough about turning it into a bridge between local talent and global audiences. 

None of this means West, South or other regions in Africa have figured everything out. They haven't. African creatives everywhere still contend with exploitative contracts, limited funding, piracy, weak infrastructure, visa restrictions and unequal access to international markets.

So perhaps the “flop era” diagnosis is ultimately unfair. Maybe East Africa is simply playing a different game. The long game. Our cultural influence doesn't always show up on Billboard, at the Grammys or on the cover of an international fashion magazine. Perhaps the region's influence is more fragmented, more local and less interested in becoming a single exportable product.

But again, if that is our defence, we should be honest about whether we are comfortable with it. Because the ‘world has long moved on from waiting for Africa to become interesting.’ African culture is already interesting. The market has already demonstrated its appetite.

The fact that we have something to say is clear enough. The challenge now is to convince ourselves and others whether that’s worth building an industry around. 

To answer the question, East Africa is not in its flop era. It is simply a frustratingly unfinished one. The region doesn't need another viral moment. It needs infrastructure. It needs investment. It needs stronger creative institutions, better regional collaboration, international-facing management and industries that understand culture now as an economic force more than an identity.

Most importantly, it needs to stop measuring its potential against what other heavyweights like Lagos or Jo’burg have already achieved. East Africa doesn't need to produce another Fela Kuti, Burna Boy, Hugh Masekela or even another Tyla. It calls for creating the conditions in which the world can discover whoever comes next.

Cover Image Credit: Skott Bennett-Riff Magazine

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The first time this writer heard Nikita Kering’, she was already singing with the kind of conviction that made it easy to forget how young she was. 

“Happy With You,” her debut 2018 single, arrived when she was just 16, introducing audiences to a young Kenyan R&B and pop singer-songwriter whose voice seemed far older than her years. 

Nearly a decade in, her music still carries that same immediacy. But Kering’ has spent the years since growing far beyond that girl to a more intimate, assured fully-fledged artist who isn’t afraid to say exactly what she means.

That evolution has unfolded across three EPs, A Side of Me, The Other Side and this year’s The Lick Back that finds her leaning further into self-possession, desire, vulnerability and the freedom to speak from a place of greater personal clarity. 

In 2021, just three years after her breakthrough, Kering’ became the first-ever East African musician selected for Apple Music’s Africa Rising programme, another benchmark of how quickly her career was expanding beyond home. Since then, she continued to build a catalogue around her distinctive RnB sensibilities while drawing from pop, Afrobeats, dancehall and the sounds of her roots – all feats she has done without a full-length studio album to her name yet and a gap she hopes to finally close next year.

Deeds caught up with the Kenyan singer-songwriter to talk about growing into her voice, embracing the parts of herself she once kept hidden, the evolving identity of Kenyan music, and what comes next for an artist who is still discovering just how much she has to say.

Stanley for Deeds: How is your day going so far? 

My day is great. I just came back from a getaway, so just kind of back with a lot of work.

Your music has been around for more than five years now, but songs like “Never Let You Go” and “Ex” still feel remarkably current. How does it feel knowing people are still returning to those songs years later? 

So cute. Thank you so much. 

You’ve been making music since you were very young. When did music stop feeling like something you were naturally good at and start feeling like something you had something to say through?

I guess from just being a talent to being almost like a channel or a platform for expression, right? I'd say probably when I was around 16. It's kind of my mom that pushed me and pressured me into writing my own music. I really used to think that I can't write my own music. So she used to just tell me, you can just try. And so that's when it happened. It stopped being about music school, stopped being about just vocal ability. But it started to be about like, who is she? Because the only way people can really know who I am is to connect with me really, was through using my music as a space where I could give my thoughts and opinions on certain things, where I can share my emotions. People could tell the kind of person that I am through my music. And so yeah, I'd say around that time and then it also became a business, so it was kind of just trying to balance the two.

Fans can hear different versions of you across A Side of Me, The Other Side and your newer work. Which version feels furthest from who you are now?

I'd say the first EP. I'm only saying that because it just makes sense for that to be so, given that that was the youngest version of me. And I allow myself to really immerse myself into my eras or phases, like I really live in the moment. And so, A Side of Me may be the furthest to who I am now, but it was very authentic to who I was then, right?

You’ve grown up in public ever since the Emmy Kosgei days we discovered you and that audience has grown up alongside you. What part of your evolution do you think people haven’t quite caught up with yet?

People haven't yet seen that side of me that doesn't really care, the side of me that is aggressive and speaks up for herself. And I think with The Lick Back, the people who are the closest fans that are listening to the music deeply and listening to the lyrics, they can see that.

But what I've seen is my music really takes a long time for people to catch up to. I don't know what it is about the music, because when I drop it at first, no one ever really gets it. Then a year comes, okay, everyone is now on the Nikita Kering’ hype and blah, blah, blah. So I would just say, perhaps the people who listen to my music at a more surface level haven't really gotten to see the side of me that is a little bit more outspoken and doesn't shy away from the truth.

So you feel like sleeper hits/albums are a good thing?

A hundred percent I think sleeper albums are the best because the majority of people then who are discovering are actually in a quest to discover, rather than the people who just were listening to it because it had hype at the moment. You'll find that people who are listening to an album a year after and had never listened to it probably were like, okay, this album had gotten good reviews let me see it for myself and there isn't that noise at the time that they're listening.

So I'm for it and the whole sleeper concept has really built and sustained my longevity that I've had because then people are still able to experience music of three, four years ago right now. And in fact, if you want to look at TikTok and stuff like that, there's people that I'm seeing still discovering “Ex.” There's a performance I did in Ethiopia months ago of a song that came out years ago that's trending right now. So that just tells you that rediscovery is amazing because even as I perform songs I sang five years ago today, they're still relevant. And I feel like that's how music is supposed to be.

People are always listening. Is there a song you've written that you understand differently now than when you wrote it?

I actually don't. I don't think I have an answer to that because I don't really listen to my own songs. I just perform them. After I sing them, now it's in the hands of the people I made it for.

You write quite openly about love, heartbreak, and desire. Do you really understand what you're feeling or do you need to understand it before you can?

 I don't think I internalize my feelings before writing music. I kind of just go with the flow. So I would say I discover my feelings after the fact.

When a melody or lyric comes to you, do you usually know what the song is about, or does the song tell you as you go? 

Yeah, it definitely tells me, but it depends. Different songs, different approaches. When I initially write it, sometimes I know what I'm trying to talk about, but for the most part, it always reveals itself. 

For instance, the “Niwache” song, the line that you sang, was actually the first line I came up with in the whole song. I only had that, and nothing else. And then I sent that to the producer, and we built from that. So already that kind of tells me this song is probably about someone who's playing games, someone who's doing like a cycle back and forth type of thing. 

What emotions do you find the easiest to sing about, but hardest to actually live through?

I think the pain from heartbreak; because we hear about it so much, we watch a lot of movies, we interact with each other, our friends go through it and the pieces of heartbreak; the crying at night, people's life moving on and yours is kind of stuck. We know those little pieces, so I'd say heartbreak is very easy to write, yet very difficult to go through.

When you're going through it, the process is so profound and you get so immersed in it that those feelings never really leave you and that's why perhaps it's very easy to describe them because literally, you live inside those feelings so immensely and so vividly that I guess you can't forget.

Your latest EP feels like another step into your artistic evolution. What did making The Lick Back reveal about the artist you're becoming?

I would say that it reveals less to me about the artist that I'm becoming, but more so the person that I'm becoming because my art is directly linked to my personal experiences and to who I am and how I'm feeling. So I think it's just a reflection of somebody growing up, finally becoming a woman. Being able to speak out for myself because that's some of the things I struggled with a lot as a young person. Like I’m finally grown up and out of being that timid young girl who is scared of voicing her opinions and is scared of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It's just shown me how much I am actually growing and if I thought that I wasn't growing I can now see it in my music from also experimenting with different sounds.

You’ve experimented with different sounds and languages throughout your catalogue. Is there a version of yourself you can express musically that you can’t quite access in everyday life?

The sensual part of me, mainly because I find that society isn't very forgiving with women. Sometimes when it comes to freely expressing your sensuality and yourself. That’s something that I've been able to put in my music, even in collaborations such as Motto, I feel as though if I was to transcribe that and tell it to people word for word, everyone would be like, what the hell is this girl saying? 

We are also at a time when Kenyan music is drawing increasingly from across the continent while also developing its own new identities. What does the Kenyan sound look like to you today?

I think that Kenyan sound looks like a Kenyan person that grew up in Kenya or was exposed to Kenyan culture, presenting it in the way that they understood it. I don't think there's any way that it's supposed to sound. I just think that if you took part in being Kenyan in any way and you're expressing that musically, I think that's Kenyan music.

I think the exposure to the difference in cultures and even different music and how you choose to interpret that is exactly what makes it Kenyan, because the thing is, that culture is just a bunch of people that sat together and behaved and acted a certain type of way. It wasn't influenced by any sort of DNA or anything. We are just a couple of people that settled on this part of the earth and started to do things in this manner. And that became culture. So I think with music, it's the same. I'm glad the exact rule applies.

And what do you think Kenyan artists or creatives are doing exceptionally well right now and what are they still getting wrong?

Let me start by saying that finally, there's some kind of trend where there's a lot more Kenyan musicians making Kenyan music that is inspired by their own cultures. So when I look at Kodongklan, Kosta Ojuang, Elsie Wameno or Zaituni, all of these people are not only inspired by, for example, the Nairobi culture or the Swahili language. They have embraced who they are and where they come from. And even through my EP and what I was doing with the intro with Sofiya Nzau. 

We have unlocked a new level to even more content by allowing ourselves to access our own cultures because I genuinely believe that we are spiritually connected to where we are from. I myself come from the Nandi community, and I know my clan and exactly where we come from. And there are stories our parents teach us about our clan and the things that we used to do and our strengths. And I can see that coming out now, even being in Nairobi or traveling around the world, I can understand.

So I would say how we are attaching ourselves or rather how we are holding on to our history is really important and I think that is something that we're doing so right because it makes the pot overflow. It will consistently pour out more and more content because we're not just Kenyans, we're not just Kalenjins, we're not just Nandis, we're not just Taitas, we come from this home. And the deeper you go into who you are, the more there is to find and the more of that DNA will show through your music making it even way more unique than perhaps someone that was just following some trends, right?

Yeah and at the end of the day, like creativity, music continues. Music has been around for maybe a few thousand years and maybe even more, but I mean in terms of like proper proper structured songs and stuff like that, it can't end here. It has to keep going and how does it? We have to keep finding new inspirations and that means going deeper into your culture while at the same time going wider into the future and wider into exposing yourself. How can my culture mesh into this? How can we intermarry different cultures to create a new art form? And that discovery is what I'm seeing in Kenyan music and not just music/artistic space, because even with fine arts, even with culinary arts, with people like Denis Ombachi, turning things like managu and terere into cold salads, you know, that kind of stuff. That's why people like that are still relevant, because it's innovation. And innovation doesn't necessarily mean that you have to come up with something from thin air. Sometimes it just means taking this thing, taking this other thing, and blending them together to create a new thing.

Because that's exactly how humans evolve. It's a mother and a father coming together to create something new. And if you yourself see yourself as a new being, as a new creation, then that, I think, reflects creativity. That you've taken this that was already in existence, and this other thing, and you're putting them together, and you're literally just consistently creating something new every time. And I think that's amazing. In terms of what I feel like Kenyan artists are doing wrong, I don't know what Kenyan artists And I don't think I will ever come out and say anyone is doing anything wrong creatively because I see artists who are making “bubblegum” music being shunned upon, but we are listening to it.

That is an art form in itself. For example, there's calculus and then there's freaking one plus one. And without one plus one, there would have never been calculus. Like both of those things are necessary. Sometimes life doesn't have to be so complex. People don't have to do the right thing all the time. And so I would never, ever comment on what I think someone should do or shouldn't do creatively. What I think I would say is how hard are you working to make this into something proper? Because you can turn something very stupid into something amazing and something that is worth sharing to the world as a representation of Kenya music. What I would say artists are doing wrong on the other side of things is not knowing how to protect this art that they are creating, is not knowing how to correctly monetize it. Those are now the things I can speak on because I can see exactly how my input would benefit them.

What do you admire about the next generation of East African artists coming up alongside you?

I applaud my fellow artists because they’ve kept going because I've seen and experienced crazy things, and there's times where I've genuinely sat down and was just like, bro, I don't think I can do this anymore. I can imagine that all these different artists have probably been in the same exact space where they felt like giving up. But the choice to continue, to me, that is the most amazing, brilliant thing. And I'm so proud of all of them.

And I support in the ways that I can. When I speak to upcoming artists, when I talk to Bridget Blue, when I speak to so and so; I sit with these people, and all I do is encourage them and tell people, you should try this and try that. My hand is never closed. It's always open to giving and that's why I believe that I keep receiving, because I don't tie that information to myself. I don't believe in gatekeeping, because I really genuinely believe that we can all coexist. And I know people that are so worried about gatekeeping and stuff, they're copycats because they know they copied something and they know it's not authentic enough to sustain, but because I know what I'm coming with is so original, I'll never be worried about what anyone else is doing or that they're doing better than me.

I'm so proud of each and every one of my fellow artists and I wish them all the best and I have generally given upcoming artists opportunities way more than I've even given anyone else and I don't talk about it, I don't post about it, I don't go out there wanting anyone to lick my bum about it, I'm just out here and I know one day, should I help the right person, and they're grateful, they're gonna come out and they're gonna be like, you know what, I appreciate Nikita because she helped me get here, she helped me get there, but I don't even do it for the applause, I don't do it so that they can say, I do it because it's just the right thing to do. And why not? 

Your music influences have ranged from Rose Muhando and Nigerian pop to American R&B with people like Rihanna. When you're creating, do you think about those influences, or have they become so deeply embedded that they just come out in the way you create your own music? 

I see inspiration kind of like taking a test. You read for your exam, and when you're in the exam room sitting with your paper, you're not thinking about every single thing that you read. You read the question, and you hope that the answer will flow to you depending on how prepared you are.

How I relate it to making my music is if I am genuinely, I've listened to the music, I've taken it in, I've meditated with it, I do not need to go over my notes again. I just write, and it will show. There is a way that your brain is able to divide or to compartmentalize different ideas and how they would apply into your different ideas. You never have to be listening to other songs at the same time in order to make that happen. 

You just have to constantly feed yourself with the material, and then it will show in the music, because if you then do the former, what's going to happen is you're just going to plagiarize. So even when I'm making a song and I can hear like, okay, this song kind of sounds like, let me give an example, Diamonds by Rihanna. The one thing you're not allowed to do at that one instance is play that song because then you're going to start copying. That's how I do it. 

Speaking of influences, are there any people that are on your dream collaboration list? 

I think I only have one person on my dream collaboration list right now, and that's Dave. I really like Dave. His song, Raindance with Tems is amazing. But I think if I were to make a song with Dave it would never be a commercial song. I wouldn't waste my opportunity on that.  I would want to drain him of every little bit of niche creativity he has in him, because that's how I fell in love with Dave. I didn't really get exposed to Dave through the commercial song.

What can fans look forward to next? Is there anything else in the book? An unreleased project before the year ends that you want to bless them with?

There's definitely gonna be some songs out before the year ends, but, in terms of a whole project, no. I'm not gonna lie and say that. I really hope to release my debut album next year though.

For the Peaches and Cream event, I would say that's gonna be the best show of the year yet, actually the best of my life yet. So if anyone is waiting to attend my concert, and they don't know which one to attend, because I know there's a couple, they need to attend that one.

Finally, if we remove Nikita Kering’ the public persona that people know, what would you want to discover next just for yourself? 

I really just want to see how far I can push my entrepreneurial side. I'm just about to launch one of my businesses, aside from Nikita Kering’, because I'm not going to be publicizing it, and I just want to see that I can actually manage a huge business and not lose my mind.‍

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Cover Credit: Nikita Kering’/Tofauti Vibes

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In its first 12 days on Prime Video, The US TV series Off Campus drew 36 million viewers worldwide, becoming Prime Video's most-viewed series debut of all time among young women aged 18 to 34. 

It was the first of a dozen young adult titles the video streaming platform rolled out this summer as part of its "Obsession Is In Session" initiative. Other titles coming include: Every Year After, The Love Hypothesis, Fourth Wing, Rose Hill, Boys of Tommen, Sterling Point and Elle, a Legally Blonde prequel. 

Three weeks after Off Campus broke records, The Last Sunrise, based on Anna Todd's novel and starring Maia Reficco and Eva Longoria, debuted at number one on Prime Video's global Top 10 Movies chart in 33 countries within 24 hours of release. 

Prime Video is not dabbling in young adult romance. It is building a content world around it. To understand why that matters, it helps to understand what existed before it.

For two decades, The CW was the home of glossy, emotionally intense young adult television. Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, Riverdale, Arrow, Jane the Virgin, One Tree Hill: the network built a specific audience and served it steadily. 

When Nexstar Media Group took over The CW, in August 2022, ten shows were cancelled immediately, three times the average annual cancellation rate over the previous decade. Average primetime viewership fell to 453,000 in 2023, down 21 percent year over year, finishing last among all five major broadcast networks. Riverdale, the last show still carrying the network, ended in August 2023 after seven seasons, averaging just under half a million viewers in its final run — a quarter of what it drew at its peak. 

The CW's Netflix licensing deal ending was the financial trigger. Without that revenue stream, the network cut aggressively. The audience that had grown up watching Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries had nowhere to go.

Netflix had built a streaming version of that audience in the late 2010s. To All the Boys I've Loved Before, The Kissing Booth, Never Have I Ever, Heartstopper: the platform demonstrated that young adult romance worked on streaming and drew a devoted, active fanbase. Then it moved on. Adolescence swept awards in 2026 and became the defining teen drama of the year. XO Kitty and Heartbreak High continued but represented lighter investments. Netflix recognised that the young adult romance audience existed and then chose to serve a more prestigious version of teen content instead. The gap it left was real.

Prime Video's path into that gap was not accidental. A Prime Video executive told The Hollywood Reporter directly that the push into young adult content had been "very thoughtful, very curated", and that the platform had done a purposeful study of what engages younger female audiences. 

The answer was BookTok, the TikTok subcommunity for readers that had already built passionate, active fanbases around titles like Off Campus, The Summer I Turned Pretty and Red, White and Royal Blue before any of them had a screen adaptation. BookTok readers are not passive audiences. They campaign for adaptations, create content around them and drive conversation before a show has aired a single episode. 

Prime Video noticed that energy as a distribution infrastructure it could plug directly into. Adapting novels with pre-built fanbases was not just a creative decision. It was a way of acquiring an audience that had already done the promotional work.

The shows reflect this logic consistently. The Summer I Turned Pretty is based on Jenny Han's novels. Maxton Hall on Mona Kasten's. Off Campus on Elle Kennedy's. Every Year After on Carley Fortune's. The Last Sunrise on Anna Todd's, the author behind the After series, one of the most successful self-published young adult romance franchises in history. 

Every major Prime Video young adult romance is a book adaptation. Every author had an established fanbase that preceded the screen version. Every fanbase was active on BookTok. The A.V. Club's assessment was direct: "All the soaps and ships have moved to Prime Video." 

Maxton Hall Season 2 is confirmed. Off Campus is already renewed for Season 2. The pipeline beyond that includes Fourth Wing, based on Rebecca Yarros' romantic novel that broke UK records for fastest-selling sci-fi and fantasy title, and Boys of Tommen, another BookTok phenomenon. The platform is not treating these shows as experiments. It is treating them as franchises.

The demographic the platform is targeting is specific. 66 percent of romantasy book buyers in the UK are aged 13 to 34. Prime Video's Off Campus debut set records among women aged 18 to 34 specifically, the same demographic The CW spent two decades building and then lost. 

The Last Sunrise reaching number one globally in 33 countries in 24 hours confirms the audience is not limited to one market. Young adult romance travels, and Prime Video has built its slate around titles with global fanbases rather than domestic ones. Maxton Hall is German. The Last Sunrise was shot in Mallorca. Every Year After is Canadian. The platform understands that BookTok is not an American phenomenon and has positioned its slate accordingly.

What Prime Video has built is something The CW spent twenty years cultivating through broadcast television and Netflix briefly owned through streaming: a destination. When a viewer finishes one show and wants another like it, Prime Video is now the platform they open. The Summer I Turned Pretty leads to Maxton Hall leads to Off Campus leads to Every Year After. The slate holds them. The CW understood this logic for two decades. Netflix understood it briefly and then chose prestige. Prime Video is the third party in this sequence, and the first to build intentionally around serving this audience.

The CW served this audience for twenty years and then stopped. Netflix created a streaming version of it and then moved on. Whether Prime Video becomes the permanent home of young adult romance or simply its current one is a question the next few years will answer. What the numbers already confirm is that 36 million people in 12 days is an audience that was waiting for somewhere to go. Prime Video gave them an address. 

Credit: Amazon Prime Video

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Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun Is A Bold Experiment Of The Soul And The Self

Mama's Gun is one of Erykah Badu’s acclaimed albums. After she made headlines with her debut album, Baduizm, her second studio album, Mama's Gun, was widely anticipated. Erykah Badu's distinct sound is a tasteful blend of RnB, neo-soul, jazz, and hip-hop. In one of her recent interviews, the American music icon told Popcast’s Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli that she only puts out a record when she has something to say. The songwriting in Mama's Gun touched on spiritual themes, romantic love, and the mistreatment of marginalized groups. 

Mama's Gun is many things; bold, soulful, inspiring and lyrically witty. This is the second album after her exciting 1997 debut, Baduizm. Mama's Gun set out with a goal and at Green Eyes, a song about her then breakup with rapper Andre 3000, that goal was completely achieved. The neo-soul album successfully blends elements of funk,  jazz, rock, and reggae. Released in 2000, Mama’s Gun is more than 25 years old and is considered one of the best albums of its era by numerous publications like NPR and Pitchfork.

The record succeeds at expert storytelling. It starts with a 6-minute opener, Penitentiary Philosophy, where Erykah uses her vocals like an instrument. She sings about boxing oneself into an identity, and the nonconformity of individualism. Three songs off this album; Bag Lady, Cleva, and Didn't Cha Know explores self-fulfilment in relationships with self and others. This is one of many things that makes Mama's Gun a timeless listen; she covers issues—both personal and societal— that are integral to the human experience. 

My Life, the third track of the album, was from a 1995 demo. Two other songs from that era On &  On and Appletree were released as singles from Baduizm. Following My Life is ...& On, a sequel to her Grammy-winning single, On & On. She continues to teach the principles of the Five-Percent Nation, a black supremacist movement on this track. Erykah Badu has been linked to the Five-Percent Nation due to her cultural identity and lyrics with nods to the doctrines of this movement. Based on research documented in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Five Percenters believe that 85 percent of humanity are oblivious to the true nature of God and thus, are misled by 10 percent of humanity who are knowledgeable but falsely teach about the existence of God. Only 5 percent understands the truth about God; He is living and He is a black man teaching freedom to black communities. Hey Sugah (interlude) levels the tempo before going into the track Booty. A song with clever lyrics about an unfaithful man and his protective lover. Other songs that explore romantic motifs include; Kiss Me On My Neck (Hesi), Orange Moon, In Love With You (featuring Stephen Marley), and Green Eyes. 

Mama's Gun also features two songs about the racialized sufferings of black people in early 2000s America. A.D. 2000 is a tribute song to a 22-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo, who was shot dead by members of the New York City Police Department in 1999. Wyclef Jean also made a similar tribute that year with the track Diallo. Time's A Wastin' is a message about survival, targeted at young black men who aim at thriving in a white supremacist system that wasn't created for them. The  album  spans more than an hour of soulful melodies and grounding lyricism.

When Erykah Badu broke into the scene with her signature head wrap inspired by African women and her silver jewelry, she came as herself and noted the influence her spirituality has on her music. Perhaps one of my personal favourite things about Mama's Gun, apart from its mid-tempo groove is its richly textured soundscape, with everyday sounds like finger clicks and sounds from analog or naturalistic elements being incorporated into the composition of the album. This was the perfect addition to nail down the perfect album for a chill, candle-lit day. 

Truly, who could compare to the great Erykah Badu? Her influence can be seen in fashion, film, and music. Erykah Badu is more of a lifestyle. She is a cultural tastemaker, and a trueborn artist. RnB and soul acts like SZA, Summer Walker, Jhené Aiko, Ari Lennox, Teyana Taylor and many more have cited her as a major influence in their music artistry, especially for her spiritual teachings and use of sound systems like tuning forks. Ari Lennox has covered a lot of Badu songs including Green Eyes. According to VIBE, the singer Solange said of her at ESSENCE‘s 8th annual Black Women in Music in 2017: “She is a beautiful reminder that you cannot put us in a box.”

P.S: If you enjoyed Mama's Gun by Erykah Badu, then give two of Willow Smith's projects a listen; Petal Rock Black, and The Thread. A Seat At The Table by Solange and 5 by Sault are also some of this writer’s personal favourites. 

 Cover Credit: Erykah Badu captured by Eric Johnson in 1997

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Six days ago Anil Padia stood at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, in Paris, before an industry that had gathered to decide which young designers deserved to exist at the next level. 

He is the first Kenyan finalist in the history of the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) Prize, competing against 2,400 applicants from across the world. 

His label, Yoshita 1967, is based between Nairobi and Paris, built around handmade production and collaboration with women-led craft communities in Kenya. 

He won the Savoir-Faire Prize, worth €200,000 and a year of LVMH mentorship. "I am completely lost for words," he said backstage. "This has been a collective effort from all our team in Nairobi, and I am just extremely honoured." 

The prize was introduced in 2024 specifically to recognise craftsmanship, technical innovation and sustainability. Yoshita 1967 is exactly what it was designed to find.

The brand is named after Padia's aunt, Yoshita,whose story shaped part of its creative direction. It draws from his Indo-Kenyan lineage, with his family having migrated from Gujarat to Nyeri over a century ago, and collections that explore identity, memory and family histories that have remained largely unspoken across generations. 

Padia studied at La Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne in Paris and La Cambre in Brussels, training in the technical rigour of haute couture, before returning to Nairobi where the heart of his practice remains. 

The garments are made using crochet, embroidery and intricate hand embellishment, produced by women artisans the label has spent four years training and working alongside. Among them is a group of Zimbabwean-born nuns who joined the production line. Every piece is made to order and never held as stock. 

The mirror work draws on Gujarati embroidery tradition. The sterling silver-plated bells sewn into hems and panels reference the ornaments worn during Navratri celebrations, so that the pieces carry sound as well as shape when the wearer moves. "The brand unifies the unheard voices of the women in my life and the censored stories in my lineage. It is a liberation of our collective karma,” Padia said at Yoshita 1967's launch in 2024. 

He beat 2,400 applicants to reach the final. Then,  he won.

Seven years before Padia stood at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Thebe Magugu of South Africa won the main LVMH Prize, the first African designer to do so. His label, rooted in South African identity and history, built through specific research and deliberate craft, also not designed around the narrative of being overlooked. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote to commend him after the win. The industry took note of what was being built in Johannesburg. Magugu did not wait for the industry to find him. He entered the competition, made the case for his work, and won on its merits.

What Magugu and Padia share is a simple approach: make something specific, make it well, enter the room. Their brands were built around the work, and recognition followed. At a time when conversations around African fashion often focus on exclusion, their wins shift attention back to what is being produced. The snub argument remains valid; global fashion has long borrowed from African aesthetics while sidelining African designers. But Magugu and Padia show another route forward: grounded, excellent work that earns its place in the rooms built to recognise it.

The prize Padia won was introduced, in 2024, to recognise something the main LVMH Prize does not always foreground: craftsmanship, the human labour behind the clothes, the communities that make the work possible. 

Yoshita 1967 won it in only its second year of existence. The women in Nairobi who embroider, crochet and sew bells into hems are not a footnote in the brand's story. They are the brand's story, and Padia's vision for what comes after the prize reflects that. "Yoshita can only grow if the community around it is nourished," he has said. "We are linked to each other, and no one should be left behind." 

A prize designed to see that kind of work saw it, and gave it €200,000 and a platform.

Padia's immediate priority after winning is hiring more staff. One extra person, he says, would be "a really a dream." The money does not change the model. It expands it. Yoshita 1967 will keep making clothes the same way it always has, in Nairobi, with the same women, using the same hands. 

Magugu's win in 2019 did not produce a wave of African winners in the years that followed.  What it produced was proof that the door could open, that the room was not structurally closed to designers from the continent, that the work could speak for itself inside one of the most competitive selection processes in global fashion. Padia's win in 2026 is the second data point in what may become a longer story. The gap between them is seven years. It is also not forever.

Cover Credit: LVMH Prize

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On the night of November 16, 2001, at Sun City in South Africa, an 18-year-old computer science student from Port Harcourt walked out of a Miss World final and directly into Nigerian history. 

Agbani Darego was the first Black African to win Miss World in the competition's 51-year history, and the weeks that followed were spent processing what that meant with the kind of sustained attention usually reserved for World Cup victories.

Darego competed in a year when the pageant had introduced a new audience voting system, a structural change that gave her an advantage previous contestants had not had access to. When she was crowned, the announcement ran on loop across Nigerian TV in a way that beauty pageant results simply did not, before or since. 

Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State described the win as "an expression of the natural endowment of the people of Rivers State and noble qualities of Nigerian womanhood." The entire country celebrated the way it does when a win feels personal, not just for the woman who won it, but for the country watching. 

What that night produced, beyond the headlines, was a standard. Not an official one. Nobody announced that future Nigerian representatives would be measured against Darego's win. It was informal, persistent, culturally embedded, and carried by every woman who has represented Nigeria at Miss World since, whether she knew it or not. 

The conditions that produced 2001 were specific: a new voting system, a particular year, a particular contestant. None of those conditions were guaranteed to repeat. The expectation that the result would repeat anyway is what has shaped Nigeria's relationship with the pageant across the 25 years since.

The record of those 25 years is largely one of participation without breakthrough. Nigeria sent representatives consistently across the 2000s and 2010s, collecting occasional Top 20 placements that were noted in the press and then largely forgotten. 

The gap between what the country expected, because 2001 had taught it what was possible, and what the pageant delivered was never formally examined. It was simply felt, in the quiet way that unexpressed standards make themselves known, whenever a Nigerian contestant did not place and the conversation turned briefly to why not.

The restructuring of 2024 was the first formal acknowledgment that something in the Nigerian pageant infrastructure needed to change. Silverbird Group separated Miss World Nigeria from Miss Universe Nigeria and the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria competition, creating a dedicated pathway for the Miss World title rather than treating it as one output of a larger system. 

Joy Raimi became the first representative under the new structure, travelling to Hyderabad for the 72nd Miss World in 2025 and finishing in the Top 20 and Top 5 from Africa, the strongest Nigerian performance in years, produced by a system that had only just been built.

Tamunosoye Karibi-George carried that momentum into Vietnam. The 26-year-old is from Port Harcourt, the same city Darego called home, and she arrived in Nha Trang having already won Miss Africa International 2024 in Accra. Her advocacy platform, Beyond Labels, centres on inclusion and empowerment for children with disabilities, a specific, substantive cause rather than the generalised statements of intent that pageant representatives sometimes offer. 

At Miss World 2026, Karibi-George won Africa's Top Model, beating representatives from Equatorial Guinea, Botswana, Kenya and South Africa to secure her place in the Top 40. She then advanced to the Top 12 through the People's Choice vote, finishing among the final twelve contestants out of 111. The Dominican Republic's Joheirry Mola was crowned Miss World 2026, earning the country's second win after 1982.

Karibi-George's Top 12 finish, Africa's Top Model title and People's Choice qualification, set alongside Raimi's Top 20 in 2025, constitute the two strongest consecutive Nigerian performances at Miss World since Darego won in 2001. 

Still, the result deserves to be read in that context rather than against the unrepeatable standard of 2001. Whether that represents a genuine shift in how Nigeria prepares its representatives, a product of the restructured pathway or simply two good years arriving in sequence is not something the evidence can settle with confidence. 

What can be said is that the women Nigeria has sent to Miss World in 2025 and 2026 have arrived at the competition prepared, competitive and visible in ways that the years between 2001 and 2024 did not consistently produce.

A win of that historical weight does not recede simply because time passes, and the shadow of 2001 was never going to lift on its own, but what has changed in the last two years is that the shadow is being navigated with more care. Darego was 18 when she won, from Rivers State, studying at the University of Port Harcourt. Karibi-George is 26, also from Rivers State, also from Port Harcourt. She won Africa's Top Model, advanced to the Top 12 through the People's Choice vote, and left Vietnam with a result that sits more comfortably in the long story of Nigeria at Miss World than most of what came between her and the woman who started it. 

The standard set in 2001 has not been met. It has, for the first time in a long time, been seriously attempted.

Cover Credit: Agbani Darego

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Chinyemugo Obiekwugo-Charles did not set out to build a fashion brand. During her third year at Parsons School of Design in New York, a distinct design vocabulary was assembling itself through references, images and garments before she could fully name what it was becoming. By the time she graduated, with her collection featured in Vogue, the vocabulary had a name, and what MUGO MUGO needed next was the woman who would wear it.

That woman is genuinely difficult to describe, which is exactly the point. The MUGO MUGO woman is not a fixed archetype that other women have to qualify for. She is not a mood board or a demographic or a set of aesthetic preferences. She is someone who contains contradictions without needing to resolve them. She can be assured and still have moments of vulnerability, seductive without wanting to be consumed, ambitious and still romantic. She can change her mind. She can leave one version of herself behind and become someone entirely different. MUGO MUGO does not ask a woman to embrace a label and stay inside it. It gives her permission to keep becoming. That freedom to move between contradictions, rather than resolving them into a single coherent identity, is where the brand locates femininity, not as a fixed state but as something in motion.

Marie Claire Nigeria named MUGO MUGO one of the Nigerian fashion brands to watch in 2026. The design language that earned that recognition is built around sharp tailoring alongside sheer fabrics, structure meeting fluidity, sensuality present without being obvious. The clothes hold the same contradictions the woman does, discipline and softness occupying the same garment without either cancelling the other out. The military shapes and antique references in the collection are not decorative choices but the visual grammar of a brand that understands clothing as armour, as vocabulary, as the tool a woman uses to control the narrative around herself before anyone else gets to write it. The clothes are made. She decides the character.

For Obiekwugo-Charles, reinvention is an inevitable part of becoming. She is interested in the freedom a woman has to reassess who she is, move beyond versions of herself that no longer fit, and decide what comes next. Reinvention, in her understanding, is not about rejecting who you used to be, but allowing yourself to evolve. What interests her is not the difficulty of those moments but what comes after them. A woman can experience something that changes her and still decide what happens next. Reinvention, in her understanding, is not about rejecting who you used to be but about allowing yourself to evolve. That idea is the emotional core of MUGO MUGO, and it connects directly to the collection at the centre of the brand's current moment. The thirteen-piece I Still Dream wardrobe is not named accidentally. Even after disappointment, change or uncertainty, there is still the capacity to imagine something beyond your present circumstances. 

Now, MUGO MUGO wants to find her. The brand is conducting a worldwide search for one woman to receive the complete I Still Dream wardrobe - a collection built around the idea that even after disappointment, change or uncertainty, a woman can still imagine something beyond her present circumstances. The search is extended to September 15, 2026, and it is not a conventional giveaway. The questions being asked of applicants reflect that: the city that influenced your creativity, the song that embodies MUGO MUGO, the fashion rule a MUGO MUGO woman would never follow, the place that feels like the brand, the moment that changed your life for the better. These are not questions about follower counts or aesthetic preferences but questions about how a woman sees herself and the world, and what she does with that vision. Entries are open through MUGO MUGO's Instagram and TikTok until September 15.

Perhaps the MUGO MUGO woman was never meant to be invented by the brand. Perhaps she was always out there, waiting to be found.

Credit: Mugo Mugo

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…on reinventing himself, mental health recovery, olodo uprising 

YCee dropped his breakout song Jagaban, in 2016, and Nigerian pop culture did not recover for a long time. Within the next two years, another smash hit, Omo Alhaji, followed, then Late Night Vibrations, an EP that showed a different side of the same artist, one willing to sit inside heartbreak and make something honest out of it. By 2019, his debut album, YCee vs Zaheer had surfaced, cementing his status as a prolific rapper. After another extended play, Love Drunk, in 2021, and it went a bit quiet on YCee’s end. The years after were shaped by a bipolar disorder diagnosis that he has only recently begun speaking about publicly. Out of Sight, Out of Mind, his debut album, was built across that period. 

In this conversation with Deeds, the 33-year-old artiste, born Oludemilade Alejo, speaks about mental health recovery, artistic integrity and what the ‘Olodo Uprising’ revealed about modern Nigerian youth culture.

Sophia From Deeds: For anyone reading this and discovering you for the first time, how would you introduce yourself and your music?

My name is Ycee Omo Alhaji.  I'm a rap musician from Lagos, Nigeria. I love music. I love creating music, I love consuming music. I like to think of myself as a fun guy.

Who is YCee when there is no music, no industry, no public version of you to maintain? What does a regular day actually look like?

I mean, it depends on the day of the week, actually. If it’s a Monday—because I literally have a tattoo that says “Weekend Forever”—I think I structure my weeks like weekends. It’s like one long weekend.

Very flexible Mondays. I try not to do anything, you know, just probably chill, unless I have obligations like work or an interview or any other thing. But outside of work, I’m usually just home, either on my laptop, watching a movie or series or anime, or playing a video game.

When you think about what success, money, family and happiness meant to the person who made Jagaban and Juice, how different does that person feel from who you are now?

I’d definitely say my view on success has changed a lot over the course of not just my career, but my life in general. I think at different stages, it’s usually a thing where you have dreams or goals that you’ve envisioned for yourself, and there are people who are lucky enough to get to a point where you meet those goals and you live those dreams.

I think one thing that I learned very early on in my life is that there’s always a higher level than the top. So it’s always been a thing for me where, whatever venture I’m embarking on, when you achieve that, you then realise there’s always that question of, “What next?” There’s always a next step.

I think for me, success right now, as opposed to back then—back then, success meant making music that would travel the world, I guess. It was never necessarily a thing about, “I want a million dollars.” It wasn’t. I think my concept of success has always been detached from monetary value and more about just breaking boundaries, breaking ceilings.

There was a conversation I was having with a younger friend of mine, and he was just talking about how he needs to make money. He wants to make money, money, money. Bro, you’re better off setting goals for yourself that, when you achieve those goals, there’s possibly no way you would be in that position and money wouldn’t be there.

I feel like there are a lot of people we see in society today who have money or have made money, but there’s still a certain longing, there’s a certain itch that needs to be scratched. For me, I’ve always been detached from that. I’m not saying that I don’t like money. I like money because money makes things happen. Money is a necessary tool. Whatever it is you want to do in life, even if you want to live a low-key life, that in itself comes at its own cost.

You know, as opposed to back then, where it was just about trying to get my music to a bigger stage than I was at the time, getting a larger fan base, being able to travel and just take my music as far as I could take it, I think right now success for me is more about my well-being, my state of mind, my state of physical being, and the state of my relationships with my friends and my family.

I feel like if I’m able to maintain a good level of that, then I would think I’d be successful in whatever other metric people would want to grade my life or career by.

So I feel like I’ve grown older. I’ve become more in touch with who I am as a person. I think, for me, it’s just about trying to make that reflect in the music. That’s the most important thing to me. I’ve come to realise that, in doing so, it elevates the quality of the music itself.

I’m a yapper, by the way. I tend to just talk.

The years when things went quiet publicly - what was actually happening? Not the narrative, not what people assumed. What were you doing, who were you spending time with, what was shaping you?

Oh my God! You know, it’s so crazy. I feel like every time I was getting ready to release music again, people were always asking, “What’s been going on? What have you been getting into?” I think a lot of people were expecting deep responses like, “Oh, I went on a journey of self-discovery. I was, you know, with the monks in the mountains. I was meditating.” And I was like, bro, I literally was just out here trying to live as much as I could.

I think from when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, it just put a lot of things on the back seat because I wasn’t able to necessarily function as I used to before the diagnosis and before all the medication and everything that I was going through. So I think when I was able to get some level of stability back in my life, I was like, there’s no reason why I will not make the most of every single minute of every single day for the rest of the life that I have.

Because one thing that I notice about the entertainment industry in Nigeria, especially within the music space, because that’s where I operate, so that’s where a lot of my knowledge comes from, is that we work so hard to become so big, just to seclude ourselves from the world. And that has never made sense to me because I think one of my favourite things about being popular and being a celebrity is the perks that come with it.

There are pros and there are cons, but I’m not going to sit here and act like a lot of times the pros don’t outweigh the cons because you’re in a position where your presence is appreciated anywhere you go. You get access to the crème de la crème, premium spaces and everything. It’s just a great experience. It’s a great thing to be popular.

And you find that people just become so secluded from everything that’s going on because you don’t want to become too accessible. You don’t want your value to be overly saturated because it’s like, “Oh, we see this guy here, we see him there.” But I still want to do the things that I used to do before I became popular. I still want to go to the cinema. I mean, private cinemas are cool, but there’s nothing better than the experience of watching a movie and seeing the reactions of other people as well, in real time, and just being part of a community.

Just going to the beach, going out to eat in a restaurant. I tell people all the time, I feel like the number one thing about living on this earth is how we interact with other human beings. That’s one of the best experiences in life because there are times that I will literally just be in a crowded place and I’m looking at, maybe, give or take, hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s like every single person in this crowd, every individual, is a different story, with different experiences. You know, even within a household, children don’t necessarily experience the same parents, even if they are born of the same parents.

So our experiences as human beings come down to how we interact with other human beings. And it’s like, why would you want to keep yourself away from the pinnacle of human experience, existence? I love to go out. I love to just do things.

So it was a question of, “Where’s Ycee?” and it’s like, Ycee is in W Bar. Ycee is here. Ycee is there. I pretty much was very active, just not necessarily present within the music industry.

And I felt like the time away that I took just really helped my outlook on life in general and informed my decisions on what it was that I wanted to do with my re-emergence back into the industry. I think it’s always a thing where you tell artists all the time that, as long as you’re within your younger years, because you can’t be active for as long as you would want to be, you should make the most use of it.

And that, in turn, tends to—not all the time—but tends to translate into: you can’t take breaks. You have to always be at the top of your game. You have to be active. You have to be releasing music. And it just gets very exhausting because you can go to the cinema and count the number of times you watch certain actors in movies, and it’s not because they’re not good actors. It’s not because they’re not making movies. But there’s a season for everything. There’s a time for everything.

And breaks are very important because one thing that I’ve learned about the body is that if you don’t take a break for yourself, it’s going to be worse when your body decides to take that break for you.

I think the whole time away and just being low-key was a very trying time, obviously, with my mental health issues and dealing with that. I think one of the saddest parts about it was not just what I went through personally, but pretty much what the weight of my condition was putting on the people around me. It affected a lot of my friendships. It affected a lot of my relationships as well.

But I think one of the key parts of my recovery was also the people who stuck it out with me and were able to meet me in my time of need. And I’m more than grateful to the circle around me that just helped me get back to—not who I was—but back to a version of myself that was able to come back into the industry and just get back to making music and the things that I love.

I think, as much as there were certain experiences that were dark, I feel like it was a necessary time that I needed for myself. And I’m glad that I was able to deal with everything that I dealt with and just come out on the other side and get back to doing what I want to do.

About bipolar disorder. How are you?

Yeah, I’m good. I’m fine. I haven’t had an episode, if I’ll call it that, since 2024, and everything has been very good, I would say. Aside from the things that we deal with on a day-to-day basis, I’m just thankful for a good state of mental well-being and, to a certain extent, some peace of mind as well.

I think ever since I became public with my mental state and my mental health issues, I’ve encountered a lot more people, more Nigerians, coming up to me and saying, “I also suffer from bipolar disorder,” or some form of mental health issue. So I think it’s a conversation that a lot more people need to be having because, as much as there’s been positive feedback on it, there’s also been a lot of pushback, even from people that I know personally, just talking about why I’m speaking about bipolar disorder so casually.

And I think it just comes down to how I was able to deal with it. I’m still—I don’t think there’s a cure for it—you just need to learn how to live with it.

I feel like the more people share their lived experiences, the more it helps other people who are dealing with the same struggles know how they can navigate their lives as well. It’s something that I would always like to push for. I would always want to speak about it, just let people know that, as much as the healthcare system in Nigeria is the way it is, there are still means to navigate mental health issues through the strength of community and the strength of just being within safe spaces where you’re in touch with your emotions and you’re able to speak freely about your feelings without the pushback of other people’s opinions, stigma and all that stuff.

Late Night Vibrations is the clearest example of your personal life finding its way into the music. Is that something you do deliberately, or does it just happen?

It started to come about the older I got because I think, in the earlier stages of my career, I was just more content with making music that people would listen to and just be amazed by my rapping ability, or people would listen to it and it’s just like, “Oh, it makes them dance.” I started gravitating towards wanting to make music that would make people feel something because I realised that, with the music I enjoy from my favourite artists, they’re pretty much giving a piece of themselves. It’s always a crazy thing to listen to a song and be able to relate to the experiences of whoever is creating the music.

I think that’s one thing that has helped my music connect with my core audience: the level of relatability. I think with Late Night Vibrations, that was pretty much the first time that I was open enough to be as vulnerable as I was with what I was going through at the time. So I made that EP during the time when I was going through my very first major breakup, from a relationship that I was in for almost over two years.

And I think, for me, it’s just been a situation where, regardless of whatever I’m going through, my number one coping mechanism is just going into the studio and expressing my emotions on a song or into a song. And it’s not necessarily about whether the song is going to come out or whether I’m going to release it. It’s more as a means of therapeutic release than as a means of self-expression.

I would liken it to someone who journals. It’s like just being able to put your thoughts down and then go back to it, read it again, listen to it again. In this case, I think it was a thing of joy for me to see people gravitate towards certain songs and connect with certain lyrics. It just strengthened my thoughts on music being a universal language. Ever since then, I’ve been more comfortable with just expressing my views on love and life and everything else in between.

I think within the Nigerian space, it wasn’t up until more recently that you had artists singing more about the dark side of relationships. I think, for the longest time, you had love songs where it was always beautiful stuff. You know, you talk about the girl, you talk about meeting the girl, guy meets girl, they fall in love—all the fairy-tale stuff. Don’t get me wrong, that is equally essential to tell that story. But there are also other sides that we encounter every day. We experience it every day.

I have a lot of my friends who complain about the fact that I’m always listening to, quote-unquote, sad music. But I find it a lot more sincere when people are singing about heartbreak because it’s very easy to sing about love even when you’re not in love. It’s the easiest thing to say: “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day,” all that.

There’s a certain level of sincerity and just a certain level of vulnerability that goes into making music that touches on the discomforting side of love.

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Out of Sight, Out of Mind was made across several years, which means different versions of you are in it. When you listen back now, do you like them? 

I like them a lot. I think most of what makes me like them is the fact that, inasmuch as these individual songs were made across different periods of time, there’s still some level of cohesion across the body of work.

And I think, for me, I listen to it and I just see growth and maturity because, like I said, over different periods, this was created and that was created, and we brought that together to make this. It doesn’t feel out of place. It doesn’t feel like these songs shouldn’t be put together. It’s a thing of beauty for me, and I just feel like it’s even helped me with the next step that I want to take creatively, just going off people’s reactions and everything, and then listening back.

That’s the thing about music. You could listen as a consumer, and there are certain songs that, when you listen to them, take you back to the first time you heard the song or the memories attached to the song. Like, “Oh, I remember this song. I heard it at this wedding.” Every time I hear the song, I remember the wedding party and all that stuff.

Yeah, I think for me, anytime I listen to the album, from the intro, I can remember when I got the voice note that I used for the intro. With the songs, I remember how I felt when I first heard the production and the beat: “I like this beat. I want to work on this beat.” It’s like a time capsule of sorts.

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You are a rapper, a singer and a songwriter, and Nigerian music has always wanted you to pick one. Has that pressure gone away?

I think during the earlier years of my career, it was always a thing where I was—I wouldn’t say forced—but I was pushed to work on my singing because, at the time, it was considered that if you wanted to make money, there wasn’t really that much money within the rap industry.

So I had to get a vocal coach. I was doing vocal training, and I got better at singing. It then started to lean to a point where I was doing more singing than rapping. My earlier fans, or the people who fell in love with me because of my rap ability, were now on the side where they were like, “Oh, so you’re no longer a rapper? Are you going to leave what we all fell in love with you for?”

It wasn’t until I became more confident in my ability that I realised getting better at singing had also helped me become a better rapper, in the sense that I was able to infuse melodies into the rap I was doing at the time. And with singing, because of my ability as a rapper and being able to write raps as a songwriter, it also helps you make better songs that are more fleshed out, with deeper meaning and deeper lyrics. It’s a no-brainer.

So it got to a point where I was able to blend both seamlessly, and that just gave rise to a merger of both fans: people who love the singing and people who love the rap side. It was always a conversation where you either do one or the other, but I feel like, as a creative, there’s always going to be that desire to evolve, that desire to better yourself, that desire to make all kinds of music and touch on as many genres as you can.

Because I feel like being an artist and just being comfortable enough in one sound gets very monotonous. It gets very boring. And you could extend that conversation to collaborations. For example, before Asake did “Chanel” with Blaqbonez, I don’t think anyone would have envisioned Asake on that type of bounce. Seeing how he was able to just come into the song and make it his own, it’s one of those things that shows it’s even better for artists themselves to step outside of the box as much as they possibly can. It’s in those experiences that you’re able to evolve as an artist and as a creative.

How do you make your records? Take us through your creative process.  

For me, it's always a thing where I believe the creative should decide what the fan base consumes and not the other way around. My reason for this is I would use my journey personally. It's like before I made Condo, it wasn't like anyone asked me to make it that way. It was because of what I made and how good it was that they liked it.

So it's always a thing where I always liken this situation to someone going to eat in a restaurant, for example, you go to a Michelin star restaurant, look through the menu and find out there's no jollof rice. You're not going to ask them to tell the chef to make you jollof rice; you know where to get Jollof rice. So it's like regardless of whatever it is that you want to eat, it all comes down to what's on the menu, what they're offering. So you have to pick from what is available.

So it's not the restaurant's job to make what the fans want. It's the restaurant's job to make the best meal possible. As soon as you taste it, your taste buds start telling you that this tastes amazing. As a creative, it's just my own job to make music that I feel like making, to just put my best foot forward and work to the best of my ability. As a music consumer myself, I want to believe I know what good music is.

So, the beauty of making music is that you've made something that you think is great and you can share with the world. I feel like a lot of people want to always question an artist when they say they made an album for themselves. You see, that is the beauty about art; it is like you've made something beautiful, but you can't possibly be the only one that would enjoy the beauty of what you've created. And that therein lies why people share the music that they make for themselves with other people. Because it's like the beauty of art is consumption. It's people resonating with what you've created for yourself and they also like relating that to their own experiences. So, for me, it's always going to be me first, then you guys can come in and I share that with you. That's just the beauty of creation in total.

The Olodo Uprising and the Peller conversation - beyond that specific moment, what is your bigger concern about what Nigerian popular culture is rewarding right now?

As much as I'm trying, I feel like it's a necessary conversation that needs to be had. I feel like in this day and age, especially with the advent of social media and social media now being a platform that is giving people, it pays now, there's financial benefits from being on social media. There's always going to be another trending topic, another trending conversation. But I think with the strength of how long we've had this little olodo uprising conversation, it just shows that it's a necessary conversation that we need to constantly keep having so that we continue to increase the bar of excellence within our society. I feel like a lot of people look at the clippings from the video that went viral as opposed to going to watch the full interview. So a lot of people were considering that I had something personal against Peller. Yeah, I feel like it goes beyond just the content creation industry or just the entertainment industry as a whole. You can akin certain different areas of our lives and point out an olodo uprising moments within them, whether it's politics, dealing with other people within your neighborhood, within the systems you operate in, within education, within the movie industry, the work, the office, the 9 to 5 industry. There's a hint of Olodo uprising within every facet of our Nigerian society today. 

People can beg the question to say, it's not just a Nigerian thing. But at the end of the day, I can only speak to the society that I am a part of, and that's the Nigerian society.  I think a lot of people felt like it was a personal attack on people that don't necessarily have formal educational backgrounds and stuff. I think for me, it was just like a degradation of just education in general. People are no longer curious anymore. People don't ask questions. They only rely on AI summaries. It used to be a thing where one would research publications, factual accounts on history, scientific theories and so on. Now, people are okay with outsourcing their own intelligence.   That's why we are dealing with the repercussions already.  People consider this mentality of, “as long as he's making money,” and that's why we have a lot of people that are okay with doing questionable things. If you are in a working society, you wouldn't be doing those things unless you really wanted to. There's no reason why you would want to be a clown when you're not part of a circus. So I just look at certain things and I think, “oh, God, I wish we had better leaders. I wish we had a better, administrative arm.”

If you look at it, it's like people have just outsourced, not just intelligence now, but even their justice system. People don't have faith in the judiciary anymore. They're more comfortable with going to social media personalities that will bring them justice because of their following. It just is quite telling that people are more comfortable with putting their trust in somebody that's just within the same sets of limitations as themselves.  

That in itself lies the lesson where it's like we can see that this person is able to pull this much public appeal or public opinion. So why can't we, as the public, pull our own public opinion ourselves and engineer the change that we so desperately want?  So, yeah, it's a lot.

Cover Credit: _teeshots

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The annual NBO Film Festival is returning to Nairobi this October for its seventh edition, expanding its offerings with new competitions, a filmmaker retrospective and a broader industry programme under the theme “Cinema for Us.”

Running from October 15 to 25, the festival will take place across four venues: Prestige Plaza, Unseen Cinema, Kaloleni Social Hall and, for the first time, Alliance Française Nairobi. 

The expanded footprint reflects NBO’s ambition to make cinema part of Nairobi’s wider public life, bringing audiences together through screenings, filmmaker conversations, City Dialogues and community programmes.

This year also marks a significant expansion of the festival’s competitive programme. The Fiction Feature Film Competition, introduced in 2025, will return alongside a new Short Film Fiction Competition, creating a dedicated space for short-form storytelling. NBO is also introducing the Nick Wambugu Prize for Documentary, honouring the late Kenyan filmmaker known for his work in documentary filmmaking, including The People Shall.

The festival will also present its first filmmaker retrospective, dedicated to acclaimed French-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis, whose films include Félicité and Tey. Gomis is expected to attend audience and industry events during the festival, with the retrospective examining his body of work and creative evolution. Supported by EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture), the full retrospective line-up is scheduled to be announced on September 9.

Beyond screenings, NBO 2026 is placing greater emphasis on the infrastructure behind African cinema. Its expanded industry programme will include the NBO Project Showcase, creative labs and professional exchanges designed to connect filmmakers with industry professionals while supporting projects in development and pre-production.

For Artistic Director Mbithi Masya, the festival’s “Cinema for Us” theme is rooted in the belief that African audiences should be able to experience, discuss and celebrate the stories being made across the continent at home.

With its expanded venues, competitive categories and industry programming, NBO’s seventh edition positions the festival as more than a showcase of films. It is becoming a meeting point for Nairobi audiences, filmmakers and the wider African creative industry – one designed to keep cinema within the cultural life of the city.

Cover Credit: NBO FESTIVAL

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For its second annual edition, this year, Afro Plus Fest returned with a sold out event headlined by major acts across Afrobeats, dancehall, soca, R&B and hip-hop. Held in the DMV, Maryland, this past weekend, it was a full 3-day experience that saw headliners such as Wizkid, Davido, Tems, Ayra Starr and Alkaline take the stage – as well as supporting acts namely Latto, Sexyy Red, Chief Keef, Tiwa Savage, Sarkodie, Odeal and more.

Dubbed as the largest celebration of global Black music and culture, Afro Fest debuted last year, founded by DMV (Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia) native Michael Awosanya who noted that the festival represents the culmination of years spent building spaces for African and diaspora culture in the region. 

A Prince George’s County local and Towson University alum, Awosanya began organizing DJ battles and dance competitions before bringing artists, including heavyweights like Burna Boy and Asake, to the region. 

That work eventually culminated in Afro Plus Fest’s inaugural edition in 2025, a one-day event at the RFK Festival Grounds, which sold out and drew more than 20,000 attendees. The festival also generated an estimated $10 million in local economic impact, establishing Afro Plus as more than a concert but a growing cultural and economic platform.

That first-year response set the stage for an even more ambitious sophomore edition which expanded from a single day to a 3-day format and moved from the RFK Festival Grounds to the Northwest Stadium Complex in Landover. Additionally, it was projected to draw as many as 120,000 attendees across Labor Day Weekend, reflecting the rapid growth of an event that is positioning itself around the breadth of Black music and diaspora culture rather than a single sound or region.

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In that sense, Afro Plus joins a wider festival movement using large-scale live experiences to bring Black artists, audiences, businesses and cultural expressions into the same space; therefore pushing its central idea even further and the increasingly interconnected sounds of the African diaspora. 

If its sold-out debut proved there was an audience for that vision, then this year’s 3-day expansion shows just how far that audience can reach. It also ultimately suggests that Afro Plus may be building something with staying power across other cities such as London, Dallas, among others, beyond its inaugural location.

Cover Image Credit: Afro Plus Fest

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The scenes witnessed at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on the first of Jay-Z’s two-night JAŸ-Z30 London show can only be described as captivating, iconic and legendary. For the Brooklyn rapper celebrating the 30th anniversary of his debut album Reasonable Doubt, this was another stop on the tour, a true celebration of the iconic catalogue he has built over his 30-year career and his impact on hip-hop.

The show marked a major moment, not only celebrating 30 years of his career but also his first solo performance in London in 13 years, since his Magna Carter tour, and his last time on stage alongside Beyoncé on their On The Run II tour in 2018. From the start of the show, which began with Hackney native Idris Elba delivering the intro to “American Gangsta”, Jay showed why he is one of the greatest of all time. The show featured an iconic setlist and a band of musicians who enriched the songs. It also featured stunning visuals that matched themes and moments from his life and career. It was truly special to witness an artist who has built and delivered a show at that level 30 years into his career.

His energy towards the crowd was truly next level. The transitions and outfit changes flowed effortlessly across the 2-hour show, which felt like it could've gone on with the amount of music he has. The love and deep respect for all he has was well and truly alive in the stadium of fans who were not only London locals but also very much international, having crossed borders and seas. New York was present, as shown by the number of American accents and the NY merch all around. It was worth every minute and truly euphoric to witness.

From the announcement of the show, which was taking place on September 4th, there was high anticipation that he would be joined on stage by his wife, Beyoncé, who just happened not only to be celebrating her 45th birthday but also the 20th anniversary of her second album, B’Day. Yet on this night, she was merely one among the crowd, watching like a proud wife and, most importantly, a fan. She did have a brief moment in the spotlight when the crowd sang happy birthday to her and put on a fireworks show in her honour.  Another iconic moment came when he was joined by two other musical legends, The Fugees, who took the stage to perform a 3-track medley of “Killing Me Softly,” “Ready or Not,” and “Fu-Gee-La” from their album The Score, which is also celebrating 30 years since its release. The group went back with Jay, who opened for them on his first European tour, so the moment was full circle for both legends. Another legend who took the stage was the UK's own Giggs, who joined HOV for the UK anthem "Talking The Hardest." Having previously shouted him out in his 2022 single “GOD DID”, it only made sense for him to bring him out, adding in his “Welcome To The Jungle” verse and adding in his own freestyle ad-libs over the iconic beat.

There was so much to take in from the show in how it married and came together from the production, which was quite simple yet maximised in its execution of the stage design, screen and lighting show. It was much needed, and it really showcased Hov's true artistry and performance. Multiple outfit changes and transitions flowed effortlessly before you realised they were happening. The setlist was crafted not only to showcase his many hits but also his catalogue as a whole. It included tracks like “Pray” “Fuckwithmeyouknowigotit” “Run This Town” “Dead Presidents” “Can I Live” “Song Cry” “Girls Girls Girls” “Niggas In Paris” “Public Service Announcement” and the show closer “Numb / Encore” It was a perfect blend of old and new yet also timeless delivering something for the old school JAY-Z fans as well of those of the new generation. Backed by a band of live string players, drummers, piano players, and electric guitarists, the show enhanced the songs' sound and emotion, adding a special touch to the musicality. Not to mention the visuals displayed throughout the show, put together by Gabriel Moses, which spoke to the emotions and impact of the songs and the significant cultural and personal moments in his career. His vocal performance is another thing to note, as his breathwork and control were flawless throughout. Whilst some of his counterparts struggle to maintain it throughout a couple of songs. As a 56-year-old who performed with the energy and hunger of someone who just started, he reinforced that he is still the best in the game, because no rapper comes to mind who can match that breathwork and control.

The whole thing was captivating to witness and will stay in the memory of all who saw him and will see him for the remainder of his run of shows, as somebody who has retired from music, having not released any new original material since 2017’s 4:44 album. He clearly showed that music will always be in him. Dusting off the mic and showing the world why he really is one of the greats, and that his legacy does speak for itself. Rappers, artists, and creatives should take note of the master at work, showing that even at this point in his career and life, he remains meticulous and maintains a status that will forever be etched in the history books.

Cover Credit: Chloe Newman

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August 31, 2026 might just be a few days ago but it has become one of the most important dates in global pop culture history. 

Exactly two weeks before the 30th anniversary of Tupac Shakur’s death, a Las Vegas courtroom finally delivered a verdict in the murder that had gone unsolved for three decades. His longtime rival, Keffe D, was found guilty.

Duane "Keffe D" Davis was convicted of first-degree murder for orchestrating the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. 

Significantly, the prosecution did not have a murder weapon, DNA evidence, fingerprints or a surviving eyewitness who could place Davis in the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired, given that every other alleged occupant of that car is dead. 

Instead, what the prosecution did have was Davis's own words, spoken across nearly two decades of interviews, a BET documentary and a memoir he published in 2019 titled Compton Street Legend, in which he described his role in the murder in detail. The jury convicted him on those words, and nothing else was needed.

Las Vegas detectives travelled to Southern California a dozen times in the years after the murder and were met with uncooperative witnesses, unreliable informants and a wall of silence that Suge Knight and the South Side Compton Crips maintained with the consistency of people who understood exactly what breaking it would cost them. 

Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, the man Davis says fired the shots, was killed in an unrelated gang shooting in 1998 and took whatever he knew with him. The code of silence in gang culture is not merely social pressure but survival infrastructure, maintained by fear and enforced by consequence, and for 30 years it worked exactly as designed. Law enforcement could not break it, forensic science could not break it, and the passage of time did not break it.

Keffe D broke it himself, not under duress, not in exchange for a deal, not because a witness turned on him, but across a 2008 police interview in which he opened by saying 'Don't bullshit me, and I won't bullshit y'all,' described the positions of everyone in the car, and named his nephew Orlando 'Baby Lane' Anderson as the one who pulled the trigger, all in exchange for immunity from drug charges he believed would carry a life sentence. A BET Death Row Chronicles appearance in 2018 where he described how the fatal shots came from the backseat, a memoir in which he wrote about obtaining the gun and searching for Tupac - 'Them jumping on my nephew gave us the ultimate green light to do something,' he wrote. 'Tupac chose the wrong game to play.' When they spotted the car: 'No words exchanged, the time for talking had passed, the sht was about to go down', and YouTube interviews with anyone who would listen. 

The prosecutor's closing statement captured the situation plainly: "For nearly 18 years, Duane Davis has told the police, television, books, YouTube interviewers, anybody that will listen. He has told you he is responsible for the murder of Tupac Shakur. Tell him you hear him." 

The jury heard him.

Davis kept talking because talking was profitable, because the memoir generated income and the interviews generated profile, and because the reputation of being the man who orchestrated one of hip-hop's most notorious murders carried its own currency in the underworld he operated in.After his arrest in 2023, he told ABC News: 'I shouldn't have said nothing. I'm innocent, man.' He also claimed he had never read his own memoir and that his co-author wrote it independently. 

The culture of silence that hip-hop built around this murder survived everything except the man at the centre of it, who talked ‘too much’, until he spoke to a jury that was finally listening.

Cover  Credit: John Locher/Pool/AP

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Last summer, Pharrell Williams walked out of his Louis Vuitton presentation at Paris Fashion Week wearing a shoe nobody had seen before. Chunky, strange, nearly six inches wide, built on the chassis of a 2005 Adidas Adistar Cushion 3 running shoe but bearing almost no resemblance to it. 

The 3D moulded rubber panels protruding from the surface in organic, dimensional clusters gave the shoe its name. The Virginia Adistar Jellyfish. Footwear News named it their 2025 Sneaker of the Year. Every colourway sold out the moment it became available. The shoe that nobody had seen before became one that everybody wanted.

The Jellyfish sits outside everything Pharrell has been doing at Louis Vuitton. His LV tenure, now in its third year, has produced wearable, considered, commercially reliable collections season after season, with the spectacle of the shows absorbing the creative risk the clothes themselves rarely take on. The Pont Neuf debut, the Snakes and Ladders installation at the Pompidou, the DROPHAUS Zen garden: all of it ambitious, theatrical, and surrounding garments that critics have consistently found safe. The Jellyfish operates on different logic. It is polarising, technically strange, deeply personal, designed under his VIRGINIA creative alias, named after his Virginia roots, priced at $300 and built around an aesthetic that most brands would have softened before it reached retail. For once, the object itself was carrying the risk.

From August 2025 through July 2026, every Jellyfish colourway sold out immediately. The Focus Olive/Orange debut. The Real Green and Solid Grey paired release. The Triple Black and Royal Blue in February. Each drop was deliberately limited: raffle releases, Virginia website exclusives, pop-up appearances in cities including Chicago where Pharrell arrived in a box truck to the Adidas store in Wicker Park. 

The shoe commanded nearly triple its retail price on StockX and GOAT. Pharrell and Adidas had built one of the most coveted sneaker stories in recent memory, and the conversation around the Jellyfish stayed alive because demand consistently outpaced supply.

The Triple White dropped August 1, 2026, and something shifted. For the first time, a Jellyfish colourway was made available through big-box retailers, Foot Locker, Finish Line, wider distribution than any previous release. It was the first colourway to sit. Business of Fashion asked directly whether Adidas was misreading the market. The sneaker community noticed. The shoe that had never been findable for longer than it took a line to clear was suddenly on shelves.

What happened next is the more interesting part of the story. The Crystal Sand dropped August 22, also in wider distribution, and sold through considerably faster. The Triple White sitting was not the end of the Jellyfish hype. It was a data point Adidas absorbed and responded to. 

For the Timber, dropping September 5, Adidas introduced a Golden Ticket system through the ‘confirmed’ app, giving select fans guaranteed purchase access without the usual release-day scramble. The brand is not retreating from wider distribution. It is learning how to manage it. The Golden Ticket is a demand management tool, a way of maintaining the feeling of exclusivity inside a release that is no longer actually exclusive.

Adidas has also already produced a takedown model, the Adistar XLG 2.0, a more accessible version of the Jellyfish silhouette that signals the shoe has become significant enough to warrant its own ecosystem. 

This is how hype products mature. They generate a more accessible tier that lets the original retain its cultural position while the brand captures a wider market. It is the same logic that produced the Stan Smith Recon after the original Stan Smith became ubiquitous, and the same logic that will determine whether the Jellyfish remains a cultural object or becomes a product that used to mean something.

The Watermoc makes the architecture even clearer. Dropping the same day as the Timber, September 5, and priced at $140, the VIRGINIA Watermoc is the third silhouette in Pharrell's footwear line alongside the Jellyfish and the Flat Earther. 

Built on an early-2000s Adidas Adventure Water Moc base, it has a neoprene upper, bungee lacing, reflective webbing and a rubber lug outsole built for wet terrain. It debuted at a VIRGINIA beach takeover in Marseille earlier this summer. Three colourways, Blue, Yellow and Black, launch globally September 5 through the CONFIRMED app and select retailers. 

Where the Jellyfish is about expression, the Flat Earther reinterpretation, the Watermoc is where VIRGINIA gets experimental, and at $140 it brings a different customer into the ecosystem without touching what the Jellyfish represents at $300. This is not Adidas managing one shoe's hype. It is Pharrell building a brand with deliberate tiers, and the Jellyfish sits at the top of it.

The problem Adidas is trying to solve does not have a precedent that ends well: whether a shoe can be both coveted and available, both culturally significant and commercially maximised, is a question the sneaker industry has been trying to answer for decades without arriving at a clean solution. 

Pharrell designed something genuinely strange and it worked, commercially, culturally, critically. Adidas now has to decide how to scale something whose value was partly built on the fact that it could not be scaled. The Triple White sitting suggested the market had a ceiling. The Crystal Sand recovering suggested the ceiling was higher than one bad week implied. The Golden Ticket system suggests Adidas is trying to find a distribution model that preserves the feeling of the shoe without limiting the revenue it can generate.

Pharrell wore the Timber colourway at his Louis Vuitton SS26 show in Paris before it had a release date. The worlds he is operating in, LV, VIRGINIA, Adidas, are not separate. They are different expressions of the same design thinking, and the Jellyfish is where that thinking has produced its most uncompromising result. The Timber drops September 5, and nothing about how it performs will settle what is actually being decided here.

Cover Credit: Pharrell Williams in Adidas VIRGINIA Adistar Jellyfish

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Today is the 45th birthday anniversary of one of pop’s biggest songbirds: Beyoncé. Somewhere in Lagos’ bustling Lekki suburbs a group of fans are planning a special party in her honour — a tradition they’ve held for years. 

Elsewhere in Atlanta, some others from the ‘Beyhive’ are hosting something similar.

The same thing is happening across Paris, Mexico City, Dublin, Bangkok, Toronto, and Barcelona, thanks to her distro-publishers Sony Music. Beyoncé, herself, is expected at the London edition tonight, as she’s in town for Jay-Z’s concert as well.

Social media is agog with fan updates on their own versions of celebrations across the world. Fan-pages are buzzing with tributes. A large slice of the internet is celebrating with the mother-of-three today, because to her large fanbase — one of the most dedicated among contemporary fandoms —  it is kind of a big deal. 

However, beyond the extravaganza tied to her birthday festivities tonight, the parties are also curated to celebrate her just-released 20th anniversary edition of her sophomore album, B’day. 

This expanded digital version contains 31 songs, with guest features from late Mexican-American powerhouse Selina Quintanilla and Colombian rapper Maluma. Beyoncé clinched approval from Selena’s estate for the duet “Irreemplazable (Como La Flor)”, having popularly cited Selena as one of her biggest influences behind her 2007 Spanish EP, Irreemplazable. 

The remastered version also melds B-sides, Spanish-language recordings, extended material, archival tracks and previously unreleased tracks like “Creole,” “Back Up,” “Lost Yo Mind,” and “Can I Watch You” featuring Pharrell Williams alongside other original tracks from 2006. 

Arriving three years after she went solo, Beyoncé’s sophomore album, B’Day was a defining mark for one of popularCover Credit: Parkwood Entertainment music’s most recognisable women. Twenty years later, that is yet to change. 

So far, Beyoncé has become an artist for whom music, fashion, choreography, photography and visual storytelling operate as parts of the same creative language. Her albums have become events, her performances extensions of their worlds and her visual choices subjects of cultural conversation in their own right. 

The 35-time Grammy Award winner first teased the 20-year commemoration with, “Morning Dew (Donk)” – released earlier on July 4, a kick-off to the 60-day countdown that heralded the album’s unveiling. 

The four-LP edition also includes a commemorative booklet and collectible prints, inevitably inviting nostalgia – while Beyoncé also remastered the accompanying videos, originally captured on 35mm, recoloured and finished in 4k Ultra HD. The reworked video for “Déjà Vu,” featuring Jay-Z and directed by Sophie Muller, was also released alongside the anniversary album.

Revisiting B’Day in 2026 shows a pristine moment when Beyoncé was learning how to make an album visible. Nonetheless, one thing we have to make clear right from the start though is that Beyoncé did not invent visual storytelling in pop, nor did she invent the visual album. 

Long before B’Day, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Madonna and more had explored strong visual identities for their music, while specific artists such as Missy Elliott had radically expanded what a Black artist could do with a music video. Missy's surreal environments, exaggerated silhouettes and playful approach to tech and fashion rivalled the status quo of music marketing around that era. 

Kelis known for her 2003 hit “Milkshake” was similarly unwilling to remain visually predictable, using fashion, colour, sexuality and experimentation to construct an identity that was inseparable from her music. Ciara, meanwhile, made choreography fundamental to the experience of her early records. Her body was not simply present in the music video; movement became part of the music's vocabulary.

Still, Beyoncé arrived within that lineage and showed how these elements could be consolidated around one of the world's biggest pop stars. 

B’Day was an unusually visual project for its time. Songs including “Déjà Vu,” “Ring the Alarm,” “Get Me Bodied,” “Freakum Dress,” “Suga Mama” and “Green Light” were accompanied by distinct visual identities, allowing Beyoncé to appear glamorous, confrontational, sensual, playful and commanding across the same album cycle. 

The scale became even clearer with the B’Day Anthology Video Album, which gathered 13 videos connected to the album and its deluxe material. The project transformed the record from a collection of songs with promotional videos into a body of music that could be experienced visually as well as sonically. 

That does not make B’Day the first visual album. It does, however, make it an important forerunner to the way Beyoncé would eventually approach the format of visual albums. When she would eventually release her self-titled fifth album seven years later, with a video accompanying every song, the visual album became an undeniable part of mainstream pop vocabulary. 

C/O Parkwood Entertainment and Youtube

Seen from 2013, B’Day might have been an early prototype. Black pop's visual history is much older than Beyoncé, but her contribution is instead one of consolidation and scale. 

Additionally, fashion was central to that construction. The clothes were not simply accessories to the songs; they helped establish the characters Beyoncé inhabited from video to video. 

Choreography worked in the same way. A song such as “Get Me Bodied” was difficult to separate from movement, just as “Freakum Dress” became culturally attached to an idea of dressing, confidence and physical presence. The music could travel through radio, but the image gave it another life.

That relationship between music and appearance would become increasingly important throughout the next decade. Rihanna made reinvention a central component of pop identity, moving through radically different visual eras without losing her recognisability while Kanye West is revolutionary in the way he developed album campaigns in which artwork, fashion, stage design and public persona increasingly operated as one creative system. Together with artists who came before them, these developments have helped establish the expectation that a successful album should have a world around it.

But Beyoncé would take that expectation further. Take Lemonade for instance, where she would eventually turn the visual album into a vessel for autobiography, Black womanhood, Southern identity and historical memory; or on the world her 7th studio album, Renaissance constructed around Black dance music, queer cultural histories, fashion and liberation. Cowboy Carter would use the scale of a Beyoncé album to interrogate country music and the place of Black artists within American musical history.

Those projects are more ambitious than B’Day, but that underlying instinct is familiar. The music is never expected to exist alone. That may be the most enduring significance of B’Day. It arrived before the contemporary pop industry had fully embraced the idea of the “era,” but it understood its potential. 

In that sense, B’Day belongs to a transitional period in global Black pop. Music television was still powerful, but digital culture was beginning to change how artists reached audiences. Fashion magazines, music videos, DVD releases, performances and celebrity photography all contributed to the construction of a star. Beyoncé was operating at the centre of that project and learning how to make those different forms speak to one another.

The result was not simply a successful album. It was a more expansive idea of what an album could be. That idea would eventually travel far beyond Beyoncé. Contemporary artists now, be it Ayra Starr, Tyla and more, release music surrounded by carefully constructed aesthetics, from photography and fashion to choreography, stage design and social media. Fans do not only stream albums; they study their visual languages, recreate their outfits and participate in their worlds. The “era” has become a standard way of organising pop culture.

Ultimately, Beyoncé did not create that system alone. But B’Day shows how early she was in understanding its potential. Two decades down the line, that may be the most revealing way to revisit the album. Its legacy is not limited to the singles we can name off the top of our minds; more readily its deeper significance lies in the way Beyoncé began treating “visuals” accompanying a song as part of the song's cultural life and promoting that tradition across contemporary music. 

Cover Credit: Parkwood Entertainment

Sixty Years On, London’s Biggest Carnival Is Keeping Caribbean Culture Alive 

At 6am on Sunday morning, paint, powder and music returned to the streets of West London. It's a full spectacle of Caribbean pageantry, restless Soca sounds and an array of parades through the city streets.

This year, J'Ouvert opened the first full day at Notting Hill Carnival, sending revellers through the neighbourhood before the children's parade took over.

By Monday, enormous masquerader bands in feathered costumes were moving around the main route while reggae, soca, calypso, dub, jungle and Afrobeats poured from more than 30 static sound systems.

The Carnival returned last weekend for its 60th anniversary. The carnival grew from Caribbean community celebrations in London during the late 1950s and 1960s, particularly among people from Trinidad and other parts of the West Indies. 

It was named after Notting Hill, the West London area where the street carnival sprang from and is still held. Following the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, Caribbean activists and organisers used music, dance and carnival traditions as forms of community celebration and cultural assertion.

The UK’s national steelband competition, Panorama, opened the weekend on Saturday. Families and children led Sunday’s programme, followed by the adult parade on Bank Holiday Monday. 

Around two million people were immersed in the festivities across the weekend, once again turning a residential part of London into one of the world’s largest street festivals.

Nearly £5 million in public funding supported the 2026 edition as organisers and City Hall addressed overcrowding and safety around an event that has outgrown every early expectation. The investment protected a living piece of Black British history in the neighbourhood that created it.

Meanwhile, this year’s Notting Hill Carnival ended with 636 arrests across its two main days, up from 528 in 2025. 

The Metropolitan Police recorded 242 arrests on Sunday and 394 on Monday, with offences ranging from drug possession and supply to weapons offences, assaults, sexual offences and public-order violations. 

Police also expanded their use of live facial recognition, which generated 214 alerts and led to 121 arrests, while extensive stop-and-search operations recovered 68 weapons, including a handgun. 

Despite the scale of the arrests, police said serious violence remained markedly lower for the second consecutive year, with two knife attacks recorded and neither resulting in life-threatening injuries.  

Ultimately, Notting Hill Carnival still offers the joy imagined by its founders in a form that remains unprecedented. Caribbean London gathers in public, younger generations inherit the masquerader, pan and sound-system traditions, and an entire city enters the celebration. For one weekend, the streets become the institution. And, the people, a living archive. 

10 Unforgettable Moments From Notting Hill Carnival History

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‍Claudia Jones Brings Carnival Indoors ‍

England’s first major Caribbean carnival took place inside St Pancras Town Hall on January 30, 1959. Claudia Jones organised the televised event after the racist violence in Notting Hill the previous year. Mighty Terror performed calypso, steel bands played and a Carnival Queen was crowned. Jones had created a stage on which Caribbean London could answer hostility with its own culture.

‍A Steel Band Starts Walking ‍

Activist Rhaune Laslett’s community festival changed once Russell Henderson’s steel band stepped into the street. Children and residents followed as the musicians walked through Notting Hill, producing the procession that became the foundation of the modern Carnival. A local celebration had found its defining movement almost spontaneously.

The Sound Systems Plug In 

Leslie Palmer officially invited static sound systems into Carnival in 1973. Duke Vin and Count Suckle had already played sets informally around Ladbroke Grove, but official recognition gave Jamaican sound-system culture a permanent place beside Trinidadian mas, calypso and steelpan. Today, more than 30 systems turn separate street corners into distinct parties.

Carnival and the Police Collide ‍

The 1976 Carnival ended in open confrontation after police moved into the crowd to arrest suspected pickpockets. Around 1,600 officers had been deployed, many facing young Black attendees already angered by aggressive policing. Bottles, stones and batons filled the streets; roughly 60 people were arrested. Photographs from the day became some of Carnival’s most enduring and politically charged images.

‍Good Times Rolls Into Carnival 

Brothers Norman and Joey Jay brought their hand-built Good Times sound system to Carnival in 1980. It grew into the famous Good Times bus, known for playing soul, funk, rare groove, disco and house outside the stricter reggae selections of the period. Its packed dancefloor helped widen Carnival’s musical vocabulary and became an attraction in its own right.

‍Carnival Goes Ahead After the London Riots 

The riots that spread across London in August 2011 placed Carnival under intense pressure. Calls for cancellation arrived only weeks before the event. Carnival went ahead under one of the largest policing operations in its history, and the weekend passed without the disorder many had predicted. Its survival defended the distinction between a Caribbean cultural festival and the unrest happening elsewhere in the city.

Notting Hill Goes Green for Grenfell

Grenfell Tower stood close enough to the Carnival route for its absence to be felt everywhere. Revellers wore green in honour of those killed in the June fire, bands lowered their music and the crowd observed a silence on both days. A festival famous for uninterrupted noise held still for its neighbours.

‍Carnival Enters the Internet 

COVID-19 removed Notting Hill Carnival from the streets for the first time in decades. Organisers responded with a digital edition streamed across four channels, carrying performances, DJ sets and discussions into homes around the world. The crowds and physical force of the sound systems were missing, though the broadcast kept Carnival visible during lockdown.

The Streets Reopen 

After two successive street cancellations, J’Ouvert returned before sunrise in August 2022. Paint-covered revellers reclaimed the route, children’s bands followed and the adult parade restored the full scale of the weekend. The celebration began with a 72-second silence for the 72 people who died at Grenfell, reconnecting Carnival’s comeback with the community around it.

‍Two Million People Mark 60 Years 

The 60th-anniversary edition brought Panorama, J’Ouvert, children’s mas, adult bands and more than 30 sound systems back to west London from August 29 to 31. Around two million people showed up across the weekend. Paint flew before breakfast, steelpan filled the park and costumes took over the road. The small procession begun in 1966 had become a city within the city.

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Femme Nature Put The Casting Decision In Their Broadcast Channel. The Girls Chose.

Femme Nature’s Heat Check casting turns a campaign call into a community-led story of fashion, girlhood and self-expression in Lagos.

LAGOS, NIGERIA — What started as an open casting call for three Heat Check campaign girls is becoming something bigger. Lagos women have stepped forward, shown up as themselves, and found a community where they can connect, express themselves, and simply be.

Most brands cast a campaign behind closed doors. There is usually a moodboard, a casting agency, a shortlist, and a final decision made by a handful of people in a room.

But Femme Nature, Severenature’s official womenswear line, did things differently. Beyond the clothes, Femme Nature is building a community of girls who explore fashion through shared experiences, meaningful conversations, creativity, and fun.

So when it came time to decide who would represent the next chapter of that world, there was really only one place to look: the women themselves.

The Brief Was Simple: Show Us YOU

For Heat Check, Femme Nature’s second womenswear drop, the casting call was opened to women across Lagos with a simple invitation: come outside, talk about yourself, and show what summer looks like through your eyes.

There were no requirements. Just set up your camera, be original, and be creative.

And Lagos answered.

Tara Gold kicked off the casting call video, inviting women to step forward and launch the Heat Check collection with her. The message was clear: come forward and show what makes you uniquely YOU.

Whether plus-size or slim, dark-skinned or light-skinned, women were encouraged to get creative and show their bold, sexy, and confident style. The brief was an invitation to freely express their idea of streetwear with a mix of femininity. And they did.

Many filmed themselves in the comfort of their bedrooms and on balconies.

Some included their friends, with girls hyping each other up across split screens.

Others took their cameras outside, filming on Lagos streets or on the way home, with no agency, experience, or portfolio.

One woman even filmed and edited her entry straight after an exam, ending with the words, “You called, and I answered.” Somehow, that quickly became the unofficial but perfect catchphrase for the casting call.

There was no single way to answer the call, which was exactly the point. It was beautiful to see over 50 women dress for themselves, create their own energy, and make ordinary moments feel like occasions.

And Then, the Girls Found Each Other

When the casting entries went live, the Femme Nature “For The Girls” broadcast channel — a community that has been part of the brand since its very first collection — became the home of the public voting process. The channel gave the women already inside the Femme Nature world a say in who would move forward and become part of the Heat Check story.

From the casting process, three selected women will share a ₦1,000,000 reward and front the Lagos chapter of Heat Check.

The response became bigger than simply choosing campaign girls. Hundreds of women joined the conversation, shared their favourites, rallied their friends, and showed up to support the girls they believed in. Public and internal votes determined the Top 10 finalists.

And because Femme Nature knows just how hard every girl showed up, each of the Top 10 women received ₦100,000 in Femme Nature store credit — a little something to celebrate their creativity, confidence, and willingness to put themselves out there.

But something even more powerful happened alongside the casting.

Women who had never met started campaigning for one another. They hyped their favourites, shared entries, and pulled other girls they knew into the conversation. What started as a way to choose three campaign girls quickly became a space where women could meet, connect, and support one another.

This experience reflects what Femme Club, the spine of Femme Nature, represents: a safe place for women to meet, connect, explore fashion, femininity, confidence, and self-expression on their own terms. The “For The Girls” channel has become one of the most active parts of that world, and it is not going anywhere now that the casting is done.

Is Summer the Same Everywhere? Heat Check Is Coming

As Heat Check unfolds, the campaign will come to life through a series of experiences built for the girls. From a Lagos spin class to Hot or Not, a Lagos × New York styling game show where fashion stylists and community girls put their spin on Femme Nature pieces, the campaign will move beyond clothing and into culture.

The journey will also include a funfair and a community launch event where women can shop the collection, hang out, and celebrate together.

For now, Lagos is where the Heat Check story is being built with the girls who answered the call. But it will not be the last stop. Femme Nature will extend the Heat Check world to London and Brazil, exploring how the same season can take on completely different identities depending on where you are — and how women choose to experience it.

The Girls Chose. Now the Story Continues. If there is one thing to take from this chapter, it is this:

Femme Nature asked Lagos to show up.

Lagos answered.

The girls chose.

Now, they are connecting online and offline as Heat Check continues to take shape with the women inside it.

The Heat Check story is only getting started.

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Like several great inventions, House music has travelled continents, evolving into the diverse versions that defined it everywhere it went. 

Now, Something similar is happening in Nigeria. 

This present wave of indigenous Nigerian House-pop fusion appears to be one of House music’s strongest influences in the country’s music scene.  

Just as the French, the South Africans and Europeans localised House music for their audiences, Nigerians are now creating and playing House music that is textured with the accent, lingo and spirit of the community. 

  So why don’t we talk about ‘Nigerian House’?  

The music itself is harder to ignore on a Lagos dance floor. The four-on-the-floor pulse remains, but around it are sounds that belong unmistakably to the environment in which the music is now being made: Yoruba and Pidgin vocals, familiar percussion, Nigerian melodic instincts, indigenous phrases and singing patterns that alter the character of the electronic production carrying them. House may have travelled here from elsewhere, but somewhere along that journey, Nigerians began interfering with it.

This is what makes the current evolution of Afrohouse in Nigeria interesting. Nigerian artists are not simply adopting an existing global sound. They are interpreting it through their own languages, rhythms, musical traditions and experiences. As more artists, producers and DJs experiment within the space, Afrohouse is beginning to develop something that sounds increasingly like a Nigerian accent. But this isn’t entirely new. 

The foundations of “Nigerian House” dates back to a period before streaming platforms and the current explosion of electronic music culture

For instance, Niniola has spent more than a decade building a career around a sound she has consistently identified as Afrohouse. When she released “Ibadi” in 2014, she was entering a Nigerian music industry where the sound was still unfamiliar to many listeners. She has spoken about how people questioned whether the genre would last, particularly because she was singing Yoruba over house-influenced production. She also resisted record-label offers for years because she wanted to protect the sound she was developing.

Her story challenges the idea that Nigeria has only just discovered Afrohouse. What is happening now is less about introducing Nigerians to house music and more about watching Nigerian artists become increasingly comfortable deciding what house music can sound like here.

And this raises the more interesting question: what exactly makes Afrohouse Nigerian?

It would be easy to reduce the answer to indigenous lyrics, indigenous percussion or samples from older Nigerian records. Those things can certainly contribute to the sound, but they cannot be the entire definition. Nigerian music has never depended on a single ingredient to make it Nigerian. Sometimes it is language; sometimes it is rhythm; sometimes it is the way a producer rearranges a familiar musical idea. Sometimes it is the story being told or the audience for whom the music is being made. Nigerian identity can exist in the smallest details of a record without announcing itself loudly.

That makes the idea of “indigenous Afrohouse” particularly interesting and complicated. If the term is going to mean anything beyond a catchy description, it has to be about more than putting a Nigerian vocal over a house beat. It has to consider how Nigerian musical instincts are changing the music itself.

Yimeeka Olayinka's music offers one way of thinking about that question. Across records such as “Ola ” featuring Black Culture and her more recent “Ibadi ,” there is a meeting between electronic production and Nigerian musical expression. The language does not simply sit on top of the production as decoration; it becomes part of the identity of the record. Yoruba is allowed to occupy an electronic space without being translated into something more familiar to an international listener.

That matters because language can do more than tell us where an artist is from. It can determine the feeling of a song. A Yoruba phrase carries its own rhythm, inflection and emotional texture. When it sits over house production, the vocal is not simply bringing Nigerian content into a foreign genre. It is changing the way that genre is experienced.

Xylaa's “ìyà ni wúrà” offers another example of how indigenous language and cultural expression can occupy an electronic space without losing their familiarity. Even the title, which translates to “mother is gold,” carries a distinctly Nigerian cultural resonance. The significance is not simply that Nigerian words are appearing in electronic music; it is that Nigerian cultural references can exist there naturally, without needing to be introduced or explained.

This is one way genres change when they travel. A musical form can be reproduced as closely as possible to its original form, or it can be absorbed by a new environment and eventually emerge differently. Nigeria has a long history of doing the latter. Highlife, jazz, funk, reggae, hip-hop and other foreign influences have all passed through Nigerian hands and been reworked through local traditions.

Afrohouse is now entering that process.

The Nigerian accent is therefore not necessarily found in one particular sound. It can be heard in the language, melodies, rhythms, samples, vocal delivery and the decisions producers make about what should sit at the centre of a record. 

And if Nigerian Afrohouse is still deciding what it wants to sound like, the people helping shape that sound matters too. This is where Nigerian women become part of the larger story, not simply as women entering a male-dominated industry but as artists, producers and selectors helping to determine what the emerging sound can become.

Niniola provides a historical context. Yimeeka’s record demonstrates how Nigerian language and identity can move through electronic production while Xylaa shows how cultural references can remain central within an electronic framework. 

DJ Yin adds another dimension to the conversation. Her role illustrated that Nigerian interpretation does not happen only through singers. DJs and producers are equally important in determining which sounds reach an audience and how those sounds are experienced.

Her work sits within the overlap between Afrohouse, house and Nigeria's wider electronic music culture, demonstrating the importance of the person behind the decks in building a scene. A DJ introduces an audience to unfamiliar sounds, connects records that might not otherwise appear beside each other and can make a song that exists quietly on a streaming platform become the soundtrack to an entire room.

That fluidity is increasingly important in Nigerian music. A DJ can move from Afrobeats into house, from house into Afrohouse and into another electronic form, showing an audience that these categories do not necessarily need to remain separate. The listener may not care whether a record belongs technically to Afrohouse, Afrotech or another electronic subgenre. If the rhythm works, the body responds.

Together, these women point towards the same possibility: Nigerian women are not simply being added to an existing Afrohouse story. They are helping shape what that story becomes. 

However, that influence does not exist in isolation. 

Electronic music has historically depended heavily on the spaces around it: DJs, clubs, parties, festivals, collectives and audiences. A producer can create a brilliant record, but a scene needs somewhere for that record to live.

Lagos is increasingly providing those spaces.

The city's rave culture has expanded beyond the traditional club environment, creating rooms for DJs, producers and audiences interested in electronic music. Warehouse parties, outdoor events and alternative nightlife spaces have helped build communities around sounds that might not always receive the same attention on mainstream radio.

Afrohouse benefits from that shift because a sound needs an audience before it can become a movement. Listeners willing to spend a night with electronic music give producers permission to experiment. DJs can introduce records that might otherwise struggle to find an audience, while artists can collaborate across genres without worrying about whether every song fits neatly into a commercial category.

A scene therefore becomes more than the sum of its releases. It is the DJ who keeps playing the record, the crowd that requests it again, the producer who hears that response and makes another one, and the organiser who creates another night for that audience. These decisions may seem small, but they are how musical cultures develop.

The Blueprint For Nigerian House

This raises the bigger question: is Nigerian Afrohouse becoming a new genre?

The honest answer may be that it is too early to say. Calling it a new genre now could impose boundaries on something that is still evolving. The artists working within the space do not necessarily share one formula, and Afrohouse continues to overlap with other electronic forms. Some artists may identify strongly with the term, while others may simply consider themselves electronic artists.

That uncertainty may actually be the most interesting part of the story.

Perhaps Nigerian Afrohouse does not need to become a neatly defined genre. Perhaps what is emerging is something less rigid: a Nigerian production language within global electronic music, where Yoruba can sit comfortably over a house groove, Nigerian phrases can become the titles of dance records, indigenous references can exist alongside synthesizers and electronic drums, and DJs can move between genres without treating the boundaries as rules.

This matters because Nigeria's global musical influence has largely been discussed through Afrobeats. Electronic music offers another way for Nigerian musical ideas to travel. It does not require every record to sound conventionally Nigerian. Instead, it allows the country's rhythmic instincts, languages, cultural references and musical traditions to enter a global form and change it from within.

That is what makes the current Afrohouse moment worth watching. Not because Afrohouse is destined to become “the next Afrobeats,” but because it demonstrates what can happen when Nigerian artists encounter a global sound and refuse to leave it unchanged.

It may never dominate Nigerian radio. It may remain a relatively niche club sound. It may continue to overlap with Afrotech, house and other electronic genres without settling into a universally agreed definition. None of that necessarily makes it less significant.

Nigerian music has always evolved through collision. Older traditions meet newer technologies, local sounds meet foreign influences, and artists borrow, reshape and return those influences with something changed in the process. Afrohouse is now entering that cycle.

The Nigerian accent will not necessarily sound the same on every record. It may arrive through Yoruba vocals on one track, a Nigerian phrase on another, a familiar percussion pattern somewhere else, or simply through a producer's instinct for rhythm. It may be obvious or almost invisible.

What matters is that Nigerian artists are no longer approaching house music as something that has to remain untouched in order to remain authentic. They are making room for themselves inside it.

Perhaps the most interesting future for Afrohouse in Nigeria is not that it becomes a neatly defined Nigerian genre at all. Perhaps it becomes something less tidy and more useful: a space where Nigerian artists can experiment with electronic music until the distinction between what was imported and what was made here becomes difficult to trace.

The sound travelled to Nigeria. Now Nigeria is giving it an accent.

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Nigeria’s YouTube ecosystem, NollyTube, is the latest boom within the country’s film industry. While Netflix and Amazon Prime investment reduced within Nollywood, NollyTube expanded significantly within the past four years. It grew so popular that more than half of NollyTube videos were consumed from outside Nigeria, a move that’s positioned it as a viable sub-industry and one of Nollywood’s biggest global distribution channels. 

Without commissioning bottlenecks, cinema splits and distribution gatekeepers, NollyTube producers have been creating non-stop with growth as their north star. The only thing that might be slow in catching up, however, is its storytelling. 

Nollywood lovers know that “feeling”, one where they already predict a plot synopsis before the screenplay gets past the first act. Sometimes, from just the thumbnail and title, the plot already looks familiar: the cheating husband, the rich man hiding his wealth, the mother-in-law who cannot let her son's marriage breathe. The volume of films arriving on Nigerian YouTube every week is genuinely extraordinary. The sameness running beneath all of it is what is troubling. 

But how did we get here? 

How did a handful of Nigerians elevate a country’s film industry with crude resources, sheer gut instinct, and will? Well, in 2014, Ruth Kadiri and Uche Nancy set out to answer that question. 

Four years earlier, Jason Njoku began to legally license Nollywood films for YouTube, attracting over a million subscribers on his NollywoodLove channel. He later developed his own streaming platform iROKOtv and focused his attention there, leaving a clear path for Kadiri and Nancy to emerge as NollyTube’s next heaviest contributors. 

Kadiri launched RuthKadiri247 from Lagos. Uche Nancy built a parallel wave from Asaba, creating a YouTube ecosystem for the actors based there, with her own daughters appearing across her productions. Notably, Uduak Isong, a veteran Nollywood producer with over two decades in the industry, moved toward YouTube before it became the default. Their model worked well enough that by 2019, Uche Nancy had acquired a dedicated property specifically for her productions, to combat frequent sabotages from street urchins who attack them when they film outside. As a result, many NollyTube movies became apartment-themed. 

Others built on what Kadiri and Nancy started. Uchenna Mbunabo now has 3.6 million subscribers. Maurice Sam has been on YouTube since 2013 and has amassed 2.5 million subscribers. Uche Montana's channel sits at 1.4 million subscribers, with her movie Chemistry starring Maurice Sam at 11 million views, and Better Half starring Chidi Dike at 23 million. 

Nollywood diva Sonia Uche has 1.3 million. ChineyLove Eze TV has been building on the platform long enough to bridge the pioneer era and the current wave. 

A Blessing in disguise?

The NollyTube era has also been a blessing in disguise to both emerging and veteran actors. Veterans like Chioma Akpotha, Uche Jumbo and Regina Daniels all run their own channels. Regina Daniels who appeared in old Nollywood films as a child now produces her own YouTube content, her presence sitting alongside the broader return of veteran Nollywood actors to the platform. Kanayo O. Kanayo, Emeka Ike, Zubby Michaels, Mike Ezuruonye, Patience Ozokwor, Ngozi Ezeonu and Chioma Okpotha are all back on screen, on YouTube, in films that would not have existed for them in any other distribution model. Their return is the clearest evidence that NollyTube has become mainstream enough to attract the actors who built Nollywood before it had a digital arm.

The model works, and the numbers are only part of why. Marketing on NollyTube has become genuinely interactive in a way traditional distribution never allowed. Actors now shoot skits, behind-the-scenes content and character previews specifically to promote upcoming films, building anticipation directly on the same platforms where their audiences already spend time. The cost of reaching those audiences is a fraction of what a cinema marketing campaign would require. 

Casting, Production Problems

On the flipside, many traditional Nigerian filmmakers from the vintage Nollywood era including Kanayo O. Kanayo has called out some of NollyTube’s casting problems. He’s spoken about NollyTube movies using the same faces, the same pairings, and the same storylines at a pace that prioritises output over originality. 

The mechanism behind the typecasting is not difficult to trace. When an audience responds well to a pairing, for instance, Michael Dappa and Ekama Etim-Inyang, Victory Michael and Omeche Oko, the algorithm validates that response and producers take note. Repeating the pairing is a rational commercial decision - it worked before and the data says it will work again. 

In January 2025, social media personality Lizzy Adebayo catalogued the casting repetition publicly, naming the pairings audiences had begun to identify as NollyTube defaults: Ruth Kadiri and Destiny Etiko, Sam Morris and Sonia Uche, Etinosa and Nosa Rex, Timini Egbuson and Bimbo Ademoye. Afrocritik reviewed Christmas Between Worlds with a single observation: "another romcom starring Michael Dappa, again." The complaint was never about those actors' ability. 

The problem is that rational commercial decisions made consistently across an entire industry produce an ecosystem where creative judgment has been quietly replaced by market logic, and the films begin to feel less like stories than like proven formulas being rerun with minor variations. 

Also, rushed production schedules compound this. When the pressure is to keep channels supplied with content, the time available for casting decisions that go beyond what is familiar shrinks accordingly. The result is an industry that is genuinely productive and genuinely repetitive at the same time, and the two conditions are not separate problems. They have the same problem wearing different faces.

There are also glaring and embarrassing production issues common across NollyTube. Many did not begin with the platform; they were inherited from the same apathy towards excellence that has long troubled conventional Nollywood. Continuity errors, forgotten props, ill-fitting wigs and actors sleeping in full makeup are now easily captured and circulated outside the films themselves by accounts such as GamePhoGuns. These are production-accountability failures intensified by an ecosystem where the pressure to upload consistently often outweighs the need for proper review. 

YouTube’s recent training programmes in Nigeria on monetisation, algorithm optimisation and AI production tools also show that the platform is doing more than hosting this culture of speed; it is helping shape it.

Is NollyTube The Ideal Future?

Nosa Rex appeared on Channels Television to argue that YouTube is saving Nigeria's movie industry. He is one of the actors' fans' names when they describe the overuse problem. Both observations are accurate. YouTube created income and visibility for filmmakers and actors who had no viable path before. It also gave that opportunity to work that has not improved alongside the access it now enjoys. 

Nigerian filmmaker Mo Fakorede has said YouTube budgets cannot support the production scale the industry needs to grow internationally. Kunle Afolayan, at the Lagos Business of Film Summit 2026, said YouTube suits filmmakers who want to bypass gatekeepers, but that for those who want to go international, it is not the future.

Around 70 percent of watch time for Nigerian content on YouTube comes from outside Nigeria. A film uploaded from Lagos is in London, Toronto and Dubai within hours, watched by an audience that can compare, criticise and replay every frame. Ruth Kadiri and Uche Nancy built something that mattered in 2014. The channels that followed them built audiences the same way. Some of those channels are gone now, their content floating across the platform under other people's names. The ones still running are producing more films than ever. Whether more films means better films is the question NollyTube has been uploading since the first channel went live.

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Where Street Football's Past Meets Its Future.

There is a version of London that rarely gets written about: one where different communities, cultures and generations meet around the game.
That was the atmosphere at TOMA London OWN The Cage Finals in Shoreditch, a day where football, music and self-expression came together around the cage.

At its heart, the event was a community showing up for football. Different backgrounds, different parts of London and different generations converged around one cage, with families bringing their kids to play for their teams and the atmosphere building throughout the day.

The football matched the energy. The men's games were tactical and tricky, with four-a-side cage football forcing quick decisions in tight spaces.

The women's games brought their own intensity, with high-scoring, high-energy matches that built towards a final every bit as tense as anything on the men's side. Two different rhythms, one shared intensity.

Music and sport blurred into each other too. Lancey Foux and CityBoyMoe performed courtside, bringing their own energy to a day built around football and self-expression.

Watching from the sidelines were professional footballers Sandro Tonali,  Kobbie Mainoo, Morgan Gibbs-White,  Lauren James and Keira Walsh, adding another layer of experience and inspiration to a day centred on the next generation.

For those documenting the day, the appeal was more than capturing big names. It was seeing players, families, creatives and first-time content creators share the same space and express themselves through the game.

For the day, Shoreditch became a meeting point for football, music, creativity and community, all centred around the cage.

That spirit of expression connects directly to what Toma Own The Cage: London Final set out to celebrate. Jay-Jay Okocha, on hand as one of the tournament's guests, spoke about what stood out to him from watching the qualifiers: players trying things, taking risks and showing what they could do with the ball without being afraid to get it wrong.

“I totally relate to that,” he said, “and I'm delighted that Nike have gone back to the street to discover talent.”

Okocha's presence added another layer of connection between generations of footballers, reflecting the freedom and creativity that the day was built around.

Asked what still separates the best street footballers from everyone else, his answer went beyond skill moves: the ability to trust instinct, play for the team, be unpredictable and keep opponents guessing.

Asked about his own legacy, Okocha didn't reach for medals or moments. He spoke about joy.

“The most important thing is just the smiles I put on people's faces,” he said. “People go through a lot, and it's always hard to make them smile.”

There was room for lighter moments too. Rattling off some of his favourite Nigerian street football lingos, he said  “e dey come” (man on) and “turn belle” (the awareness to hold and turn with the ball)

He handed the next generation a piece of language that's been passed down on Lagos streets for decades, the same instinct Toma Own The Cage: London Final is trying to protect on cages across London.

That same spirit of instinct, creativity and self-expression was present throughout.

By the end of the day, it wasn't any single name on the bill that stood out. It was the people around the cage: families, footballers, musicians, creators and fans, all brought together by the game.

Toma Own The Cage: London Final, was a reminder of what happens when players are given the freedom to take the game and make it their own.
In Shoreditch, that meant football played with instinct, creativity and personality  and a cage that gave everyone a reason to step in.

CREDIT:
Zeks, Creative Exec. Testimony on event atmosphere.
Amran Mohamed, Independent Writer & Documentarian. Behind-the-scenes testimony on event atmosphere.
Jay Jay Okocha. Main interview by Zeks (deeds Magazine)
Photos by: Sage Complex & Makuochukwu Nwajagu 
John-Henry (JHFORTHY) -  EDITOR