In March 2022, the American legacy music magazine Billboard announced that it was launching what it called a “US Afrobeats Chart.” Its popular chart, “Billboard Hot 100” had been for years the authority for music in America. This was in response to the rise of Afrobeats artists and acts in the West.
A year later, Burna Boy sold out the 19,500-seat Madison Square Garden. He was the first African to do this. Three other Nigerian musicians have done it after. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, the story of Ayo Edebiri has been told over and over again. In streaming, wunderkinds like Jade Osiberu and Kunle Afolayan have continued to reinvent the wheel.
What all of this signals is that there is a growing global thirst for Nigerian culture; music, art, film and TV, fashion, and literature. But it remains a steady hand to help navigate what is worth your time in this age of digital excess.
For the last decade, Zikoko has been at the pinnacle of Nigerian youth culture, telling stories about how young Nigerians fall in and out of love, how we grow and lose our money, how we react to government policies, how we japa.
We have done this by having deep-seated conversations with Nigerians of all ages and backgrounds. We have hosted events both large and small, we have been dragged for filth on social media and we have dragged people for filth on the pages of our website. We have joined conversations and started conversations.
In all of this, we have remained true to our mission to be the bastion of Nigerian youth culture, what we watch, listen to, rant about, celebrate and hate.
This is why we are excited to announce our very first Pop newsletter, The Feed by Zikoko, which will help you cut through the noise and understand Nigerian pop culture.
In the last few years, Nigerian pop culture has drastically moved beyond our geographical borders, occupying a very high seat in the global discourse. There is a need for stable plugged-in hands to help shift through the noise and offer the world only what is important to know about Nigerian pop culture.
This is a newsletter for those who know and those who want to know what is happening in Nigerian pop culture.
In The Feed by Zikoko, you will read about the latest from Rema, the first reviews of Kemi Adetiba, the record label deals that have crashed and the celeb ships that have sailed or sunk.
This newsletter, just as the name suggests, will help you navigate your social media feed, as well as your Spotify feed, YouTube feed, celeb news feed and streaming feed. The Feed is a weekly newsletter and will hit inboxes at 4:30 pm every Friday.
The first edition will go out on November 1, 2024. Please drop your email in the box below to sign up to receive it and subsequent editions.