Popular Nigerian musician Wizkid has been earning a lot of plaudits outside the country for his music and other things. He was recently named as Africa’s hottest star by well-respected magazine Vogue.
The magazine made the statement in a report about an event Wizkid held in America. Read an excerpt from their article below:
This past Saturday, Wizkid—currently Africa’s hottest pop star by almost any measure—unveiled his new capsule collection with a takeover of Reign in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.
Afrobeats, a scene centered in Lagos, fuses the melodic sense of West African Highlife and Palm-wine music with a range of Black Atlantic sounds, including dancehall, Soca, and U.K. soul, to arrive at a truly Pan-African pop place.
(In fact Wizkid and some other Nigerian artists describe the movement as “Afropop” and avoid the term “Afrobeats,” which was coined in the U.K. to describe the emerging sound). Lest those new to it underestimate the street value of a piece of Wizkid—the genre’s undisputed king—the shop was jam-packed with hundreds of die-hard fans feverishly snapping pics and exuding Beatlemania-levels of nervous energy at being so close to their idol (he generally performs at arena-size venues in New York and London).
Speaking at the event, Wizkid explained that he decided to hold a pop up shop because he wanted to do something for his fans.
“For me, when I dropped my last project, I just felt it was time to do something for my fans, so they could have almost like, a piece of me. I sat down with my team, and we did a couple designs, we designed some shirts and some bandanas, and we just decided to put it up for the fans—something we intend to do like every three months, put out new collections,” Wizkid explained.
