This is a song you already know.
It's "One Dance" by Drake, a huge hit from two years ago.
But pay attention to this part of it.
The guy singing is Wizkid. He's a Nigerian singer.
And this moment, when Wizkid sings on this track,
was a huge deal for a musical genre that is taking off all over the world.
It's called Afrobeats.
Afrobeats music is the sound of Lagos, Nigeria.
It's high-energy, autotune-heavy, with a constant percussive beat
and a sort of electro-hip-hop sound.
- Turn up!
But it's also way more than that.
Afrobeats is a story of a people, a sound,
and a technological revolution transforming pop music around the world.
It's the story of Africa's cultural influence, and its music industry, on the rise.
It's the story of how one country's music went global.
I'm Yomi Kazeem. This is Quartz.
This is Wizkid.
He's one of the biggest Afrobeats stars in the world.
And this is SARZ.
He's the brains behind a lot of Wizkid's hits, and a ton of other Nigerian pop hits.
He's been producing for a long time.
- When he performed the song, everyone went wild.
- So that was your first big hit?
- First smash hit, yeah.
Today, SARZ is one of the top Afrobeats producers out there,
and he's a big part of why Afrobeats sounds the way it does.
By the way: Afrobeats is not Afrobeat.
The S is important.
Afrobeat was Fela Kuti's big band, jazz-style, Afro-funk music in the 1970s.
Afrobeats is completely different.
It's electronic, catchy; the sound of urban millennial Africa.
And it isn't political:
Afrobeats lyrics are mostly about love, sex, and money.
SARZ says the secret weapon of Afrobeats is basically just one thing:
The beat.
- The beat just has to move you.
Nigerians are a very impatient people.
Once that rhythm stops, it's like "Hey, hey what's going on?"
One of the best examples is "Maradona" by Nigerian pop star Niniola.
"Maradona" was a global hit.
DJ Snake remixed it. And SARZ, of course, produced it.
He broke it down for us.
- I started this beat, I started with the drums.
And there's also this,
and obviously the kick drums.
This is the base line.
I think when I played the bass line, it just made everything come together.
Also, there are keys.
And, add her vocals to it,
and we have Maradona."
So, as African as this sounds, it also sounds universal, like anyone can hear this...
- ...And relate to it?
- And relate to it. And for me, that's a winner.
This is The Beat FM, a London radio station that plays almost entirely Afrobeats.
- We're still in the UK. This is Afrohits on The Beat London 103.6 FM. Keep it on The Beat! Let's go!
- As soon as it came, it just took over.
DBoy and Shopsy Doo are DJs here.
And they say this sound is everywhere in London.
- The only music they want to hear their parties, at their clubs, at their events, is African popular music, a.k.a. Afrobeats.
The Beat FM is owned by a Nigerian company.
Their sister station is one of the biggest stations in Lagos.
And if you ask these guys why Afrobeats is taking off in London, they say it comes down to something big.
Bigger than the music itself.
- I was born here. I went back to Nigeria when I was 11 years old.
And I came back when I was 18.
Afrobeats taps into one of the most loyal and widespread fan bases in the world:
the Nigerian diaspora.
Any place in the world where there are Nigerians, Afrobeats is big.
- The Nigerian diaspora is without a doubt the most important part of promoting Afrobeats to the rest of the world.
Afrobeats has only been able to spread around the world because of YouTube, and social media, and streaming platforms like Spotify and iTunes.
And that's done something really important for Afrobeats artists back in Nigeria.
It's allowed them to actually make money from selling their music.
- Do you have an iTunes account?
- No, I don't.
- Exactly.
Spotify isn't available in most of Africa.
And Nigeria is one of lots of countries where Apple's payment rules make iTunes almost impossible to use.
The main music distribution platform in Nigeria is this:
Street hawkers selling pirated music.
These guys can get you pretty much any of the hottest Afrobeats tracks.
- You have music?
In Lagos, Africa's biggest city, thousands of CDs like these are burned every day.
And when it isn't happening in the streets, it's happening online, where many young people download free music.
- Give me Tiwa Savage.
And while it's informal and unstructured, it's pretty effective.
These guys have found a way to distribute music to the whole country.
The problem is that it's terrible for artists.
So even as Nigeria's music scene flourishes, the money from sales goes to these guys: the pirates.
Which means that Nigerian artists who actually want to make money from sales have to get big abroad.
Otherwise, you can only really make money from concerts, weddings, ringback tones.
But that might be about to change.
- The root and the soul of the music is in Africa.
This is Ezegozie Eze.
He runs the Nigerian branch of the biggest music label in the world: Universal Music.
The Nigeria office is brand new. It just opened this summer.
Afrobeats showed Universal that there was money to be made in Nigeria.
- Twenty years from now, you'll have sounds coming from every corner of the continent. And that's when we'll have our industry.
Eze wants to build up a music distribution network in Africa that's so strong,
music won't have to travel to London, or to New York, for artists to make money.
African musicians could make money selling their music in Africa.
And for Universal, this is bigger than just Afrobeats.
- We have so many different sounds, so many different markets, and we still need to connect to each other.
Eze says a continent with more than 54 countries, with over a billion people shouldn't be reduced to selling one sound.
And that's what Afrobeats has unlocked.
There's a lot more going on musically in Africa than just Afrobeats.
And if Eze and Universal succeed, it won't just be about getting Afrobeats singers to partner with big American artists.
It'll be about empowering all African musicians to find success anywhere.
Because if the rise of Afrobeats proves anything,
it's that markets from Lagos to London are ready for more.
- Right now, more than ever, it's cool to be African.
- Wakanda forever.
Have you heard the Afrobeats sound in any of the music you listened to?
Tell us about it in the comments.
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