Wizkid At The O2 Arena —Afrobeats Fireworks From Nigeria’s Finest

BY LUDOVIC HUNTER-TILNEY/Financial Times

Wizkid sold out his O2 Arena show in 12 minutes. Two more dates were added at the 20,000-capacity venue, both of which proceeded to sell out as well: the second in just two minutes, according to a celebratory tweet from the Nigerian singer.

There were reports of unticketed fans storming the entrance gates for the first of the shows. This sort of fervour is usually reserved for big UK or US stars. Underpinning it is an album proudly advertising Wizkid’s own geographic locale, Made in Lagos.

With more than 1 billion streams, a marker of top-tier success, it underlines Nigeria’s consolidation as a global pop music hub, like Jamaica in the 1970s. The Caribbean sounds of reggae and soca are among the components of Wizkid’s music, which also draws on US rap, R&B and West African genres such as highlife. The style is known as Afrobeats, a successor to the Fela Kuti-led Afrobeat scene that dominated Nigerian music 20 years before Wizkid’s birth.

The singer, real name Ayodeji Balogun, 31, made his entrance crouched on a hydraulic platform that rose from below a catwalk, the stagecraft equivalent of the arrival of a supernatural being. A short but incident-packed set ensued, unfolding in an atmosphere of high fervour. There were pyrotechnics and confetti, a DJ shouting hypeman slogans and vast backing screens with artfully shot live footage.

A diasporic array of guests made appearances: UK singer Ella Mai and rapper Skepta, Nigerian singers Buju and Tems, and a problematic but rapturously received figure from the US, the singer Chris Brown, appearing in London for the first time in 12 years.

Wizkid was a mellifluous centre of attention amid all this, a cajoling vocalist rather than an overbearing one.

Opening with a seductive romantic song, “Joro”, his singing had a modern crooner’s lilt, filtered through Auto-Tuned vocal processing effects. He was accompanied by a seven-piece band, the DJ and three backing vocalists. A smooth interplay of horns, guitar, bass and percussion was to the fore in the Afrobeats numbers, while DJ Tunez took over for a medley of hard-edged dance music tracks.

Muted microphone amplification dampened the impact of Ella Mai’s turn on the softly lit, acoustic guitar-led duet “Piece of Me”. But a switch was flicked with Skepta’s turn on an attacking version of “Longtime”, which was punctuated by the first of the evening’s regular volleys of fireworks.

Tems joined him for the sultry hit single “Essence”.

Brown, who hadn’t played in the UK since pleading guilty in 2009 to assaulting his then-partner Rihanna, was introduced as the first international star to give Wizkid a helping hand when the Nigerian was on the way up a decade ago. The American rapped one of his own songs, to a huge response from the audience.

The reputation-washing was dubious, but also in keeping with the evening’s carefree, celebratory mood. Although Afrobeats stars including Wizkid have become involved with Nigerian political issues such as police violence, the genre prefers pleasure and escapism over the didactic messaging of the original 1970s Afrobeat movement.

Other than a pause to commemorate the death of the fashion designer Virgil Abloh, the concert aimed to provide a good time — and did so, with an A-list crackle of electricity.