When Trevor Noah asked Burner Boy what he thinks is responsible for the sudden rise of Nigerian pop, I disagreed with the answer he gave. According to Burner Boy, music moves from one nation to another and will eventually move away again.

The genres of music that were Nigerian pop were Highlife and Juju music. Juju was born in the southwest of the country, while Highlife, inspired by American jazz, came from Ghana (although Ghanaians say it was transmitted from Sierra Leone). Although these genres of music became popular beyond the shores of Africa, they never created the kind of impact that contemporary Nigerian pop is now having. Music is a mirror of a culture. Unfortunately, the culture that these two reflected was not attractive to the youth of Nigeria, largely because the youth are heavily influenced by Western culture, which lacked these genres.

So why wouldn’t young people just start music that reflected the hip-hop tinged culture they lived in? The answer is: the industry was controlled by conservatives, who loved Highlife and Juju. This adds to the truth that no one was willing to invest their money in something experimental. Then the computer came along and digital recording studios sprang up on almost every street, arming young people to start experimenting with what they thought their music was. The good thing about music made with software is that you don’t need a band. Another factor is the internet, which made it easy to interact, but also allowed fans to judge and decide if any new releases fit their tastes, rather than in the past when record companies were sometimes obstacles.

This helped reduce the cost of making a record. Suddenly, a renaissance began for an industry that was dying.

Since the music was heavily influenced by hip hop, which many music lovers outside of the continent could identify with, it is the reason why music is breaking boundaries, not just within the diaspora but beyond.

People often ask if the computers are only in Nigeria. They ask why the music of other African nations does not rise as high as the music of Nigeria. The answer is in our number, we are more than sand on the seashore. It explains why online searches for African music often turn up Nigerian music artists. This also adds to the possibility that there are plenty of ambitious people in the gigantic West African nation.

The computer became a boon to a sea of ​​talented Nigerians who probably would have gone undiscovered, talents who would have lived and died all the more painfully because they never lived to realize the real status a musical talent bestows on anyone born with it. . We probably wouldn’t have known talent like Tuface, D’banj, Wizkid, Burner Boy, Simi and all the rest.

Children will always be born to achieve what their parents failed to achieve.

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