The future is in the South

On this occasion, I want to share my most musical version, with a selection of some songs from the global pop scene that, figuratively speaking, blew my mind in 2022.

I’m going to start with what is perhaps my most out-of-context discovery: Rema.

The most exquisite beats take me back to the essentials of life. Warm piano melodies, combined with a broken English that travels from Nigeria, teach me about the power of flow.

A musical movement emerged in the 70s, and the creator named this genre Afrobeats; that creator was the Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and a cult artist, Fela Kuti.

The Afrobeats result from the combination between Western jazz, funk, and their encounter with African “highlife”; plus the traditional rhythm of the Yoruba people, an ethnolinguistic group from West Africa, to which 30 percent of Nigeria’s population belongs.

Now called afrobeat-pop, the genre and their sub-genres combines the ancient origins of tribal music with the newest forms of global pop, producing songs that by little take over the world scene.

One of the artists in this movement that is managing to attract the Afrobeats to the field of mass listening is this rapper and stage artist better known by his stage name Rema, whose real name curiously comes from the English language: Divine Ikubor.

In 2020, Rema, barely 20 years old, was listed by Rolling Stone as The Afrobeats’ New Superhero.

In 2022, his single Calm Down from his first LP Raves and Roses, achieved more than 200 million plays on Spotify. For a change, recently, the tremendous Rema did a remix of the same theme but in collaboration with none other than Miss Selena Gomez. The stuff is about to explode.

Remember that I told you here: the future is in Africa; The Future is in the South. I’m leaving. Put everything on my account, please.

*I thank my friends Grecia and Alfonso, who led me to this revelation. Happy music year.