On Oct. 4, for the first time, Afrobeats star Adekunle Gold gave an electric performance of songs from his latest album Fuji, which he had just released the day before. On that steamy Saturday night, he took the stage for a free concert at Spotify’s Lagos pop-up Greasy Tunes Café. There, the streaming service’s African music team reimagined Chef Imoteda Aladekomo’s sprawling Fired & Iced restaurant in the community of Lekki as the hub for three weeks of Afrobeats programing, from concerts like Gold’s, to panels and live podcasting, to a full-fledged fashion show – all exploring how a genre of music evolved into culture and lifestyle of its own and reflects those that it was built upon. Gold sought to make a similar point with Fuji – an album named for a distinct genre from Nigeria’s Yourba ethnic group that critics like Zikoko’s Tomide Marv have since claimed is largely absent from its tracklist. Gold’s album raises questions of what it means when Afrobeats artists evoke and remix tradition on a larger platform than their forebearers could have dreamed of – and if there is such thing as a right way to do it.
“Fújì is the grandfather of Afrobeats,” Gold said in a recent interview with Sagid Carter. “Before ‘Afrobeats to the world,’ there fújì there’s highlife, there’s apala, there’s juju, all of these sounds are what Afrobeats borrows from, but fújì is an integral part.” Thought to be named after Japan’s Mount Fuji by genre pioneer Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister in the 1960s, fújì took cues from the wéré music played during Ramadan to wake and entertain Muslims for the Sahur meal before dawn. Barrister is said to have fashioned fújì as a way to keep performing all year long. It’s full of complex and fast-paced percussion, layering drums like the dùndún and the gbedu on top of each other, with conversational call-and-response vocals tossed between a lead singer and their backing ensemble.
Just last month, Barrister’s son, Barry Jhay, seemed to fashion his father’s almost-tremored singing into his own vocals on rapper Blaqbonez’s “Stacks $$$,” an unequivocally hip-hop song. Gold has said something similar about himself: “My voice is fújì. If I sing R&B, you will hear it there. It’s the core of my sound,” he told Carter. While Afrobeats artists have long taken cues from fújì, Asake may be its most popular global ambassador in recent years, ending his last album, Lungu Boy, with the true-to-form “Fuji Vibe,” his rawest foray into the genre yet.
Over time, fújì was infused with other Nigerian styles, notes critic Joba Ojelabi, morphing into something new, as genres are wont to do. Still, Ojelabi condemned Gold’s album for being “a tribute in name only.” Gold’s Fuji does a lot – it leans on R&B, sampling Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love,” and Grover Washington Jr.’s “Just the Two of Us” with Bill Withers. You can hear hip-hop in the opener “Big Fish” and 6lack’s appearance on “Love is an Action.” Gold pulls Alté maven Cruel Santino, Nigerian pop star Davido, and Zimbabwean-Australian rapper Tkay Maidza across two songs that embrace the spirit of South African house music. Ojelabi asks, “If we call this fújì, will the world understand that the music within is not the fújì that Barrister and his many successors built with sweat, faith, and rhythm?” There does seem to be a throughline of the genre on Fuji though, like Gold’s “Many People,” a standout on the album. On the surface, it’s is a flip of 57 year-old Yinka Ayefele’s gospel tungba hit “Mi O Mo J’orin Lo,” but X users like Nigerian journalist Kayode Badmus have claimed that that fújì artist Adewale Ayuba sang the titular refrain first – on a song literally called “Fuji Music.” (Gospel tungba is a Juju-adjacent genre Ayefele is said to have coined himself.)
Last month, Gold’s “Many People,” with its bright energy and joyous urgency, turned the Greasy Tunes Café upside-down – especially when, to the crowd’s surprise, the disabled Yinka Ayefele rolled onstage to perform with Gold from his electric wheelchair. The concert seemed to be filled with teens and twenty-somethings, people who have grown up with Gold’s music over his decade-long career. Many of the people in the crowd were very young, or not even born yet, when Ayefele’s career began in 1997, but there was pandemonium when he appeared onstage. “Mi O Mo J’orin Lo” came out over 20 years ago, but it’s a song many in the crowd knew well from the type of family gatherings where fújì would also play. As popular creator Sofiyat Ibrahim, known online as The Odditty, told me, “I remember listening to music like Yinka Ayefele, R2Bees, Pasuma, the OGs; folks were doing 11 minute songs and there wasn’t any global recognition.” She was beaming as Ayefele – a cultural hero – and Gold sang together in mutual reverence. “His albums were like hidden treasures that we all just knew and loved,” Ibrahim says of Ayefele. “I actually had never actually seen [Ayefele] perform in real life. We never got to see these folks.” She explained that “Mi O Mo J’orin Lo” in particular is a celebratory song where Ayefele triumphs over his disability, singing in English and Yoruba to brush off the “many people” who “Say Ayefele can’t stand up.”
“Many People” is steadily moving beyond that Greasy Tunes Café stage, having been used in over 52,000 reels, over 280,000 TikToks, and climbing up TurnTable Charts’ Nigeria Top 100. “Listened to ‘Many People’ by Adekunle Gold ft Yinka Ayefele, and I’ve been playing Ayefele essentials since morning. Impact fr,” one listener wrote on X. This, for what it’s worth, seems to be in line with Gold’s choice to use “Fuji” as a stand in for all that has made him the artist he is and as a symbol of a particular Nigerian experience – of those old school parties, the music they played there, the bustling families that nurture taste and community, and the cities that they’re from themselves. He’s also said the name is an acronym for “finding uncharted journeys inside,” reflecting the time he’s spent lately reflecting on his Lagos ancestry and sharpening skills like swimming. Fuji, he says, is an encapsulation of all the life and music he’s built so far. “I named this album after an entire genre because fújì is bigger than music,” Gold wrote on X. “It is Lagos, it’s street royalty, it’s our story, our hustle, our heritage turned global. What we see as everyday in Nigeria deserves to sit on the world’s biggest stages. This is not nostalgia. This is reinvention. This is me carrying my roots into the future.”
Made in Africa is a monthly column by Rolling Stone staff writer Mankaprr Conteh that celebrates and interrogates the lives, concerns, and innovations of cultural workers of the African diaspora from their vantage point.
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