New Wizkid Documentary Raises Huge Stakes Around a Quiet Superstar
When Wizkid: Long Live Lagos premiered at Tribeca Film Festival this month, the documentary on one of Afrobeats' foremost superstars marked a milestone for the genre in itself. While Tribeca is flush with music documentaries, this one – a primer on a face of and the state of African pop music as it's embedded itself in global pop culture – is a novelty. Later this year, Long Live Lagos will air on HBO and stream on HBO Max. In following Wizkid as he becomes the first African artist to play London's elite Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the film makes a case for why these feats matter.
Wizkid is now nearly 15 years into his career, becoming one of the biggest stars in all of Africa before he broke barriers with his hit 'Essence' (featuring then-newcomer Tems) in 2021. Nearly a year after its release as a single from the acclaimed album Made in Lagos, 'Essence' was remixed with American heartthrob Justin Bieber and climbed to Number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was nearly unheard for Nigerian artists. Then, Rolling Stone named 'Essence' the best song of 2021, another rarity for African music. Though Wizkid had been featured on one of the world's biggest smashes before – Drake's 'One Dance,' in 2016 – this moment belonged to him and Afrobeats in a way 'One Dance' didn't. While the genre had already been quietly on the rise for years, post 'Essence,' Afrobeats has been inescapable, opening the doors for more African artists to make U.S. radio, supercharging global parties and festivals, and powering tours across the West. When the film captures Wiz's performance of the hit at his triumphant and sold-out Tottenham show, with 60,000 people singing along, you feel its impact.
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Though 'Essence' swung open the gates, Wizkid's progeny like Tems, Asake, and Rema have seemed to bound past him at times. His two albums that followed Made in Lagos – More Love, Less Ego and Morayo – are excellent, but didn't dominate in the same way. U.S tours supporting both were cancelled, seemingly without comment or explanation. Online, fans speculated that if there is a cooling of Wizkid's star, it is because he is famously reserved. In an era that demands access and presence, he's an infrequent social media user and public speaker, revealing little about his personality or personal life. News of a Wizkid documentary seemed to signal a pivot, but Long Live Lagos is not the juicy tell-all it could have been.
In fact, most of the film seems to be narrated by people in Wizkid's orbit, rather than the star himself. It offers a rare, head-on glimpse into his relationship and family, particularly with his manager of eight years, Jada Pollock (Wizkid shares three children with Pollock, two of whom are featured in the film, plus two more children from previous relationships). There is a quick but intimate reckoning with the death of his mother, for whom Morayo is named, which was preceded by an emergency surgery she entered the day of the Tottenham show. But largely, the film focuses on Wizkid as not just a man, but an institution, and the tension between the two.
'I'm a true artist before anything else,' Wiz says at one point. 'And I'm a human being; just a little kid from Surulere.' Yet, time to prepare for the concert is limited and anxiety is high ahead of it, as are the stakes. Wizkid's rise parallels the growth of an entire industry around African music that has never existed as formally and productively as it does now. He defied the odds to ascend from the ghetto of his youth and overcome Nigeria's colonial impediments. The African teammates, journalists, and fans in the film suggest that he represents a new vision of Africa to the world. His success pushes back against the barriers to equity, comfort, pride many diasporans have faced. There's a sense that if he quits or fails, some of that progress halts.
The film opens with Femi Kuti, a musician who has followed in the footsteps of his trailblazing father, Fela Kuti. Femi's narration serves as a sort of conduit between Wizkid and Fela, the seventies icon who blended jazz, funk, and traditional Yoruba music into Afrobeat, without an 'S,' like the modern Nigerian pop music Wizkid makes. Although Fela is known throughout the diaspora as both a prominent pop star and revolutionary, Femi underscores that Fela never reached the global heights Wizkid has achieved, in part because the necessary infrastructure simply didn't exist. Wizkid is a proud Fela disciple, brandishing a tattoo of the man on his forearm. Behind Fela, Wizkid blossomed in the digital age, where young Africans and diasporans could easily and feverishly share and bond over his music.
Wizkid explains that in the trenches of Surulere, Fela's legacy was a guiding light – it gave him a sense of possibility in music, a career often disregarded at home, and a sense of pride in that home in the first place. Throughout his commentary, Femi Kuti recounts the toll of colonialism's work to divorce Nigerians from a sense of self. 'How many of us dream in our languages? Think in our languages?' he asks, admitting that he does not after years of English indoctrination.
This assimilation spread to music and culture, the documentary subjects attest, as have other Nigerian acts, like Obongjayar, who recently told Rolling Stone that growing up, Nigerian music and culture was uncool among his peers, who instead lauded American rap and television. As they prepare for the stadium show, a mystified Tops Bademosi—Wizkid's tour manager in London—explains that he had a similar experience, where he and friends didn't want to feel so African as kids. It's a common story that the rise of Afrobeats has helped rewrite. Wizkid explains that his African pride has always been integral, and Femi beams about it. 'We have decided to promote our culture and tradition through music,' says the elder artist.
So, when Wizkid explains, 'My kids are kings. Anyone from where I'm from are kings – and that's what matters, the way you see yourself,' it's a look into the self-induced pressure to execute a show that serves as a regal reflection of his people. In one of the most telling and personal moments in Long Live Lagos, Wiz cuts a rehearsal of his song 'Ginger' to gently but firmly scold the band. They're already two weeks behind schedule, musically, and he doesn't feel them taking it as seriously as he is. 'We got to play like our life depends on this shit, 'cause it really does,' he says. 'I dont really give a fuck, I'll fire a nigga quick.'
Together, Femi and British-Nigerian journalist Julie Adenuga make the most salient case for the power of representation in this case, when, as a socio-political tool, it can often feel superficial. 'It shouldn't take for people to like a song for them to feel that there is an entire country and continent of people that are worth investing in,' Adenuga explains, though she and Femi also note that it can bring eyes, ears, bodies, and wallets to Africa—resources that can eventually solve the real problems of underdevelopment. That potential can be felt in the recent influx of Westerners to Afrobeats capitals Lagos and Accra in recent years, driven by the musical experiences like concerts and parties their ancestral homes have to offer.
One of the film's most important perspectives is that of Matthew Temitope Solomon, a Wizkid fan in Lagos who realizes his dream of seeing his idol in concert in London. Early on, Long Live Lagos shows how deeply engrained Wiz is in the Nigerian, city with an artful barrage of murals of him, bootleg CDs being traded, billboards he stars on, and stickers of his face on cabs. With Wizkid as a north star, Solomon also was brave enough to take an untraditional path, too – he's a part of a local BMX crew and tinkers with cars for sport. Still, he bemoans Nigeria's abysmal employment prospects for young men like him and lives with meager means. It seems unlikely he'll make it to Tottenham, against strict travel restrictions from Nigeria to the U.K., which other speakers in the film name as a cruel relic of colonialism; the British came and turned their land upside-down, and now restrict them from going to theirs. Though the film withholds just how Solomon had the financial and logistical means to make the London show, raising questions about how organic his participation in the documentary is, his bliss and wonder under the flashing lights and fireworks of a dream realized exemplify what Wizkid has meant to so many.
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