Nigerians are up in arms after a new consecration of the Beninese singer Angélique Kidjo at the Grammy Awards. The Scrapbook Mother Nature was awarded in the category “best overall music album”. Artists from Nigeria – including Afrobeats star Wizkid – were also nominated in this category. Despite his popularity, the latter left empty-handed in the category “best overall music performance”, angering his fans.
With our correspondent in Lagos, Liza Fabbian
In Nigeria, whether in clubs, restaurants or private parties, we hear above all and above all Nigerian music. The birthplace of Afropop is a giant in the cultural field, and many of its musical artists are successfully exported abroad.
Nigerian fans therefore took it very badly that superstar Wizkid left without any award at the last Grammy Awards ceremony, when he was nominated in two categories.
It is Angelique Kidjo who paid the price on the Instagram social network, where Nigerians poured out their bitterness en masse, to the point of forcing the Beninese star to close the comments under a photo of her holding the Grammy statuette.
Wizkid, who is filling stadiums in Britain, received support from supermodel Naomi Campbell on Tuesday morning. “ You are the KING for the people, the one who made AFROBEATS popular and that is worth more than any other reward “, she wrote on Instagram.
Music specialists prefer to recall that the more political themes and more African sounds of Angélique Kidjo’s album Mother Nature were more in line with what is expected by the Grammy Academy in the “overall music” category, than Wizkid’s RnB-tinged album.