How Kenyan Artists Can Hop On The Nigerian Music Wave

It has reached a point where we need to surrender and accept that Nigerian artists have better infrastructure and numbers than any other country in Africa. They are also very competitive due to their large population, since the more the people you are competing with, the more aggressive you have to be to rise to the top. They have blazed a trail in music, setting new standards for quality, marketing and expansion across borders.

At this point, Nigerian artists are the giants upon whose shoulders other African artists need to stand. Nigerian artists hitting 100 million views on YouTube is no longer news. Just this year here are several Nigerian songs that have achieved that milestone:

Nigerian artists are also filling up stadiums in Europe and US like it’s nothing.

But what could Kenyan artists offer them to make it a mutually beneficial trade? I believe Nigerian artists still stand to benefit from remixing their hit songs with other artists from all over Africa. If a song like “Calm down” by Rema hits, he shouldn’t be doing the remix with Selena Gomez. He should be doing the remix with Bien, Diamond, Chameleone, Sarkodie and Major League. The “African remix” should be a staple of Nigerian music by now. They get a second wind on a hit song and the possibility of touring all over Africa due to the new audience gained by doing a remix with a local Kenyan, Tanzanian or Ugandan artist.

Then when an artist finally gets to perform this remix on the same stage as their Naija collaborator, they need to ensure that you outperform them hands down. The Naija weakness is that they are purely studio artists. They don’t do well in live performances where they are prone to shouting loudly and hyping the crowd, even for melodious singers who don’t suit the hype method of performing at all.

Once we hop on the Nigerian wave this way, Kenyan artists will have their entry point into the international market.