BET released a list of nominees for the Hip Hop Awards and Nigeria had two representatives; OdumoduBlvck and Burna Boy in the Best International Flow Category and the Best Live Performer Category respectively.
It’s a good statement for the Nigerian Hip Hop community and a win on a global scale, considering the struggles Nigerian hip-hop acts have faced locally recently.
Conversations about rap being dead have been alive for a while now, and Burna seemed to be the only one doing anything serious for the genre for a while.
Odumodu has done well to position himself as the face of rap of this generation, and he has been reaping the rewards of that on a global scale for some time now. His BET nomination is a testament to that.
Questions were asked about the future of African hip hop while Burna Boy was the face of it globally. Locally, we know him to be an Afrobeats superstar. He tells the international media his genre is Afro Fusion.
For him to be the face of Hip Hop coming out of Africa, it wasn’t a good look for the rest of them back home.
It would also explain why Wizkid would call out the entire rap industry and label them as dead to him in a series of posts on his Instagram story a while back.
Odumodu seems to have joined Burna Boy on the international level, from his moment with Declan Rice, collaborations with Skepta, and now his BET nomination.
That one of our biggest Afrobeats exports, if not the biggest is being recognized as a Hip Hop act consistently by global media is a dicey conversation.
That Odumodu is representing African Hip Hop on a global scale is interesting to see. For all I care, it had to be Odumodu, he uniquely embodies African rap.
We say cheers to the people nominated, and we hope they bring the awards home.
