In every working system, there’s always some sort of machinery in place that’s not necessarily seen by the public but works tirelessly to make sure the system works. The big companies have their financial auditors and customer care representatives, and the movies have the set designers and make up artists. It’s the same way the music industry has A&Rs, tasked with making sure the superstars today are operating at the highest level they could, while looking for the torchbearers of tomorrow.
Every year, we have artists break out and enter the mainstream, showing signs of stardom and relevance. In the past five years, we’ve produced acts like Rema, Victony, Bnxn, Omah Lay, Fireboy DML, Ayra Starr, Tems, Oxlade, Qing Madi, Lojay, and more. These artists have gone on to hold the forte on a global level and have done well to be ambassadors of Afrobeats and Nigerian music.
This year, the industry has struggled in so many ways. We’ve struggled to succeed on the global scene and we’ve failed to produce the superstars for the next generation. Bar Llona and Ayo Maff, we didn’t have any breakout star and the two of them didn’t ‘blow’ on a national level. They built a core community and maintained it, but we didn’t have a Shallipopi 2023 or Victony 2022 moment.
The question in the space has been simple. Why aren’t we churning out superstars like we used to? Why is there a disconnect from the top level and the underground scene? What could be done to solve these issues, as the most important people in an industry are the artists. Who’s going to take over from the current set, and how long are we going to refer to Rema’s set as the Next Gen?
The answer to this is we lack structure. MTN’s Project Fame was the first and probably the only academy we had that we knew was capable of discovering talent, taking it in and honing it to a point where the mainstream industry could pick the talent up and make something out of it while giving the talent a good platform to start something for itself.
After the show ended in Nigeria, there was no structure to find talent to service the industry, and we resorted to signing artists based off social media freestyles and word of mouth recommendation.
This problem was tackled to a large extent in 2024. Chocolate City A&R and pop culture aficionado Osagie Onobun popularly known as 10Ten put together a solution to this problem. He started a movement called The A&R Tour and took to the road with the intention of finding and developing the next set of superstars. Usually, we have artists touring a set geographic, hitting the road with music on a mission to sell the music and make more money and fans. 10Ten decided to use the same idea to find talent.
The A&R Tour is an initiative designed to be a medium for the next generation to be discovered. The tour involved other A&Rs from different music companies like The Kevin Asaju, Joey Akan, Omolawyer, Tochi, Trik, the EVP of Chocolate City Aibee Adeoye and Chocolate City superstar Blaqbonez. Together, they went to places and schools like Unilag, OAU, Funaab, Enugu and London discovering and platforming talent.
The tour proved one theory. There’s too much talent in the country. In fact, talent is not our problem anymore. We will always have someone with the required skill level for success. The issue is the disconnect. A lot of artists do not know how to ‘blow’. They lack the knowledge required to position their music properly for finding and funding. The guys on the underground scene do not know how to reach the top, and the guys at the top do not know how to connect with the underground scene, but not for long, I hope.
I hear there’s a project involving artists found on the tour and superstars in the industry. I hear the project is titled 1823 is scheduled to drop next year, and is going to be a collaborative effort of the best superstars in the country and the talent found on the tour. I’m excited. If successful, a new template has been laid down for the industry to build on and follow. Careers will be made and the future will be secured.
While the industry slowly builds itself, it’s important to set up systems and processes for structure. There’s a lack of proper mechanism for artists to get found and possibly get signed to labels and be discovered by the mainstream. The A&R tour aims to solve that and bridge the gap between the top level and the underground scene, and did a commendable job of that this year.
One of the high points of the music space in 2024, the A&R tour did well for the music space in platforming the next generation. It’s interesting to see these systems put in place for the development of the genre, and we look forward to 1823.
