Sunny Ade:

Sunny Adé's music is characterised by, among other instruments, the talking drum - an instrument indigenous to his Yoruba roots, the guitar and his peculiar application to jùjú music,[6][7] that would easily put him in the same class as guitar musicians like Santana. His music is in the age old tradition of singing poetic lyrics ("ewi" in Yoruba) and praise of dignitaries as well components of Juju (traditional African belief) called the Ogede (casting a spell). Hence, Adé's music constitutes a record of the oral tradition of his people for posterity.

King Sunny Ade and The African Beats tour with the typically large African line-up of 20-30 members. They play a spacey, jamming sort of Juju, characterized by tight vocal harmonies, intricate guitar work, backed by traditional talking drums, percussion instruments, and even adding the unusual pedal steel guitar and accordian.

Ebenezer Obey:

He began his professional career in the mid-1950s after moving to Lagos. After tutelage under Fatai Rolling-Dollar's band, he formed a band called The International Brothers in 1964, playing highlife–jùjú fusion. The band later metamorphosed into Inter-Reformers in the early-1970s, with a long list of Juju album hits on the West African Decca musical label.

Obey began experimenting with Yoruba percussion style and expanding on the band by adding more drum kits, guitars and talking drums. Obey's musical strengths lie in weaving intricate Yoruba axioms into dance-floor compositions. As is characteristic of Nigerian Yoruba social-circle music, the Inter-Reformers band excel in praise-singing for rich Nigerian socialites and business tycoons. Obey, however, is also renowned for Christian spiritual themes in his music and has since the early-1990s retired into Nigerian gospel music ministry.

mikeapollo: Please, dont compare the two of them.....Obey is class ahead of Sunny.

Sunny has the stage-craft....dancing, that is all he has iver Obey!

But when it comes to music composition, arrangement, instrumentation, delivery and timeless evergreen songs....Obey is the real King!
Obey's songs are songs of yesteryears, today and the future. His gentle nature did not allow him to do / say/brag about many things...but if you really know music, you would appreciate that Obey is ahead of Sunny.

If you analyse the timing of their releases, you would realise that Sunny learnt and borrowed a lot of things from Obey's music

shadrach77:

You are extremely silly! Anybody who knows music will realise that sunny Ade is way better than Obey. Do you think the Alaafin of Oyo made him King if Juju for nothing ?? Sunny was the first artiste to introduce synthesiser , Hawaiian guitar and several other things to juju music

talk2s: "they that compare themselves are not wise"- I urge us to put a nail to the coffin of this comparism threads and only learn to only acknowledge, appreciate, emulate these stakeholders of different industries; but inly constructively, not destructively criticise them, if and when they go wrong!

mikeapollo:

Why the abuse? Why the insults?

Well, I am well bred with good home-training, so I dont trade abuses and insults online.
You are free to exhibit the kind of training and upbringing you are made of.

What I wrote about Obey and Sunny are the facts. Obey was the first person to introduce multiple guitars, western drum kits among other numerous innovations, but he does not brag, unlike Sunny. Obey was the one that modernised Juju music before Sunny joined the train!


Who is Alaafin of Oyo in music? What does Alaafin know about music? What authority does Alaafin have in music?
So what happens if Ooni of Ife or any other Oba should just wake up and say some other musician is the king of Juju or Fuji or whatever? Obey avoided calls for him to be crowned as King by other Obas in Yoruba land like the Alake and Ooni.
Dont be deceived by some people who give some spurious awards to their favourite musician.May be you dont know that most of the so-called awards are solicited and arranged by the musicians themselves in order to boost their profile and marketability!Do you know how many 'Kings' we have in Fuji music now?
Well, I dont blame you if you do not know....you have already displayed your level of maturity in your first sentence

Obey is better than Sunny in all aspects of Juju music, except stagemanship and dancing.
What Obey lacks in stage craft, he covers with un-paralled ability in great lyrics, compositions, arrangement,instrumentation, percussions, delivery etc. His songs are timeless.

Obey's kind of musician is very rare...If you do not know, go and ask your elders!

1ndidi2: I'm not yoruba but whenever I hear ebenezer Obey's song I picture sometime in the old days,with a cool weather,children playing, fathers playing board games and mothers gisting!!

I prefer obey.

damoskiy: I have listened to both of them live on stage.would prefer obey to sunny .Obey has this command on stage.both the young and old dance to his music.sunny majorly is for the older generation.sunny is kind of arrogant.if you don't play well on stage with him.he could collect the instrument from you and play it himself.obey on the other hand would tell you to play on a certain key ad would just correct you.my five cent.