Hip-hop culture in Nigeria can be traced as far back as the mid 80’s. It advanced in Nigeria because of the impact of the American culture spreading all around the world.

In Nigeria, hip hop initially picked up its ground in Lagos when individuals like DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambata and Grandmaster Flash made hip hop beats implanting the afro-culture into it. In those days, the funding wasn’t available as a large portion of the acts were indie producing music with their desktops and free softwares, however, as the 90’s approached, the quality of hip-hop music expanded, prevailing upon the Nigerian audience.

Acts like Junior and Pretty, The Remedies, attempted at making hip-hop recognized in Nigeria. Weird MC is also one of those act who truly acquired the American hip-hop style as she mixed it with Afro-beat in her track titled “Allen Avenue” off her Simply Weird album which has unarguably been known as the first full-length rap collection in Nigeria.

Music groups like Swat Roots which comprises of Modenine, Overdose, Terry Tha Rapman, 6 Foot Plus; The Thoroughbreds which had Elajoe, iLLBliss, B-Elect, Obiwon; The Trybesmen which quite had eLDee the Don and Ruff Rugged n Raw literally paved way for the likes of M.I, Naeto C, Ikechukwu, Ice Prince, Jesse Jagz, A-Q, Vector, Yung6ix just to mention a few.

It is 2018 now, a lot of things has happened, and in particular, Nigerian hip-hop music is on a steady decline.

Definitely, someone has to succumb to this. Who do we allay the blame to? Absolutely it’s a lot for one individual alone. So who is to be blamed for the decline?

Indeed, Olamide and Phyno would flawlessly fit into these shoes. Coming up as guys who had their eyes on the objective, the objective of making good hip-hop music and not making party sounds with practically no significance.


Read more: http://moremusic.ng/who-killed-hip-hop-in-nigeria/