Asake

Fuji — the Nigerian genre fusing traditional Yoruba percussion with Islamic religious chants — is the bedrock of Asake's entire artistic identity. NME described him as 'proudly inspired by Fuji music', and critics across Pitchfork, The Guardian, and Rolling Stone consistently label his output 'neo-fújì pop': a bold modernisation of the genre for global ears. His live band the Compozers specialise in saxophone-led fuji-inspired grooves, and virtually every album closer circles back to pure Fuji expression. Asake didn't just sample Fuji — he rebuilt it from the inside.

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The single most direct documented influence on Asake's music. His debut single 'Dull' (2022) directly interpolated 'Oke Agba' — a pioneering anthem by Ayinde Barrister, the musician who codified Fuji music in the 1970s and elevated it to an art form. This wasn't a background nod: Pitchfork opened its Work of Art review by foregrounding this interpolation as the founding statement of Asake's entire sound. Barrister's fusion of Yoruba praise singing with percussion-heavy rhythms is the structural DNA Asake carries into every record he makes.

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Amapiano — the South African house music genre born from kwaito in Soweto's townships — is the second architectural pillar of Asake's sound. His signature 'Afropiano' style fuses amapiano's hypnotic log-drum loops and deep bass stabs with Yoruba vocal traditions, producing something Pitchfork called 'a sound all his own'. 'Sungba' (2022) was the first proof-of-concept; by Work of Art (2023), The Guardian was calling it 'the deep and dynamic Afro-house style of amapiano' and setting a high-water mark for West African pop. Asake's adoption of amapiano was less trend-chasing and more grafting: he didn't become an amapiano artist, he weaponised the genre's groove architecture.

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Olamide is simultaneously Asake's label boss, creative mentor, and most significant collaborator. As founder of YBNL Nation — the label that signed Asake for the Nigerian market — Olamide provided the infrastructure and co-sign that launched his career. Their joint single 'Amapiano' (2023) became a global cultural moment: it received a Grammy nomination for Best African Music Performance, ranked among the most-streamed songs of 2023 on Audiomack (87.7 million streams), and was listed among Barack Obama's favourite songs of 2023. Rolling Stone quoted Olamide directly: 'He's all about good energy, and that's what matters to people. No matter what language you speak, you can feel the emotion in his music.'

"He's all about good energy, and that's what matters to people. No matter what language you speak, you can feel the emotion in his music."

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King Sunny Ade's jùjú music — the elder tradition from which Fuji music partly descended — is the deeper root system beneath Asake's sound. The polyrhythmic talking drums, lush choral call-and-response, and Yoruba praise-song conventions that Asake employs all trace back through Fuji to KSA's jùjú innovations of the 1970s and 80s. While Asake's direct touchstone is Barrister and Fuji, the broader Yoruba musical lineage he inhabits was internationalised by KSA. Notably, Burna Boy's debut was explicitly inspired by King Sunny Ade — placing both artists in the same ancestral tradition.

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Burna Boy's remix of Asake's breakout single 'Sungba' (2022) was a watershed moment — amplifying its reach from a promising Lagos hit to a continent-spanning phenomenon. GRAMMY.com described the Burna Boy remix as a key vehicle in Asake's meteoric rise. Beyond the remix, both artists occupy the same Afrofusion vanguard: pushing Nigerian street sensibilities, Yoruba spiritual language, and diasporic ambition into international arenas. Critics consistently write about both in the same breath when charting the 2020s wave of West African pop.

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WizKid — Nigeria's defining global Afrobeats star of the 2010s — collaborated with Asake on 'MMS', the atmospheric opening track of Lungu Boy (2024). The Guardian described it as 'almost soporifically relaxing', pairing the two Lagos artists in a moment of mutual celebration. WizKid's influence as a template for how Nigerian artists cross global markets is also a contextual force: Asake's trajectory mirrors WizKid's, and their collaboration cemented Asake's position as heir to the Afrobeats global-crossover lineage. The two share deep Lagos street-pop roots and an international arena-headlining profile.

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Stormzy's appearance on 'Suru' (Lungu Boy, 2024) represented Asake's most significant bridge into UK urban culture. NME called it a standout: 'wailing guitars add an angelic twinge to the South London legend's recapping of his success story.' The collaboration is not merely guest-spot transactionalism — it connects Asake's Lagos gospel-tinged Fuji aesthetic with Stormzy's own brand of UK-grime spirituality. Both artists articulate faith, struggle, and ascent through the lens of their respective urban traditions. The pairing felt inevitable to critics.

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Central Cee featured on 'Wave' from Lungu Boy, laying his ice-cold UK drill flow over Asake's hypnotic amapiano beat. NME noted he 'fits right in' — a credit to how naturally UK rap voices slot into Asake's Afrocentric rhythmic framework. The collaboration expanded Asake's London fanbase and signalled a deliberate strategy to build the Afrobeats–UK rap corridor. Central Cee represents the same generation of self-made, street-to-stadium artists, and their shared work ethic translates directly into the track's energy.

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Davido is Asake's most frequently cited peer in critical discourse about the amapiano-Afrobeats fusion wave. Pitchfork's Work of Art review directly frames Davido (alongside Mayorkun) as the elder peers who first opened the corridor between Lagos and Johannesburg sonically — a corridor Asake then walked through and claimed as his own. Asake's public performance of Davido's 'No Competition' at his London O2 show in 2023 demonstrated genuine mutual respect within the Nigerian Afrobeats generation. Both artists represent YBNL-adjacent, street-to-global Afrobeats trajectories.

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