When I meet Wizkid at Metropolis recording studios in London, I am suddenly an awed 18-year-old again. The Afropop juggernaut soundtracked my university years, yet I’m struck by how youthful he appears, apparently having barely aged since I screamed myself hoarse watching him perform at London’s Hammersmith Apollo a decade ago.
The only difference is that now, the 32-year-old Nigerian musician’s wrists are weighed down by Van Cleef bracelets and a diamond-encrusted watch. And his music is no longer the preserve of a smattering of fans across the diaspora. Wizkid, born Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, is slouched in an office chair, zen but visibly sapped from a day of interviews, a new album release and recently welcoming a second child with his manager and partner, Jada Pollock. They met in 2012; he has four children altogether. “Now I’m more careful with what I put in my songs,” he says with a laugh. “Because my kids listen to my songs.”
To a degree. His new album, More Love, Less Ego, is a quintessentially border-crossing offering that marries melodic Afrobeats and lilting Caribbean sounds with babymaking R&B. Wizkid admits he has an unorthodox approach to music, recording every day and regularly scrapping entire albums if they don’t feel right. “That’s always my process,” he says, matter of factly. “Make one, scrap it. Make another one, scrap it. Until I find the right one.” It must be an intense exercise. “It is, man. But I have a lot to say.”
Lots of it, as ever, is about love and women and sex. The new album refines the formula he perfected on his fourth album, Made in Lagos. An ode to his home town, its release in October 2020 launched him firmly into the mainstream. It was his first album to reach the UK Top 20 and became the all-time highest-charting Nigerian album on the Billboard 200, peaking at No 80. Last year, he was one of the most-streamed artists in Africa.
His ascension to household-name status feels long overdue. For many Black Britons, it’s personal, too. This is why the announcement of a Wizkid concert always has a Hunger Games feel to it, whatever country you’re in. His three nights at the 20,000-capacity O2 Arena in London last year sold out in two minutes: the diverse crowds sang along to his Yoruba and pidgin lyrics word for word. At his shows, Wizkid often crows about the consistency of his discography, how he has “too many hits”. It isn’t hyperbole: fans go feral whenever the opening chords of any of his songs drop.
With global domination finally on the cards, Wizkid’s biggest concern is not letting it get to his head. “Everyone fights with their ego and that’s where I’m at,” he says, when I ask him about the album title. “I’m still trying to shed my ego, like everyone else.”
He is prone to quasi-spiritual answers like these, shirking the braggadocio of his lyrics for a humility that borders on coyness. He also appears under no illusion about his impact, speaking often of his success as something he never doubted, the outcome of manifestation and a “purpose” that surpasses his own understanding. “I’m a very spiritual human being,” he says. “I know I make a lot of club records but I feel like a pastor, really.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly it was at church he discovered his love of music; hymns taught him “how to feel”, he says. He was the youngest of 11 children, raised by a Christian mother and polygamous Muslim father who had three wives. His mother’s only son, he grew up in a “chaotic but fun” house dominated by women in Surulere, a district in Nigeria’s bustling cultural capital. Although the area is largely middle class, it isn’t immune from the hardships of the city. “Music was more than a hobby for me, more than a talent,” he says. “It was my escape. I was in the hood. It was either [music] or turn to crime. That’s why I don’t joke with music.”
He and his cousins were choir boys at his grandad’s pentecostal church. He recorded his first ever song more than 20 years ago as part of a group with his church friends, Glorious Five. Even back then, he was trying to make his name as a rapper and was soon taken under the wing of the producer OJB Jezreel (who died in 2016). He had Wizkid observe sessions with Afrobeats artists who were dominating the emerging scene. When he skipped school to attend the studio, his older sisters covered for him. “My parents wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor,” he says. “That was a very hard conversation to have when I said I wanted to make music. I had to just prove [myself] to them.”
Was there a definitive moment when he felt he had? He thinks. “Now?” he says with a hint of uncertainty. He shakes his head and laughs. “They still look at me and think: ‘Ah ah, this boy!’ It took me how many years!”
Admittedly, Wizkid didn’t so much have a big break as rise in waves. Some fans know him firstly from the deep drums and catchy lyrics of 2011’s Don’t Dull. For others, their introduction was via his feature on Drake’s 2016 UK funky house-referencing hit One Dance, which earned Wizkid his first No 1. And during his sold-out London shows last year, support act DJ Tunez teased the so-called “Essence warriors” – recent converts who only learned of him after his 2020 duet with fellow Nigerian musician Tems.
He released his debut album, Superstar, in 2011, a title that quickly became a self-fulfilling prophecy. His international peers soon began to take notice: he first tasted global success when Drake and Skepta remixed Ojuelegba, from his second album, 2014’s Ayo. He reunited with Drake on his third album, 2017’s Sounds From the Other Side, then two years later, he got the kind of co-sign that can make an artist’s entire career, when he featured on Beyoncé’s Brown Skin Girl (from The Lion King soundtrack) and won his first Grammy in the process.
As with Beyoncé, there is a level of dissociation between Wizkid’s public and private identities. In an old video, he describes the difference between “Wizkid” and “Ayo Balogun” in similar terms to how Beyoncé discussed her old alter ego, Sasha Fierce. This fracturing is still necessary to navigate fame, he says. “I treat [Wizkid] as a million-dollar company, man. It’s a business, not me. As I grow older, I would love for people to get 100% Wiz Ayo Balogun. To give people one [person], the true me in my realest form.”
Despite his famed showmanship, he still struggles with visibility. “Most of the time, I don’t want cameras in my face,” he says. “But I understand why I have to. That’s one of the things I still battle with. I just want to live a normal life.”
Unfortunately for Wizkid, Essence put to bed any hopes of obscurity. It became the inescapable global earworm of summer 2020 and the first Nigerian song to feature on the Billboard Hot 100. It spent 21 weeks in the UK charts and peaked at No 16, launching Tems to a wider audience. A polarising remix with Justin Bieber appeared on the deluxe edition of Made in Lagos.
As Wizkid’s popularity has become more global, so has his sound. His collaborations usually read like a who’s who of the musical diaspora: Damian Marley from Jamaica, Sarkodie from Ghana, HER from the US, the UK’s Skepta. His lyrics play up to this melting pot, shouting out the ladies from specific parts of the world. “Because I know those girls, man,” he says with a smirk. “I know sexy girls from Ghana, I know those south London girls. I’m not just saying it!”
His music’s sweet harmonies contrast the bitterly fought diaspora wars online – the digital infighting among the world’s Black communities that takes place primarily on Twitter. Wizkid was part of a 2000s Afrobeats golden age that inspired a newfound sense of belonging and pride in young Nigerians. (In Ojuelegba, Skepta recounts his time at school when “being African was a diss”.) But these days he’s a unifier, overtly embracing all things Black and beautiful. The concept of the diaspora wars baffles him. “I don’t feel all of that,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. “I was in Jamaica for a month to make music and I couldn’t because I was just so into it, enjoying myself. I see people as one. Black, white, green: everyone’s one.”
In a reverse to musicians’ usual trajectory, the more fame Wizkid has found, the more he seems to have mellowed out. He is cool as a cucumber – at least until he hits the stage for his gyrating performances. In his youth he was more hot-headed, sparring on Twitter with his former manager and producer. Back then, it was a large part of his brand; he was the first Nigerian artist to reach 1 million followers. It’s partly how he accrued his loyal fanbase, Wizkid FC, who regularly go to battle online on his behalf. Not long ago they took aim at fellow Nigerian singer Burna Boy after he branded them “delusional”.
Wizkid mostly stays off the platform, leaving his tweets to his team, although in 2020 he briefly ended his hiatus to take aim at Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, as part of protests against Nigeria’s special anti-robbery squad (Sars). He ended up in a heated online exchange with an aide to Buhari. “I’m about to go crazy on their asses this election,” he says, referencing the upcoming 2023 vote. Buhari’s tenure will be ending for good, and of the four men vying to replace him, the youngest is 60. “All these old men are going out of power this time. They need to go to an old people’s home and chill out.”
Wizkid is part of a generation deeply disillusioned with Nigerian politics. When the #EndSars protests began at the hands of Nigeria’s youth, he pushed back the already delayed release of Made in Lagos by another two weeks and took part in a march in London. That October, members of the Nigerian army opened fire on unarmed protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos. Today, Wizkid is one of many Nigerians who feels unable to celebrate the country’s October independence day in the wake of the injustice. “There’s nothing to celebrate,” he sighs. “Except that [Nigerians] are amazing people in music, sports, comedy – entertainment in general. I’m proud of young Nigerians doing things around the world in tech. I have amazing friends, doing amazing things. That’s it, though. There’s nothing else.”
Despite the country’s present situation, Wizkid’s pride in his roots remains and he still has “big hopes” for Nigeria. “I feel hopeful there’ll be change. How soon? I’m not sure. But a lot has changed from growing up to now. There was a time when you could never speak to the president or anyone in government like that. But now you have a voice.”
He is adamant that he won’t make political music in the future, even though his two biggest musical influences, Bob Marley and Fela Kuti, were well known for their protest music. Wizkid’s next phase, he insists, is less about metrics and more about legacy. He speaks of the impact his friend and sometime collaborator Virgil Abloh had on fashion before his untimely death last year. He found out about Abloh’s passing just a few hours before having to perform at the O2 and held a moment of silence at the gig. “Virgil was such an amazing human being,” he says. “He was instrumental to how our culture has been perceived in the fashion world, in general. He brought a lot of people together.”
That, he explains, is what it’s all about. Alongside managing his ego, he tells me he has one other aim for this new chapter. “To live for ever,” Wizkid says. “Not physically, but for whatever I create to live for ever.” He recently went to see the Bob Marley musical, Get Up, Stand Up! “I was like: ‘Yo, we’re watching a Bob Marley play and this guy died decades ago.’ I didn’t even know that he died at 36. He did so much at a young age. It just reaffirms what I do; I have to keep taking this to the highest heights. Because I know one day they’re definitely going to create a play about me.”
• More Love, Less Ego is released on 11 November on Starboy/Sony International/Columbia Records UK.
• This article was amended on 4 November 2022. An error introduced during the editing process led an earlier version to refer to Lagos as Nigeria’s capital city, rather than the country’s cultural capital.
