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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Tiléwa Kazeem

‘It’s not noise. It’s a message’: the misunderstood misfits of Nigeria’s underground rock scene

Clayrocksu.
‘I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t into rock’ … Clayrocksu. Photograph: Adetayo Fotografi

In the violet hush of a late-night doom scroll, I stumbled across her: a woman clad in lacquered leather and glinting chains, legs laced in harnesses. She stood mid-growl, clutching the mic as if to throttle it, her silhouette framed by a red LED screen that read “Rock Nights” along with the name of the artist: Clayrocksu.

Beneath the stage at Pop Landmark in Lagos, Nigeria, a sparse crowd of silver-studded misfits was filmed thrashing around in a trance. The performance provoked a small moral panic in the comments: cries of “demonic” and fears that Clayrocksu was “slipping into darkness”.

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