Celebrated Nigerian singer and songwriter, Tuface Idibia has shared insights using a piece by Emmaugolee about how Nigerian music albums got nominations in the Grammy Awards and what distinguished them from other albums.
Tuface Idibia took to his Instagram page to highlight the key factors that has led to many great music albums that come from Nigeria not being nominated and he revealed that one of them is the lack of support.
The ‘African Queen’ crooner revealed that Wizkid’s first Grammy nomination was as a result of his affiliation with top American rapper and singer, Drake and further claimed that Burna Boy’s exploits in the 63rd Grammy Awards was made possible through veteran music executive and rapper, Sean Combs popularly called Diddy as he executively produced his album.
He wrote;
Another amazing light bulb insight from @emmaugolee
I do not know about you, but I still smile with pride when I think about what Burna & Wizzy did for us. Thanks to them, see our shoulders disrupting airplane movement when we are around other African music acts.
Anyone who underates this achievement needs a drainage system for bad blood.
Speaking of which, I was also proud of the brotherly support other music acts gave our winners. It takes maturity to do that & mean it because human nature would rather lean towards envy.
As I thought about it, I flashed passed a weird reason why bringing home the Grammy can be a little bit more spectacular.
Here’s the window I saw.
Every single time we have been invited to the Grammy table, we were in the midst of very heavy & significant Hollywood company.
Go as way back to our 1st invite as a Nominee. It was 1984, the Category was then called “Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording.”
For the album “Synchro system” by King Sunny Ade.
Produced by globally renowned Martin Meissonnier while the King was officially signed on to Island records. The album had made #91 on the billboard top 100 & the album before this, had Steven Wonder on a track called Ase. KSA’s Hollywood connect was top notch.
Back to Wizkid and Burna. The 1st time Wizkid got a Grammy nomination, he was riding on affiliation to Drake.
The album: ‘Veiws’ if I recall correctly, was up for Album of the year in 2016
His 2nd coming to the table wasn’t without John the Baptist either. This time it was Beyonce who went ahead of our brown skin star boy.
As a fan of Wizzy, it is hard for me to conclude that these two efforts were the best thing he has done in over 10 years, considering that he has had 33 music videos 44 singles, 4 studio albums 16 guest appearances 7 covers and freestyles. Yet only the Hollywood attachments could get him a sit at the table.
In Burna’s case. Thinking of the Hollywood influence, all I can say is “Wawu!”.
Where do I start from? Puff Daddy as Co-executive producer? Timbaland & DJDS as Producers? A Naughty by Nature feature, The contribution of I do English singer song writter, instrumentalist and recorded producer Ch
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