Lagos style: the production of urban culture through Afrobeats/Afropop music

Popular Nigerian music – Afrobeats/Afropop – has gone beyond the country’s shores and now has enormous fans and listeners both within and outside Africa. Since the colonial era, various artists from different genres and musical backgrounds in Nigeria have continuously taken their music beyond Africa. However, recently, through globalisation and new technologies, contemporary Nigerian music is not only proliferating beyond the continent, but the urban culture aesthetics have also continuously influenced global pop culture. Amid shaky infrastructure and the economic instability in Nigeria, especially since the fall of international oil prices in 2016, music artists and affiliated entertainers have been able to make a life for themselves, adding value to the Nigerian music industry and making contemporary music a significant product of cultural export for the country.This study aims to show the production of culture through Afrobeats/Afropop music and seek ways in which the music reflects urban African culture and vice versa. The research also seeks to critically analyse the new form of being urban African youth, primarily through the expressed culture embedded in their music. It shows how the urban youth informs expressed cultural elements in their music and vice versa. The study argues that Afrobeats/Afropop music and the artists embody an ‘in-betweeness’ where they remix and recreate local and global culture into new styles and show their identity while exporting the cultural entities globally.This exploration is a practical project that combines both practice and theory as one and not different entities. The practice is an interactive documentary (iDoc) creatively designed to avoid a linear narrative of the contested, complex, creative field regarding Lagos culture, Afrobeats music and urban youth. The research is based on a qualitative approach, which utilises 2 visual ethnography and combines semi-structured interviews with informal conversations and participant observation to garner holistic data from the field.The research explores the continuous history of syncretism, hybridity, and fluidity within urban Lagos music under different technological and cultural conditions. The iDoc is utilised to give viewers non-linear access to the data garnered from the field. It allows them more control over how they form their perspectives or critique contents without a pre-determined single direction like a linear documentary.