He has been working up quite an appetite. Just off the plane from Los Angeles, he’ll close out the first of the festival’s two nights before jetting back three hours later to continue his first U.S. tour at The Novo.
After quarantining in Accra, Ghana, for the last eight months, Wizkid is finally on the road again and eager to perform the songs from Made in Lagos — his fourth album, released almost exactly one year ago on RCA Records and his own Starboy Entertainment label.
“Rihanna came, A$AP Rocky came, Alicia Keys came, Ty Dolla $ign came, Saweetie came,” says his manager, Jada Pollock, of the buzz around her artist. “How come all of these people want to go see Wizkid? So let me pay attention now, because that’s how the world works.” Pollock, who is British, first met Wizkid in 2012 when she was managing Chris Brown, who brought Wiz out for the Lagos show on his Carpe Diem African tour. Two years later, she started managing Wiz, too.
Wizkid is the first African artist to truly make a major pop breakthrough in the United States and seems best poised to do so globally, too. “It sounds as good as every other music in the world,” says Wizkid, the vibrant genre in which he works. “So I hope it gets everything it deserves, from setting up records to selling out the venues for the artists.”
“I don’t even call my music ‘Afrobeats’ or ‘Afropop.’ I just make good music,” Wizkid.
