Asake Goes Worldwide with ‘Lungu Boy’ Without Forgetting His Roots

Asake Goes Worldwide with ‘Lungu Boy’ Without Forgetting His Roots

With his latest album Lungu Boy, Nigerian street-pop maestro Asake finds himself both growing outside his core and remaining spiritually rooted (the title literally translates to “boy in the hood,” according to Nigerian culture magazine The Native). Throughout his record, he has already sung about God, good, evil, and purpose in a variety of languages, religions, and cultural contexts. One such song is “Yoga,” a meditative ballad he recorded in 2023 following the deaths of two ladies in a crush of fans outside his highly anticipated London event in 2022.

After reaching some of the greatest heights an Afropop artist has ever experienced, his third album is both an embrace of the huge universe surrounding him from those vantage points and an introspective look inward. Asake’s most musically and emotionally varied album to date, Lungu Boy maintains the spirit while experimenting with new sounds, some of which prove more successful than others.

Asake describes his come-up on “MMS,” which is sung mostly in Yoruba and Pidgin, alongside Wizkid, saying, “I found a sound among all the sounds.” Surprisingly, “MMS,” which is an acronym for Asake’s own style, seems more like a Wizkid yield, with Asake demonstrating respect for Wiz’s history. While Asake’s sound is frequently deep and intense, the veteran of Afrobeats has a unique style that is cool and jazzy. Asake and producer Magicsticks helped bring South African amapiano into the mainstream of Afrobeats, which helped establish Asake’s notoriety. He also has a strong affinity for fuji, a kind of music that originated in southwest Nigeria and developed from fast, loud percussion to satiate Yoruba Muslims before dawn during the fasting month of Ramadan. Asake, though, sounds quite at ease in Wizkid’s territory.