In this year 2019, the Nigerian music industry experienced a considerable amount of top-class pop culture moments that had everyone talking but only a few like the artiste Kizz Daniel’s “Fvck You” Challenge in March 2019 had the whole industry in a frenzied state. It will be hard to dispute the fact that the song challenge arguably surpasses Chris Brown’s ‘Deuces’ and Ella Mai’s ‘Boo’d Up’ ‘cover’ engagement made by the best musicians in the world. The number of A-list artists that were involved in the ‘Fvck You’ challenge and the legion of the audience that followed and participated by liking and dropping comments on each video is ridiculously high.

Words by Sesan Adeniji

Despite the long struggle of the song to be aired on the radio due to the vulgarity in the language used, still, it went viral soaring and dominating global music sales charts. All across the continent, from Africa to the Asia Pacific, we witnessed artists from all genres all over the world join in to drop their cover vocals that came in handy with visuals. Kiss Daniel’s “Fvck You” challenge is unarguably the biggest song cover challenge to ever happen in Africa. The song trended so much that the likes of legendary music star Wyclef Jean had to jump on it. In regards to content and substance, the Kizz Daniel’s “Fvck You” Challenge delivered on all fronts.

With a window of opportunity for all the performers that got involved to express creativeness in storytelling, wordplay, unique songwriting skills and vocal versatility, some artists justifiably did good amid some weird ones. A couple of new generation artists caught our attention and held us spellbound. For a long period in weeks, the question asked was, who is the MVP of the ‘Fvck You’ Challenge? If storytelling, rhymes, and punchlines were the yardsticks to gauge winners, artists like MI Abaga, Vector, Tiwa Savage, Simi, Ycee, Ruggedman, JujuBoy, Cheque, rapper Khaligraph Jones from Kenya to Sarkodie from Ghana, all nailed it. Kiss Daniel’s “Fvck You” challenge is one of the contents that had everyone talking the most in 2019. If I am not mistaken, it lasted for close to two months – In this new era of short attention span, that is a great feat. In terms of music as content, this moment provided the best of them.

The other moment that trended in 2019, and arguably surpassed that of Kizz Daniel was the Naira Marley vs Ruggedman brouhaha. Never before in the history of this country had we experienced such topsy-turvy between two Nigerian artists. On social media, their audiences were at war with each other for weeks – brothers became rivals and colleagues became foes. The drama started on April 19th when Naira shared a post where he drew a moral equivalence between slavery and Internet fraud. I will paraphrase, “If you know about slavery, you will understand that Yahoo (internet fraud) is not a crime”. Rapper Ruggedman replied by schooling him on how wrong that perception was. And after that, all hell broke loose. The trolls and the backlash flooded in in equal measures.

As a supposedly creative genius, Naira Marley released a song weeks after titled “Am I A Yahoo Boy” – a message insinuating he’s not a fraudster. But by that time, the criminal section of the Nigerian law enforcement authority had already gotten involved. He was arrested and spent weeks behind bars. All of these were happening in real-time on social media timelines – the media frenzy was unprecedented. But all in all, this issue turned out to be the most productive for both Ruggedman and Naira Marley. Fresh from getting out of jail, Naira released the song “Soapy” – one of the biggest crossover hits of 2019. Despite all the hatred and the isolated mob attack at Ruggedman, he also organized the “Foundation Concert” – his biggest music concert in the past eight years.

Another one of those moments that trended in 2019 came from the hip-hop rap battle between rapper MI Abaga and Vector. For hip-hop music fans and scholars, the exchange diss-songs between the two rappers provided them the biggest rap music conversation that happened in the last 17years dating back to 2002 when rapper Ruggedman’s song titled “Ehen” took the likes of Eedris Abdulkareem and Maintain (Olu and Tolu) careers to the cleaners for alluding they are wack lyricists. The MI ABAGA VS VECTOR – Purification Of The Purge, as I titled it in one of my stories describing it as a needless Hip-hop Battle, became one of the most talked-about moments in the Nigerian hip-hop music industry. Knowing that the release of diss songs in hip-hop comes with all the hullabaloo and trash-talking, the MI vs Vector battle did not disappoint on those elements.

In retrospect, switching play from MI’s diss track “The Viper” to Vector’s “Judas The Rat”, albeit the mouth-watering punchlines are good for the sustainability of the art of hip-hop but walking through the messages especially those from Vector, that whole rap battle seems to have transformed into a show of grown-ass pettiness and whiners. You know those you see watching the TV show ‘Yo Mamma’. Even though the battle lasted just barely over a week plus, it got everyone talking in the industry. The Tiwa Savage vs Victoria Kimani April 2019 beef where Victoria alluded Tiwa was obstructing other female musicians from succeeding was another moment that trended in 2019 but the frenzy fizzled out in less than three days.

That said, which of those moments that trended in 2019 got you and your cliques talking the most?