She was a guest on the show hosted by popular OAP, Ebro Darden,
where she revealed a lot about her perspective on African music.
Tiwa Savage has been interviewed on Apple Music Beats 1 Radio.
The Mavin Records singer who is promoting her sophomore album
“R.E.D”, recently got signed on to Jay Z’s Roc Nation. She is
currently on an international management deal.
She was a guest on the show hosted by popular OAP, Ebro Darden,
and she revealed a lot about her perspective on African music. She
also revealed more details on her deal with Jay Z’s Roc Nation and
how Africa currently commands the spotlight in global music.
The full interview has been edited below.
On African Music
continent. And so you have South Africa, East Africa, West Africa,
North Africa, and it’s just a huge continent with different cultures,
and different languages. So right now, the prominent music out of
Africa seems to be Afrobeat or Afropop (depending on what you
want to call it). Essentially it’s just music with African elements.
Whether it be the rhythm, or maybe the native language. As long as
you can have one or two of those, then it tends to be associated
with Africa.
with drums, basslines as well. I think everybody essentially, we all
have an element of it, but we are all influenced by the muic coming
out of America, we are influenced by Hip-Hop, we are influenced by
Soul Music, R&B, and I think that is the beauty of it; Blending both
markets together. So when you say African-American, truly, that’s
where it should be, between the African and the American world,
just blending both together.
On Songwriting and Sony Deal
used to be bullied and stuff. When you go to clubs in Africa, they
would play Hip-hop 90%, and maybe 10% African music. Now it is
literally the other way round, so it’s a great thing that Africans in
the diaspora are listening to African music.
I have been recording music for 8 years, I am signed to Sony/ATV
as well, so I wrote a couple of records out here, so I co-wrote ‘A
couple of forevers’ for Chrisette Michelle, ‘Collard & Greens’ for
Fantazia. So I have been writing for a long time. Now I am
focused on Afrobeat.
On Collaborations
The beautiful thing is, when American artistes come to Africa, and
you know English isn’t our first language, but you see people
reciting the lyrics to Jay Z songs, and it’s a feeling, they might not
even understand what the whole thing is. But it wouldn’t be able to
happen in reverse. There shouldn’t be a barrier just because you
don’t understand what Mafikizolo is saying or Tiwa is saying. Music
is an emotion, and I am really happy that you guys are putting that
light on, now that we have the spotlight to show the world what we
can really do.
I met B High (Jay Z’s cousin, and Roc Nation chief of mobile
strategies), I got a call, and he mentioned it and I (makes a
skeptical sound)…He was serious. I don’t know if it you’ve ever
met him, but he is serious. And I love the fact that they are not
trying to change me. They really just want to bring what I already
have to offer to the rest of the world, and they truly believe in the
movement. So yeah, I’m really excited about it.
The reason why we did not really make too much noise about it is
because a lot of people come over from Africa and they say they’ve
got this deal and that deal, and then nothing happens. We just
wanted to do it the proper way, get it official. I didn’t want to do
that to my people. I wanted them to really believe that it was really
happening, so we wanted to wait for the right time, and the time is
now.
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