Afrobeats enthusiasts were once more crestfallen by the Grammy Awards when Tyla secured the Best African Music Performance accolade, surpassing formidable Nigerian contenders Davido, Burna Boy, and Ayra Starr, a result that plunged Nigerian supporters into profound disbelief, disappointment, and anguish. Amidst the Nigerian music industry’s ongoing struggle for global preeminence, the critical question remains: should Afrobeats continue to rely on the Grammys to validate its premier artists and compositions?

That Sunday evening, the global spectacle proceeded, celebrating international heavyweights such as Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar. The night’s ultimate distinction went to Bad Bunny, who claimed the coveted Album of the Year award for his entirely Spanish-language record, marking a historic moment as the first Latin artist to conquer that most prized category.

Prior to the major accolades, the announcement of the Best African Music Performance category saw Afrobeats luminaries, including Burna Boy, Ayra Starr, and Davido, nominated, only to witness the trophy once again claimed by Tyla.

This outcome precipitated a sharp reaction from Nigerians, who questioned the Grammys’ consistent pre-show promotion of Afrobeats, exemplified by securing a performance from Davido at the Grammy Museum, only to ultimately recognise a winner whose primary resonance was quantified by impact on US charts.

Cobhams Asuquo, the eminent Nigerian music artist and composer, offered a trenchant commentary on the result, stating that the Grammys appear to be leveraging Nigerian engagement to “boost the GDP of Los Angeles”. He likened the recognition to “a carrot dangling in front of us,” perpetually withdrawn, and stressed the necessity for the industry to construct its own definitive institutions, observing, “It’s only America that will do superbowl and be playing it themselves”.

This scenario compels a critical examination:

What is the genesis of this award category, and why does this American accolade command such profound investment from the Nigerian public?

By the late 2010s and into the 2020s, Nigerian music had begun to cross international borders, especially in the US. Many top industry players began to take note, and just after the Covid, Wizkid, Ckay, Burna Boy, Davido, and Tems turned to musical who’s who in the conversations of music listeners, executives, and critics, attracting majors like Sony, Universal, Warner, Empire, and major award events in the UK, and US, especially the Grammys.

The world began to take notice, and the conversation about Afrobeats relevance popped into major boardroom meetings, which resulted to international Afrobeats-themed charts and African-themed categories at major festivals and award shows.

However, the Grammys already had something for the African continent, the problem remained that it shared one category with the rest of the world outside of the United States (U.S.)… the ‘World Music’ category with Angelique Kidjo, who is considered one of the most decorated African artists in Grammy history, winning 4 awards in the Album sub category.

As Afrobeats solidified its status as the quintessential musical expression of Africa, Nigerians advocated for its prioritization within the Academy Awards’ existing world music category. However, the initial sign of forthcoming tribulations arrived in 2020 when Burna Boy was defeated in the Best World Music Album category by Angelique Kidjo’s Celia.

The subsequent year brought a nomenclature shift, transforming the ‘World Music’ category into ‘Global Music’, an award triumphantly claimed by Burna Boy. Yet, the year after, amidst widespread Nigerian anticipation for Wizkid’s acclaimed Made in Lagos album, the prize was conferred upon Kidjo once more.

This triggered the seminal wave of outrage among Nigerians, who found it intolerable that Afrobeats albums boasting globally resonant singles were consistently overlooked in favor of albums from other regions deemed to possess less commercial impact, simply by the Grammys’ decree.

Responsive to this mounting critique, the Grammys inaugurated an African-themed category for the 2024 event: ‘Best African Music Performance’. This category was established with the stated objective to “amplify and expand the reach of African music and its creators and to celebrate the distinct, unique sounds of the continent”.

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said, “These changes reflect our commitment to actively listen and respond to the feedback from our music community, accurately represent a diverse range of relevant musical genres, and stay aligned with the ever-evolving musical landscape.”

In its inaugural presentation, the nominations heavily prioritized Afrobeats, featuring tracks such as Asake & Olamide’s “Amapiano,” Burna Boy’s “City Boys,” Davido’s “Unavailable,” and Ayra Starr’s “Rush”. These contenders vied fiercely to secure the category’s first prize, which was perceived as distinctly African-focused and propelled largely by the mandate of their domestic fanbase.

Yet, the Grammys delivered an unforeseen outcome: Tyla, the sole non-Nigerian contender from South Africa, claimed the victory in 2024 with her ubiquitous global anthem, ‘Water’. This decision immediately ignited profound backlash from Nigerian factions who felt profoundly aggrieved by the Recording Academy’s judgment.

Unbeknownst to these supporters, this moment inaugurated a relentless and desperate pursuit for validation from an American institutional body dictating who constituted their finest artist of the year.

In 2025, Tems won the category in 2025 for ‘Love Me Jeje’, her second Grammy win after picking one up the previous year in the Melodic Rap Performance category for ‘Wait 4 U’, where she gave her American-toned vocals to the Drake and Future single. To Nigerians, this felt right. It seemed the Grammys had finally understood the assignment.

Then 2026 rolled in as most Nigerians wanted to put the icing on the cake with Davido’s hit song ‘With You’, which was one of the biggest songs in the Nigerian and, to a large extent, according to Kworb’s data, West African music space. Ayra Starr’s Gimme Dat featuring Wizkid posed as a good contender alongside Burna Boy’s Love but yet again, Tyla picked up the win for her global hit ‘Push 2 Start’, which was widely adored by global listeners, especially in the US, where Grammy members are based.

Why Tyla won and what it means for any artist submitting for that category

“Davido didn’t win. This marks his fourth Grammy nomination without a win, a painful pattern for one of Afrobeats’ most relentless builders. The losses outnumber the wins, but the wins are real. The system works. It simply wasn’t designed to capture everything Afrobeats actually is. The winner was Tyla… a deserved win. “Push 2 Start” wasn’t just an African hit. It was a global one,” said Joey Akan, founder of Afrobeats Intelligence podcast.

Push 2 Start was the highest-selling song in the US among its fellow nominees in the category with over 500,000 units as of the first half of 2025.

The song was the only song among the group to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 88, staying on the chart for 3 weeks. No Nigerian song had such a feat. Push 2 Start was also the highest-streamed song among the songs with over 617 streams across all platforms

Exploring the ongoing debate around the Best African Music Performance category, cultural commentator Opulence (@Theopulenceman) on X offers a sharp critique of the award’s structure. He argues that the category unfairly compresses the vast musical diversity of an entire continent into a single box, unlike how the Grammys treat other regions with genre-specific separations.

“The Grammy Awards do not group other regions into one box. Instead, they are separated by the genres Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Country, etc. They allow cultural nuance and specificity. Africa, on the other hand, a continent of 54 countries and hundreds of genres gets one umbrella category,” he wrote in a widely engaged post.

Opulence goes further, warning that the category harms African music culture in the long run by incentivising imitation over authenticity. He suggests it be scrapped or subdivided into more precise recognitions and emphasised that African artists should treat Grammys as a valuable “perk” for global exposure rather than the ultimate yardstick of success.

“Africa is a continent of 54 countries, with thousands of distinct musical traditions. Lumping them all into one Grammy category isn’t a celebration. It’s a consolidation. The Recording Academy is saying: “We’ll acknowledge you exist, but you all have to compete for one trophy,” Akan said.

Olele Salvador, a Ghanaian pop culture journalist, addressed the recurring backlash on social media, saying, “When Tyla won the Best African Music Performance again at the 2026 #GRAMMYs, a familiar reaction played out on social media,” Salvador stated in his video editorial.

He described this as a consistent display of entitlement, where victories by artists from outside Nigeria spark widespread complaints, boycott calls, and assertions that the category or broader African music recognition should primarily or exclusively favor Nigerian talent, revealing an underlying resentment toward non-Nigerian success in global African music spaces.

Salvador pointed to a clear double standard, noting the muted or absent outrage when Nigerian artists like Tems previously claimed the same award, contrasted with the intense negativity directed at Tyla’s wins. He framed the issue as Nigeria exhibiting “Main Character syndrome” in the continent’s music narrative, where the success of others is often viewed through a lens of theft or unfairness rather than shared celebration.

“That reaction exposes the real tension hiding inside the category: when we say ‘African Music,’ do we mean the continent, or do we mean Nigeria? Because the Grammys mean the continent. And Afrobeats, for all its dominance, is one genre within a much larger musical landscape. The category becomes less about what’s hot in Accra or Lagos and more about what resonates in Los Angeles or New York. That’s not a flaw in Afrobeats. It’s a flaw in the frame.” Akan said.

According to Akan, pushing so hard for institutional recognition and the genre accepting recognition on the institutions’ terms is a trap Afrobeats built for itself. (BusinessDay)

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