Lil Kesh, LK Kuddy, Ycee and Adekunle Gold have topped the annual listing of upcoming music artistes who are likely to shape the Nigerian music industry in the coming year.

The Spinlet Sound of 2016 is a list compiled by popular artistes, DJs, industry executives, OAPs, club promoters and critics, and published by Spinlet as a prediction of the biggest and most influential music acts for the upcoming year. It’s aimed at showcasing rising stars and appreciating their work so far. This year’s shortlist attracted artistes from Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt.

Speaking on the selection process, Rotimi Fawole, Head of Business Development, Spinlet, said: “The artistes are nominated by a panel of music experts and the artistes with the most nominations from these music experts make the list. These experts include OAPs, DJs, Producers, Club promoters and music critics.”

“We looked to music experts who are the most genuine, enthusiastic and passionate about good music and particularly, up and coming acts. Each of our panellists then furnished us with a top 10 list of acts, which in their opinion, were eligible for the Sound of 2016 list. We tallied the nominations based on a combination of frequency and ranking. (So an artist nominated twice or thrice and ranked number 1 would out rank an artist nominated once for the same ranking, and so on and so forth.) It was by this process of elimination, that we arrived at the following list,” Fawole added.

SPINLET SOUND OF 2016

Lil Kesh

LK Kuddy

Ycee

Adekunle Gold

Lindsey

Jessica Bongos

Tay

Poe

Ozone

Dice

Koker

Kiss Daniel

Boj

Funbi

Acetune

Eco

Tesh Carter

Double Jay

Viktoh

Tekno

•Photo shows Lil Kesh.