Can Mohbad’s untimely death make Afrobeats whole again?

The late Afrobeats rapper, singer and songwriter Mohbad was known for his distinctively introspective music. Singing mostly in his native Yoruba, his raspy voice bore a timbre and weariness beyond his years.

Yet his sudden death, reportedly from an ear infection in mid-September, has created a firestorm in his native Nigeria. On social media platform X (formerly Twitter), #Justice4Mohbad is still trending more than two weeks later, because the circumstances surrounding his demise are sketchy.

Perez Medcare Hospital in Lagos released a 25 September statement saying the patient had been “BID (Brought in dead)…Upon inquiry about the circumstances leading to the emergency, our team was informed that the deceased was being treated at home by a nurse and that she administered injections to him.” The nurse has since been found to be unlicensed and has been arrested.

The Lagos State Commissioner of Police established a special investigation team within its homicide section “to coordinate the investigation”. On 21 September they ordered an exhumation of his body, which had been buried the day after his death. It emerged that Mohbad had been attacked at an event the weekend he died, the last in a series of acts of violence and intimidation targeting him following his departure from the Marlian Music label in October 2022.

Not afraid to be vulnerable

Like most artists in his genre, Mohbad sang about himself, but unlike many of his colleagues, his focus was not his relationship with cars, women or money. Instead, his trials and personal suffering were a constant refrain. His songs drew from his palette of life struggles and rugged experiences, with a vulnerability all too scarce in his genre or in society.

His musical voice bore a muscular poignancy and a remarkable degree of honesty and self-deprecation. While many musicians lace their lyrics with braggadocio, Mohbad sang with melancholy about “sapa’”(poverty) and the futility of life itself, or about struggles with mental health:

This kind life e tire me  

Daddy no get salary  

Ten years I no see money  

Stepmother no care  

Landlord e dey worry  

My brothers are hungry  

Daddy gather money make I go poly [polytechnic]

I go poly but I no go class daddy I am sorry 

On Mohbad’s song, ‘Feel Good’, the listener will note his strong voice and measured drawl, laid on top of a beat with infectious and bouncy rhythms punctuated with staccato bursts of the “gangan“, or talking drum, a mainstay in the Yoruba musical tradition.

The rhythms seem to draw the locus of a skateboarder careening wildly on a wall in tight loops, while the lyrics swing between hope and despair in a sort of giddy schizophrenia:

Ahn 

When I dey Ikorodu sapa mumi [when I was in Ikorodu I was broke] 

Mo ma ronu, moma sukun (moma sukun) [I was despondent, and I cried]  

Ehn, I don work tire  

I don pray tire 

I don go Mountain of Fire 

I know there is a day 

All my pains will go away 

But, 

Mo de ma party all way (I will party all the way) 

I know there is a day 

All my pains will go away 

But, 

‘Til then, I smoke it away 

I feel good para-ran, para-ran 

Omo iya mi malo ronu, ko para-ran, para-ran 

I feel good (para-ran) 

Mohbad was a study in contrasts. “Imole” [“light” in Yoruba] is the word most often repeated in his music, which had dark and brooding tones; the word has come to represent him, and is the title of one of his tracks. Despite how assured his voice was when he sang, Mohbad was an uneasy fit in his industry, as well as in his own career.

After a public and tumultuous end to a troubled stint at his former label, he would remark in an interview that he was passed over by concert promoters, which must have been a torment for someone with so much talent and expressiveness. He found himself labelled a misfit after leaving a label that prided itself on hosting misfits – when what he wanted most was to make music, and to belong.

Artists as commodities

Concert promoters as curators and gatekeepers have in great part fostered the global dispersal of Afrobeats by commodifying the music, and inevitably the artists themselves. The genre has become a global phenomenon, boasting superstars such as Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido. As is obvious from comments on their YouTube videos, it increasingly serves as a beacon and a rallying point for people the world over, and across Africa and its diaspora.

Afrobeats is going through a gut check. Rap, the last such global movement of Black culture, lost its way as petty “beefs” mushroomed to consume some of its biggest and most talented stars like Tupac Shakur and Christopher “Biggie” Wallace.  The drained musical form never recovered after the fans tuned out.

Grievances and complaints may make for good copy, but they’re bad for business. Ultimately, people are drawn to music for escape, expecting to be uplifted and transported, and they are particular about where the journey takes them. No art or system that devours its most talented will survive, nor does it deserve to.

Afrobeats is not rap. It is free of the seam of violence that weaves through the latter, once represented by the American Suge Knight, founder and former CEO of Death Row Records, once gangsta rap’s most influential impresario, now serving a 28-year prison sentence. Whereas Afrobeat’s two most influential men, Olamide Gbenga Adedeji and Michael “Don Jazzy” Ajereh, are remarkable leaders known for their fairness and integrity.

They support their stars and even become avuncular figures, in sharp contrast to the toxic and feral nature of MohBad’s previous experiences. Olamide guided the spectacular rise of Ahmed Ololade, or Asake, to his recent sold-out show at London’s O2 arena. And Rema, Divine Ikubor, a rising star from Don Jazzy’s Mavin Records, won the first Afrobeats category addition to the VMA awards lineup on 12 September, poignantly, the very day Mohbad died.

Tributes and indignation

His death has been accompanied by an overwhelming outpouring of public grief and indignation. Candlelight processions have been held across cities in Nigeria, the UK, Spain and in the UAE, with thousands of mourners holding candles aloft, as “imole” and in homage to “imole”.

The football club Cádiz Club de Futbol in Nigeria posted on its X page the message, “We continue to be shocked and saddened by the news of the death of Nigerian rapper @iammohbad. We wish for rest and justice for the family. Your star will shine brighter than ever in the sky. RIP Mohbad.”

🇳🇬🙏 This tribute at Wednesday’s match is the least we can do to honour and remember @iammohbad_.

🖤⚽️ Let’s hope that his jersey will bring us luck and strength to beat our rival and serve to give voice to his story.

𝘾Á𝘿𝙄𝙕 𝘾𝙁 🤝 𝙉𝙄𝙂𝙀𝙍𝙄𝘼 https://t.co/SzXkHrAVlN pic.twitter.com/f5XBVXY1D2

— Cádiz CF 🇳🇬 (@Cadiz_CFNG) September 26, 2023

Meanwhile, Naira Marley, the head of Marlian Music (the label Mohbad left), has been caught up in a fierce backlash and become the focal point for the public outrage over the artist’s untimely death.

Aftermath

Marley’s own music videos have been removed from playlists, including on MTV Base and Soundcity. Local radio stations have banned the playing of his songs on air, and he has lost hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram. He has become Nigeria’s first person to be “cancelled.”

#Justice4Mohbad has become a social movement in its own right, with protests having expanded to denounce more generalised corruption in Nigeria and drawing international media attention.

Whether the police’s investigative trail stops with the person who administered the injection or extends to include wider questioning, justice in this instance must not end with merely identifying and sanctioning those responsible for Mohbad’s death. As shocking and tragic as the loss may be, it can also lead to a watershed moment. As the world becomes increasingly captivated by the special and exhilarating music that is Afrobeats, larger questions need to be asked about these new makers and shapers of our global culture: who they are, and what they stand for and represent, both as a genre and a generation.

Like the country around them, they need to decide and define what values they hold and project to the world. Whether they are to remain simply an incoherent community of talented individuals or become a group united in meaning and in purpose.

If nothing else, then, Mohbad’s tragic death could at least serve to help make whole the very industry – and wider society – that let him down, to fatal effect.