“To fully understand it, you have to experience it for yourself. “There are no amount of words I can put together to make you understand what Lagos is, to explain the hustle, or the political injustice, the strength of the people or the number of amazing creatives,” he says. Here, the city’s bright-yellow auto rickshaws, or keke maruwas, are always bumper to bumper in traffic, and street vendors peddle their wares on every corner. Raised by a Muslim father and Christian mother, Wizkid and his seven siblings grew up in Surulere, the bustling middle-class enclave in Lagos. It was a blessing.”īlessed is without question the adjective Wizkid uses most often to describe his extraordinary path (it’s also – surprise, surprise – the title of the song he sings with Damian Marley on the latest album). “To see the two of them playing together, that almost made me cry. It was only earlier this year that the singer was finally able to return home and introduce Zion to Boluwatife, his 10-year-old son from a previous relationship, for the first time. That’s why I feel this album means the same thing to me as it does to a lot of other people – it really helped me through a tough time,” he says. “Being away from Nigeria and my family for so long brought me to my darkest point. When I ask him about that time, his voice takes on a different tone. The musician found himself stranded in London during lockdown.
The album Wizkid is currently touring has come to symbolise a sort of post-lockdown euphoria, but it’s easy to forget that Made in Lagos was released when many places in the world were in the throes of a second wave. “The impact he has beyond that, well, it’s just huge.” “It’s funny because now you see all the guys wearing slippers and tight pants,” Binns says, racing after Wizkid as he heads towards the stage door. One shiny pair of black Martine Rose slip-on loafers later, and he’s ready to go. He douses himself with a mystery fragrance, one he refuses to name, like it’s holy water. “This is it,” he says, buttoning up the matching short-sleeved shirt and serving his best blue steel in the mirror. He inspects the rack of clothes with an intensity that suggests he understands the devil is in the detail, and wastes no time in picking out his favourite things: two looks that have been created especially by British menswear designer Bianca Saunders, a pair of slouchy, black, patent-leather trousers that he rules out (“they need to be tighter”) in favour of a beige-pleated pair. “Back home, we dress comfortably, it’s everything for me,” says Wizkid, born Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, with an accent that falls somewhere between east London and Lagos. Even in the half-light of the green room, it’s impossible to ignore the two gigantic diamond-encrusted Jesus-piece chains that are glistening around his neck or the sizeable diamond hoops tugging at his earlobes.īlack Friday Exclusive: Subscribe to British Vogue for one year for just £19 Moments later, Wizkid ambles through the door in a cloud of smoke, dressed in the kind of loungewear that would look right at home in Liberace’s mansion: a pyjama set cut from vintage baroque-print silk, Chanel sunnies and furry red Balenciaga slides. He unpacks it hurriedly, pulling out box-fresh pairs of slip-on shoes – Balenciaga slippers, Gucci mules, Rick Owens’s much sought-after Birkenstock clogs – like rabbits out of a hat, and lines them up on the floor. A member of his entourage scurries in wearing head-to-toe tie-dye and schlepping a royal blue Goyard duffle bag, stuffed to the gills.
Steaming trays of jollof rice are lined up on the bar next to bottles of Hennessy a fresh batch of performance outfits is being arranged by his stylist Karen Binns, who has flown in from London for the last leg of the American tour. Though the 31-year-old Nigerian megastar himself has yet to arrive, preparations are being made for him backstage. It’s almost showtime at the Tabernacle, the hundred-year-old church-turned-concert-hall in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, where Wizkid is set to perform to a sold-out crowd.