Seni Saraki on Co-Producing New Documentary on Wizkid

The moment was symbolic, dense with meaning. Wizkid had just made history as the first African artist ever to sell out Tottenham Stadium. Here stood one of Afrobeats' biggest cultural exports, breaking another record and paving the way for those coming behind him. It was a moment to relish.

But what did it take to pull off such a feat? How did the expansive and structurally ambitious stage set-up come to life? What burdens or anxieties plagued him on the day of the event or during rehearsals? And, most importantly, what did that moment mean for his fans and the people who look up to him?

Wizkid: Long Live Lagos, a new documentary on Wizkid and his journey to performing at Tottenham Stadium, answers those questions. The documentary is set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this Friday, June 6. It is directed by American filmmaker Karam Gill, who is also known for directing Lil Baby's documentary Untrapped: The Story of Lil Baby. Wizkid: Long Live Lagos is a deeply vulnerable look at a cultural figure navigating global stardom while staying true to his roots and trying to fulfill the promises he made to himself.

"It's the most intimate view of Wizkid I've ever seen," Seni Saraki, who co-produced the project, tells OkayAfrica. In 1 hour and 23 minutes, viewers will follow Wizkid from London to Surulere, the Lagos neighborhood that shaped him and remains his most crucial creative springboard. The documentary also takes the opportunity to examine the rise of Nigerian music, what it means to be a global star from the African continent, and the many burdens that come with that.

Cross-cultural movement

For Saraki, this documentary is a full-circle moment.

Towards the end of 2020, the same year Wizkid released his fourth album, one of the most culturally significant albums in global music history,Made In Lagos, Native Magazine, under Saraki's editorial guidance, did something simultaneously honorific and consequential.

Dedicating four different covers and an entire magazine to Wizkid, Native chronicled the rise and reach of Wizkid's impressive global stardom through an extensive profile of the man himself and also through the eyes of his managers, producers, visual artists, and the people his music has touched at one point or another. Called the Wizmag, it was a befitting celebration of a generational artist whose project was already piloting the rise of Afrobeats music in the late 2010s.

More than five years later, that editorial project helped provide a thorough, on-ground perspective of Wizkid for the documentary. It is through the cultural insight provided by that editorial project that the documentary was able to accurately contextualize and frame Wizkid through the eyes of the people who know him best. Having a Nigeria-based media outfit involved in the production of an important film about one of its brightest stars was also a necessary step in telling a culturally resonant story.

"I see how it would look like a full circle moment," Saraki tells OkayAfrica. "I think for us, it's a testament to what we tried to do when we started Native. When [Karam] was working on the film, he saw that Native kept coming up in the research, and then he stumbled on Wizmag."

Saraki says that the documentary is a candid look at the grueling work that goes into maintaining the level of excellence for which Wizkid's artistry is known. "You can't do that stuff by mistake," Saraki says. "There's a certain level of process and preparation and dedication to a craft to get to that level. I think this film shows, probably, the most intimate view we've seen from Nigeria to date in terms of this new generation of artists."

Examining the culture

As a storyteller himself, Seni Saraki has worked across print, music, and now film in a bid to understand and thoroughly examine the flow and bends of culture. With his magazine, for instance, Saraki sought to engage with Nigerian music on a cerebral level at a time when many were simply consuming it without contextualizing it. The central theme in his work and one of the key forces that drew him to the project Wizkid: Long Live Lagos is an appetite for stories or artists who can get people to care about something.

"Getting people to care, to have an opinion about something in this day and age, when there's such an impression on people's time, that means a lot, and that's how I pick a lot of my projects," he says.

With Long Live Lagos, Saraki says he is most excited about the scope of the project. The documentary also looks at the rise of stan culture in Nigeria, focusing on how Wizkid's massive fan base helped pioneer a movement of rallying around Nigerian artists and building entire ecosystems around fandom. This documentary takes the opportunity to delve into the psyche of that movement.

"What this film encapsulates is that the love of these figures [like Wizkid] has shifted to being about talent and what you're good at, and these guys are offering their music to the world. That's why stanship now feels bigger. It's not about how rich they are. There's still a section of society that loves them because they're rich, but it's now about 'I love Wizkid because this song did this for me at this time in my life,' Saraki explains.

As viewers get a peek into Wizkid's life and the technicalities that make him Wizkid, Saraki hopes that this project allows people to slow down and appreciate how far Afrobeats music and the Nigerian music industry have come.

"I hope people first see it as a celebration of Wizkid and the celebration of the genre and the movement as a whole. There's a lot of conversation around how Afrobeats is doing, whether we're making progress, and if the story has ended. But there's still a long way to go, and there's still stuff to do," Saraki says. "Sometimes we get so insular, but are there a lot of countries apart from America that have six potential stadium artists in another country? I don't know if five artists from Spain could sell out the Tottenham Stadium. That's not to say rest on your laurels and think you've made it, but some people have done some incredible things. I think that's one thing I want people to take away from the film."