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Video: Mr Eazi On How He's Helping Young African Artists Grow

In 'Moments With: Mr Eazi,' the buzzing Nigerian star tells us about Banku music, being a serial entrepreneur, and how he's been pushing young African artists through his emPawa initiative.

Mr Eazi stopped by our offices in New York City during a packed round of promo around his new emPawa platform.

The Nigerian star sat down with OkayAfrica and spoke in-depth about his early days, how his friends all pooled money to help him get started, how his famous 'hat' look came about, the blend of Ghanaian & Nigerian sounds that make up Banku music and more recent things like collaboration with J Balvin and Bad Bunny.

Watch our Moments With video with Mr Eazi below.

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Asa 'Lucid' cover.

The 14 Songs You Need to Hear This Week

Featuring Asa, Patoranking x Busiswa, $pacely, Vagabon, Shane Eagle and more.

Every week, we highlight the cream of the crop in music through our Best Music of the Week column.

Here's our round up of the best tracks and music videos that came across our desks, which you can also check out in our Songs You Need to Hear This Week playlists on Spotify and Apple Music.

Follow our SONGS YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS WEEK playlist on Spotify here and Apple Music here.

Check out all of OkayAfrica's new playlists on Spotify and Apple Music.

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Music
Emefa Smith and Wavy the Creator. Photo: Chuchu Ojekwe for OkayAfrica.

Photos: A Look Inside Nigeria's Alté Subculture

We speak with four of the people shaping Nigeria's alté scene: musicians Wavy The Creator & Teezee, creative director/stylist Ashley Okoli and fashion entrepeneur Emefa Smith.

Just like most cultural waves that come from Nigeria, the roots of the alté subculture can be traced back to Lagos. The bubbling populous city is home to innovative hustlers and a large youth population which leads to a lot of experimentation and creation of new sounds and subcultures happening within.

While afro-fusion transcends international borders to become a regular fixture on top of the global charts and a permanent presence in UK airwaves—and as afropop stars like Wizkid and Davido collaborate with global hitmakers like Drake and Skepta—a smaller community of artists in Nigeria is creating a sound and style that is harder to define: it's inherently more experimental and subverts expectations of what it means to create in Nigeria.

By crafting out a style that plays on gendered fashion and refuses to follow conventions, and a sound that fuses varying textures of different genres together, these alté artists have created a disruptive subculture that has earned and grown a significant following.

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Still from YouTube

Watch Santi's Spooky Short Film for 'Raw Dinner' Featuring Kida Kudz

The artist once again draws inspiration from Nollywood horror in the self-directed video.

Santi has taken his already memorable music video offerings to another level, releasing a short film as the music video for his latest single 'Raw Dinner," featuring Kida Kudz from his debut album Mandy and the Jungle.

Constantly drawing inspiration from the Nollywood horror films of the '90s—which he also referenced heavily in the video for last year's "Freaky"—the artist produced an 8-minute short with dark and stunning imagery. The self-directed and self-written video, follows a girl named Luna who possesses supernatural abilities. She joins Santi as they embark on a mission to find Kida Kudz who has mysteriously gone missing. They are then joined by another girl named Erin, who turns out to be even more otherworldly than originally thought. "Then again there is a certain type of darkness, gifted to you without explanation or purpose," says the film's narrator as the camera captures shadowy shots of terror, zombies and exorcisms.

The artist has given the film, a full movie rollout, teasing its release on social media with a movie poster, complete with acting and production credits on Friday, and dropping a spooky trailer last weekend in anticipation of its release.

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