As the rise of 'YoruPop' sparks debate about genre classification in Nigeria’s music scene, artists and industry insiders grapple with a fundamental question: does branding help global accessibility or does it risk limiting artists to an 'African' sub-category?
"I don't see YoruPop as limiting the music internationally."courtesy of Solana
Sometime around June, a song that would become one of the year's most talked-about and exciting tracks spread like wildfire across Nigerian social media.
“Okunkun” was created by Solana, a bright-eyed singer unafraid to wear her cultural identity on her sleeve. Released on June 16, 2026, the song became associated with YoruPop, a synth-leaning, polyrhythmic pop style that blends Yoruba language and cultural references.
The sound itself is not new; much of it can be traced through the Lijadu Sisters, which is why some have taken to calling this crop of artists the ‘Lijadu granddaughters.’ Artists like Lodu and Celeste Ojatula have used YoruPop to describe their music, while distributors have also begun using it as a descriptor.
As the Nigerian music industry looks to what comes next after Afrobeats' global breakthrough, YoruPop could be part of a shift toward more culturally specific sounds. But it raises a question about how Nigerian music is defined and understood: must distinct sounds be named to gain international acclaim, or can Nigerian artists shape global conversations within existing genres?
What we now call Nigerian pop sits within the broader Afropop ecosystem, with Afrobeats often used interchangeably with Nigerian pop in global conversations. Nigerian pop includes more specific genres, including street pop and sub-styles such as Afroadura. YoruPop is now emerging as another possible identifier for a Yoruba-rooted sub-genre of contemporary pop.
Dolapo Amusat, CEO and co-founder of WeTalkSound, doesn’t consider YoruPop a genre so much as a catchy new descriptor.
“I think it’s just a cool term, he says. “And the artists have embraced it because the term is getting attention right now and they have no reason not to leverage that.”
Lodu, one of YoruPop’s emerging voices, agrees. “It’s such a fun term that people started calling it, and I just embraced it. The sound is not something that would change at the end of the day because the identity is ours.”
Artists like Celeste Ojatula have used the term 'Yorupop' to describe their music.by Toyin Segun AKA Teezah
Tope Agbeyo, Communications Manager at Mavin Records, is more wary. “YoruPop can be useful because it gives language to a particular cultural and sonic expression,” he says. However, I think these should remain identifiers, not genres. I’d be wary of turning a cultural identifier into a rigid genre classification that dictates what an artist can or should sound like.”
Solana sees it differently. Pop, she says, tells you a thing is accessible. Yorupop tells you where it came from. “I don’t see Yorupop as limiting the music internationally. If anything, I think [its] uniqueness can be the doorway.” For her, the label doesn’t narrow the music; it gives the listener another way in.
Labels can help describe what makes a sound distinct, but Nigerians have often been more hesitant to christen emerging sounds. In 2022, for instance, some artists seemed to spurn the Afrobeats tag in favor of befuddling markers like Afrowave and Fireboy’s Afrolife. YoruPop feels different, raising a more useful question: what determines a genre, and how can these labels enable or limit new sonic expressions?
Music journalist Chibuzo Emmanuel says genre classification is not an exact science. “Broadly speaking, genres emerge from two main conventions. The first is musical structure: rhythm, meter, song structure, instruments and production techniques. The second is the culture or traditions associated with the sound. Country music, for example, has certain cultural tropes. That’s also why Afrobeats, despite its wide-ranging musical expressions, can be regarded as a genre.”
Amusat similarly defines genres as “having more to do with the music production than anything else.”
Solana sees it the other way. Pop, she says, tells you that a thing is accessible. Yorupop tells you where it came from.courtesy of Solana
Agbeyo thinks genre depends on a combination of listeners, artists, and media until it gains mainstream acceptance. He adds that labels can inspire sonic expression by teaching new artists the conventions and possibilities of a particular sound. But at the same time, those rules can become limiting. “New artists may feel pressure to lean into popular labels or allow existing categories to shape their work, even when they might otherwise develop something less familiar and more innovative.”
He offers a useful point about when cultural identity becomes a genre: when it develops “a specific musical language” capable of producing multiple iterations, regardless of the language in which the music is sung or the geography from which it originates. If its defining characteristic is only its language, cultural references, or geography, he suggests, then it may be more useful to think of it as an identifier rather than a genre.
It is easy to understand why artists might want to create a distinct name and identity for their music. Beyond giving a sound cultural specificity, a term like YoruPop can also serve as a marketing tool, helping artists distinguish themselves and build recognition at home.
In Nigeria, every sound gets conflated into the Afrobeats umbrella, which some artists have publicly contested. Wizkid made the point in 2024, pushing back against the assumption that Morayo would be an Afrobeats album and insisting he was an African artist who made several kinds of music. In the same year, Tems also disavowed Afrobeats, describing herself plainly as an R&B artist. Burna Boy has also frequently spurned the Afrobeats tag, describing his sound as afro-fusion.
They are unlikely to be the last mainstream Nigerian artists to push back against the label. As Nigerian music becomes increasingly global, artists are also becoming more conscious of how genre classifications can shape the way their work is understood outside the country. Afrobeats has been an invaluable umbrella for Nigerian music’s global rise, but the same umbrella can become restrictive when it is used to describe artists whose music has moved beyond its boundaries.
Ayomide Oriowo, cofounder and managing editor of TurnTable Charts, thinks Afrobeats working as an umbrella term is acceptable. Local awards privilege local work and compress everyone else, he points out; the Headies sorts African music by region and dumps the rest of the world into a single international category. “That’s how it works everywhere,” he says.
“The sound is not something that would change at the end of the day because the identity is ours.”by dstoryteller
Yet the consequence tells a fuller story. No American artist’s career is bound by how the Headies files them. And the compression happens regardless of how finely Nigerian music names itself: Ayra Starr’s “Heaven Baby” debuted on the UK Afrobeats chart despite production that sounds nothing like what most listeners mean by Afrobeats. The label persists because, internationally, Afrobeats has become a shorthand for identifying Nigerian and African pop music. It makes it easier for platforms, charts, and unfamiliar listeners to place the music. Thus, inventing a more precise name, in this case, YoruPop, does not necessarily stop a less precise one from being applied on arrival.
Perhaps the better question, then, is whether cultural specificity has to determine the category in which music competes. K-pop offers an interesting case study. “Golden” from Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters was nominated in four Grammy categories in February. K-pop is, of course, operating on a much larger global scale than Nigerian pop. But we can learn something from its trajectory. Cultural specificity does not have to come at the expense of global accessibility. A genre can be rooted in a particular language, culture, and place while still competing on the biggest stages simply as music.
“Language is one of the biggest elements in music, and there are artists winning internationally who speak other languages. There’s something Mohbad said: ‘music no need permission to enter your spirit ’; music in itself is universal,” Amusat says.
Nigerian pop can be just pop; it should be. But for that to happen internationally, the way the industry categorizes and markets Nigerian music has to evolve. And if YoruPop survives and develops into a genre of its own, it should not become a ceiling. The music should still be able to travel and compete alongside pop music from anywhere in the world. YoruPop can be a Yoruba-rooted sound while still being heard as pop. Afro R&B can acknowledge its Nigerian context while still being evaluated as R&B. Nigerian artists can be Nigerian without having aspects of their music placed in a new category before it is taken seriously.
Solana, on her part, is thinking about a smaller unit than the industry. “I want people to feel something when they hear my music, whether they understand every word or not. I want YoruPop to make people dance, feel, connect, and express themselves in their most authentic selves.”
