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Adekunie Gold Vibez

Adekunle Gold started out as a highlife traditionalist in a kaftan and ended up making records with Pharrell and Nile Rodgers. The route between those two points is the most interesting story in modern Nigerian pop.

The most complete reinvention in Afrobeats

Adekunle Kosoko began, improbably, as a graphic designer who made a cover version — his 2014 reworking of One Direction's "Story of My Life" as "Sade" went viral in Nigeria and got him signed to YBNL Nation. His early albums leaned hard into highlife and Yoruba folk traditions: acoustic guitars, talking drum, storytelling lyrics, a deliberately old-fashioned presentation.

Then he took it apart. Beginning around Afro Pop Vol. 1 and accelerating through Catch Me If You Can and Tequila Ever After, he rebuilt himself as a sleek, funk- and disco-inflected pop artist — more falsetto, more live bass, more explicit debt to Michael Jackson and Off the Wall-era arrangements. He also disclosed living with sickle cell disease, which recontextualised a lot of the striving in his writing.

What to listen for

The playlist is sequenced to make the arc audible. "Sade," "Ogaranya" and "Sinner" represent the earlier, more traditional palette — though "Sinner" with Lucky Daye is a later record that reaches back for the same warmth.

"Falling Up" with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers is the headline collaboration and exactly the disco-funk lineage he had been building toward — Rodgers' guitar is unmistakable within two bars. "Do You Mind?" and "Party No Dey Stop" with Zinoleesky are the club end.

"High" with Davido was the record that made him unavoidable internationally. "One Woman" with Ty Dolla $ign and "Make It Easy" with Coco Jones show him operating comfortably inside American R&B.

The quieter tracks are where the writing lives: "It Is What It Is," "Believe," "Something Different" and "Okay." Fourteen tracks, and a case study in how to change completely without losing anyone.

Go deeper

To hear the transformation properly, play Gold (2016) and then Tequila Ever After (2023) back to back. Same man, almost nothing in common. Catch Me If You Can (2022) is the hinge record.

For the highlife roots he started from, go to Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Adé — the jújú and highlife tradition his early records were consciously reviving.

His wife Simi is a superb songwriter in her own right and their catalogues are worth hearing alongside each other. And for the disco-funk direction he moved toward, the obvious homework is Nile Rodgers and Chic, plus Off the Wall, which is clearly the album he has been chasing.

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