Music Break. Bonus Friday Edition, N°0

By: Sean Jacobs

Last week we brought you the serious side of Burkina rapper Mokobe. In this hilarious video he makes proper use of a beat made famous by 50 Cent:

Belgian hipsters: Magic Mirror’s “Show man”:

Cities Aviv’s “Araw.” The guest rapper is Royal T. Yeh, they’re hipsters too.

What’s it with Nigerians and derivative R&B? This is 2Face, basically the national face of the genre. (I suppose there are rewards: you have to endure American TV chat show hosts.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GT-CiEuw94&600&h=367]

Finally, if you still don’t know what’s Azonto about:

H/T:

Trumpism in Nigeria

Why does the anti-Black racism of the US president have defenders in Africa’s largest Black nation?

Politics

03.26.2026

After the subcontracting state

Abdullahi Mohamed Boru

The withdrawal from the port city of Berbera by regional powers distracted by war, marks the end of an external system that managed the Horn of Africa—and the beginning of a deeper structural collapse.

Culture

03.25.2026

Cooking up the city

Muthoni Kihara

A new history of Mombasa shows how street food, colonial labor migration, and urban capitalism reshaped what—and how—Kenya eats.

Culture

03.24.2026

Who owns the memory of struggle?

Azeezah Adekanmbi

An exhibition in Ibadan recovers Nigeria’s buried history of activism, raising urgent questions about access, erasure, and whether archives can inspire new political action.

Politics

03.23.2026

Greater Israel and the new regional order

Jwan Zreiq

Israel’s campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran are not discrete crises but interconnected fronts in a broader project of regional dominance.

Politics

03.20.2026

Senegal’s theater of morality

Rama Salla Dieng

As debt mounts and police violence on campuses goes unanswered, Senegal’s government is targeting its queer citizens.

Ancestors

03.19.2026

A life in struggle

Ikenna Edwin Madunagu

From the Nigerian Civil War to decades of Marxist organizing and scholarship, Biodun Jeyifo’s life traced a tradition of commitment—one that now passes to a new generation.

Politics

03.18.2026

Where do the borders really lie?

In Nairobi, migrants face not just national frontiers but invisible barriers in policing, housing, and work.

Culture

03.17.2026

David Hundeyin may not be a false prophet

Omole Ibukun

In Nigeria’s media landscape, anti-imperialist commentary captures popular anger without transforming it, turning dissent into spectacle rather than power.

Politics

03.16.2026

Pilgrimage to power

David Tonghou Ngong

From John Paul II to Benedict XVI, papal visits to Cameroon have often come when Paul Biya’s government faced political turmoil.

Politics

03.13.2026

Who speaks for Iran?

Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda

Between imperial narratives and state propaganda, debates about the war on Iran often erase the diversity of Iranian society and the voices of its marginalized communities.

Politics

03.12.2026

The arrest protocol on my fridge

A. Kayum Ahmed

A year after ICE detained Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil, pro-Palestinian organizers in the United States are living under the threat of arrest, detention, and deportation.

Politics

03.11.2026

Slow death by food

Adwoa A. Fofie

Illegal gold mining is poisoning Ghana’s soil and rivers, seeping into its crops and seafood, and turning the national food system into a long-term public health crisis.

Politics

03.10.2026

The Imam against the insurgents

Mohammed Sanda

The potential return of exiled cleric Mahmoud Dicko to Mali could challenge jihadist movements by reopening political space and contesting their claim to religious authority.

Politics

03.09.2026

A sick health system

Shayera Dark

The suspension of three doctors following the death of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s son has renewed scrutiny of a health-care system plagued by impunity, underfunding, and a mass exodus of medical professionals.

Politics

03.06.2026

From Mogadishu to Minneapolis

Elizabeth Schmidt

The Trump administration’s crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota ignores a longer history: decades of US intervention that helped produce the violence and displacement Somalis fled.

Politics

03.05.2026

The empire strikes Iran

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

The US-Israeli war on Iran is the latest expression of a long imperial pattern—one shaped by opportunistic intervention, Western alignment, and the enduring racialized logic of empire.

Culture

03.04.2026

Afrobeats after Fela

Dami Ajayi

Wizkid’s dispute with Seun Kuti and the release of his latest EP with Asake highlight the widening gap between Afrobeats’ commercial triumph and Fela Kuti’s political inheritance

Culture

03.03.2026

Whose language is the nation’s?

Gaya Morris

Senegal’s bilingual education reforms challenge the dominance of French—but foreign aid dependence and internal linguistic politics complicate the path to decolonizing the classroom.

Culture

03.03.2026

À qui appartient la langue de la nation?

Gaya Morris

Les réformes de l’éducation bilingue au Sénégal contestent la domination du français, mais la dépendance à l’aide étrangère et les rivalités linguistiques internes compliquent la décolonisation de l’école.

AfricaIs aCountry