Africa Is a Country

African pop reawakens its political roots

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

African pop reawakens its political roots

By
Billie Adwoa McTernan

Nigerian band VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes wants to open the world's eyes to the political and social realities of the continent through a catchy and danceable repertoire.

VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes.

African music icons of previous generations, such as Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba, were and are well known for their ability to speak truth through music. They’ve also inspired many across the world by revealing political realities in Africa through their art and in their lives. Today however, the various national scenes enjoying a boom across the continent tend to accommodate musicians with a pop shine and carefree hooks in order to survive in a global commercial industry. This has created a vacuum in the pop space for socially-aware musicians. Enter Nigerian band VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes, a group who strives to open the world’s eyes to the political and social realities of the continent through a catchy and danceable repertoire.

From their EP Let’s Play released in August comes ‘E Dey Pain Me’ an Afrobeat track with soulful melodies. VILLY cries ‘How you go chop and clean mouth and talk say it good, how you go treat your people like say we b fools’, questioning corrupt systems in Africa. ‘Mama’ covers stories of insecurities and jungle justice that takes place in Nigeria. In this song VILLY talks about rape, attacks on students in reference to Boko Haram, theft by government officials. The message of Gbolaka (gunshot) is clear, “it’s time we start fighting and it’s time we start demanding for our rights.” VILLY suggests that a corrupt act by government is a gunshot at the people and that it’s time the people reclaim power from corrupt leaders. ‘Make Me Mad’, takes people on a frenzy whenever the song is performed. The song is fast becoming the group’s signature revolution song and was recently featured on BBC World News.

In their live performances, such as this one, VILLY name drops leaders and officials who are thought to have acted or are continuing to act counterproductively toward the betterment of their nations. VILLY & The Xtreme Volumes are on a crusade to champion their cause and are taking the message straight to the people. They might just be that spark that is needed for African Pop to reawaken its political roots.

Further Reading

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.