Nigerian musicians are represented on Rolling stone’s list of the top 200 singers in pop music, which was recently published.
Details: Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti and Afrobeats icon Burna Boy both made the Rolling stone list of the top 200 singers of all time, which was published on January 1, 2022.
The Grammy-winning megastar Burna Boy, whose music is bringing afrobeats to a global audience, was ranked at position 197.
Rollingstone described Burna Boy as follows:
“A Nigerian cultural giant, Burna Boy is the ambassador of Afrobeats as a global movement that can feel equally at home climbing the European charts and maintaining a subtle emotional connection with past African genres like highlife. Burna’s voice is sweet like caramel, but it can also soar on slickly produced tracks like his recent megahit “Last Last,” or the 2019 gem “Anybody,” amped up by deep bass accents and insanely sophisticated polyrhythms. His vocal lines find inspiration in everything from hip-hop and R&B to hooky pop and dancehall — the world is his playground”
The father of Afrobeat and an African musical deity, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, was ranked as number 188. According to Rolling Stone, Fela Kuti was:
“Fela Kuti’s iconic songs of the 1970s and 1980s are sprawling orchestral instrumentals, an innovative swirl of African highlife, American soul, and jazz. Through his music, he shared an anti-colonialist, Pan-African vision and challenged Nigeria’s corrupt military government, which routinely subjected him and those around him to immense harm. Yet it wasn’t just Fela’s lyrical rebellion that makes him so important — it’s the way his voice carried his vision; the way he sang, his tone commanding and direct, plain and firm. His stern but conversational melodies made his movement more accessible. On 1986’s “Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense,” where he tackles whitewashed education and failed governments, he coos, “I say, I sing, I beg everyone to join my song.” And he performed in such a way that they could”
The inclusion of Fela and Burna Boy illustrates the popularity and influence of various periods of Nigerian music throughout Africa and the rest of the world.
Aretha Franklin, a singer from the United States, came in first, followed by Whitney Houston, Sam Cook, Billie Holiday, and Mariah Carey.
worldwide music icon Beyonce is ranked eighth, Usher is ranked 97th, Lauryn Hill is ranked 136th, and Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, is ranked 86th.
One of the most notable omissions from the list is the well-known singer Celine Dion.
