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Rave Review: From Wizkid and Swiss Beatz to Flavour – See Thrilling Performances From the Epic One Africa Music Fest | TIDAL x Hot Naija

Rave Review: From Wizkid and Swiss Beatz to Flavour – See Thrilling Performances From the Epic One Africa Music Fest | TIDAL x Hot Naija


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Starboy Wizkid walks off in pride after delivering an epic performance of his hit songs, Barclays Center, Brooklyn – July 22, 2016. Image | One Africa Music Fest

Mann, it’s a great time to be African! And you’ll have no problem believing this if you were under the roof of the Barclays Center this past Friday night. The much anticipated One Africa Music Fest was an absolute hit! It’s already being dubbed one of the greatest music shows ever held in the city of Brooklyn and in fact, New York as a whole.

Hosted by Banky W, the show kicked off surprisingly unAfricanly on time with a performance by Nigerian singer Praiz who was joined by Ghanaian act Stonebwoy as they performed their new song ‘Hot Body’. From early on you could feel the energy coming from the stage and an equal or maybe even greater energy oozing from the audience. The crowd was ablaze! Just the mere thought of seeing so many of your favourite musicians who have all contributed to making African music the wonder it’s becoming is enough to get you super excited. The 18,000+ indoor arena was almost filled to capacity with Africans, people of Caribbean heritage and other lovers of African music.

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The supercharged crowd at the One Africa Music Fest, Barclays Center, Brooklyn – July 22, 2015. Image|One Africa Music Fest

It was back to back thrilling performances by Banky, Diamond Platnumz, Tiwa Savage, Davido, Flavour, Seun Kuti, Timaya, Jidenna, Don Jazzy and Wizkid who surprised the crowd by bringing out New York native Swiss Beatz – himself a confessed lover of Nigerian music. Other acts at the show included Ghanaian singer Efya who performed with Stonebwoy, Sound Sultan, Machel Montano and Ayo Jay. It was really a super packed concert which was live-streamed on Jay-z’s TIDAL platform.

The only drawback was the diversity of the artists as fans wondered why only one female act was billed to perform and why there were very few non-Nigerian acts. All in all, the festival was a huge success and if the tweets and facebook statuses are anything to go by, fans are already hoping this will be an annual occurrence. Yup! It was that much fun.

It was such a fantastic job by the producers of the concert that we are tagging this a Style RAVE Event of the year! This is definitely one event to look forward to as it holds the promise of putting African music on an even higher pedestal in the coming years. Africa is definitely rising!

Nigerian-American rapper Wale who was also billed to perform at the concert had to cancel his performance as his girlfriend, Chloe Alexis gave birth to their daughter, Zyla, on the same day.

If you missed the show, we have curated some of the most thrilling performances as recorded by One Africa Music Fest and TIDAL via the HotNaija Youtube channel.

Enjoy!

Praiz opens the show…

Tiwa does her thing…


Davido wows the crowd…


Seun Kuti electrifies with his sax…


Flavour teases the audience…


See more performances below…


Wizkid’s performance was mad….the crowd was madder!


For more vids from the show, including behind the stage moments, visit the festival’s Instagram handle @oneafrica_musicfest.

Photo credit: @oneafrica_musicfest

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