At the 68th annual Grammys, South African Popstar Tyla picked up her second Grammy of her career with Push 2 Start in the African Music Performance category. While it was a win that was mostly merited, a plethora of Nigerians seemed to think otherwise and took to the digital streets of X to vent their grievances against the Academy and their dissapointment that one of their own didn’t win. So is there any substance in Nigerians’ displeasure or it’s all temper tantrums?
First off, let’s define the parameters of this award before we delve into this whole debacle. The academy states that the award, “recognizes recordings that utilize unique local expressions from across the African continent, highlighting regional melodic, harmonic and rhythmic musical traditions.” So right off the bat, the paramount question to answer is whether or not P2S fits into that definition and this writer believes it does, in every sense of the word.
Asides the fact that the song evidently satisfies the Academy’s criteria, as the aforementioned tweet posits—it’s also an all round African performance in every sense of the word. Africans like Samuel Awuku and Sammy Soso contributed to its production and composition. Heck, British producer Ariowa Irosogie too if you count his Nigerian heritage. The ‘African-ness‘ is brimming to the top from the composition alone and the fact that Tyla is of course, African.
There is another sect of Nigerians getting up in arms that the song isn’t as popular or impactful as some other Nigerian nomination, which is quite an erroneous point. Of course, Nigerian songs are more popular within the confines of the country, but the numbers indicate that P2S has had bigger success on the global front and the West especially, which matters to the Academy as they are first and foremost, an American body before anything else.
Matter of fact, that seems to be the recurring theme with Tyla’s two wins with Water in 2024 and now, P2S. In both years, her songs were the most commercially successful nominations in the US. Although last year, the most commercially successful US nomination was Chris Brown’s Sensational but there are a handful of reasons to explain why he didn’t win and the buck starts with the fact that Chris Brown is hardly African, even if the featured acts are and sonically the song isn’t as compatible as P2S and Water.
2025’s winner, Tems’ Love Me Jeje sampled a classic African song, which is similar territory to what Tyla tread with P2S. Now you could argue once again, that an award body as dignified as the Academy should prioritize excellence over commercial success but even at that, there is nary a bad song in the nominee list. They are all competent songs on a sonic level with quality levels defined by fine margins. In this writer’s opinion, P2S is also the best composition from a songwriting and production perspective.
It’s an humane thing to get emotional that one’s favorite artist didn’t win an award, but to disregard the actual deserving winner of said award is quite problematic. Almost every talking point attacking Tyla’s win is null and unfounded. From people assuming it’s exclusively an Afrobeats category, when it’s meant to celebrate African music in general or to downright disrespectful statements that state P2S didn’t have enough impact to merit the award.
Discussions like this go nowhere and do nothing productive in the grand scheme of things, except paint Nigerians in a vindictive light. Indeed the Grammys are the most prestigious awards for music in the world, but it’s a Western body that will always celebrate Western excellence and that includes African songs too.
It’s too much of a burden to heap the responsibility of celebrating the full magnitude of African music on a foreign panel, that could never truly appreciate its intricacies and depth like an African one would. It’s time for Africa to stand up and start to build something as distinguished and excellent as the Grammys, so the award body becomes a bonus for our artists on their path to greatness and not the hallmark achievement that it currently is.
