On the evening of October 7, 2025, when the The Recording Academy began to issue the first set of nominations for the 68th Grammy Awards, set to take place on Sunday, February 1, at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, the internet seemed to wait with bated breath as music fans across the world anticipated the nominations list. Nigerian fans, who in recent times have become accustomed to seeing their favorite acts snag nominations and wins, were not left out in this feverish anticipation. Before long, the last set of nominations had trickled in, and social media began to buzz with celebration in some corners and indignation in others.
Burna Boy received two nominations—Best Global Music Album for No Sign of Weakness and Best African Music Performance for Love—becoming a 13-time nominated artist. Davido, Wizkid, Ayra Starr, and Omah Lay also received nominations. Ayra Starr and Wizkid on account of their collaboration Gimme Dat, which is nominated in the Best African Music category, and Davido and Omah Lay on account of their joint effort With You, also nominated in the Best African Music Performance category. The nominated Nigerian acts—Burna Boy, Davido, Ayra Starr, Omah Lay, and Wizkid are among the nation’s biggest acts. So naturally, the celebratory cheers have been deafening. But avert your gaze from the revelry and towards the numbers, what you’ll find is that this year’s nominations reflect the declining presence of Nigerian music on the global stage.
Compared to last year, Nigerian acts are only nominated in two categories—Best African Music Performance, and Best Global Music Album. Last year, Nigerian acts clinched nominations in three categories: Best Global Music Album, Best African Music Performance, and Best R&B Song, courtesy of Tems’ Burning. Beyond this, Nigerians dominated emphatically in the Best African Music Performance in the past two years. Last year the nominees were entirely Nigerian, and the year before Tyla was the only non-Nigerian on the list. By contrast, this year the nominated Nigerian acts in this category have to slug it out with East Africa’s Eddy Kenzo and Mehran Matin, and South Africa’s Tyla. The nominated Nigerian songs—Love, Gimme Dat, and With You—also pale in comparison to their foreign counterparts. Tyla will likely earn another win in this category with Push 2 Start.
Nigeria’s lone nomination in the Best Global Music Album category this year—Burna Boy’s No Sign of Weakness is also a significant decline from last year when Nigerian music, on account of Tems’ Born in the Wild, and Rema’s Heis, scored two nominations. Burna Boy’s nomination also feels more like a result of his being a familiar name with the Grammys’ board—his 13 nominations speak to this—and the excellent PR campaign his team has heralded, than the quality of the album. At home and abroad, the album received middling reviews, most of which bemoaned its lack of cohesion. Burna Boy may pull off a miracle beating the likes of Youssou N’Dour, whose Eclairer le monde – Light the World is one of the strongest works on the list, and Siddhant Bhatia, whose Sounds Of Kumbha similarly has a strong case owing to its immense cultural significance in India. What’s more likely is that he’ll walk home empty-handed, again.
Nigeria’s weak showing at this edition of the Grammys is further exacerbated by our middling commercial performance on the global stage this year. The biggest songs of this year—Shallipopi’s Laho, Davido and Rema’s With You, and Rema’s Baby (Is It a Crime)—none of which have garnered 90 million streams or appeared on the Billboard Hot 100, almost seem a joke compared to stalwarts of previous years: Burna Boy’s Last Last, Ckay’s Love Nwatiti, Rema’s Calm Down, Wizkid and Tems’ Essence, Fireboy’s Peru, the list goes on.
Nigerian music’s declining position on the global stage stems from a variety of factors, some internal, others external. The primary external factor is that global music is undergoing a reshuffling of sorts: Hip Hop, R&B, and African genres are increasingly ceding ground to Pop, Country, and Rock. Last week, for the first time in 35 years, there were no Hip Hop or Rap songs on the Billboard Hot 100, a situation that has sent shockwaves through the Hip Hop community. Two music industry professionals who spoke to me on condition of anonymity also shared that Nigerian music’s declining prospects on the global stage are in part due to declining foreign investment in Afrobeats. Investors are more interested in backing genres with momentum rather than Afrobeats, whose promise of global domination hangs in the balance.
Another contributing factor is that Nigerian music is still trying to redefine its identity, as shown by the decline of Amapiano and the increasing influence of newer sounds such as Hausa Pop, Mavo’s slang-addled take on Afropop, and Zaylevelten’s radical imagination of Nigerian Hip Hop. There’s also the fact that music this year hasn’t been all that great. Chalk this up to the Nigerian music scene’s transitional status or some other factor, but you only need to compile a list of albums that were released this year to confirm this. Nigerian music’s declining position on the global stage might be a temporary situation or the start of an even steeper decline, how this story eventually pans out depends on the actions of key players—artists and industry stakeholders—in the coming months and years.
