11th June, 2024
By Taiwo Okanlawon
Nigerian rapper and songwriter Raoul John Njeng-Njeng popularly known as Skales has reacted to Afrobeats star Wizkid’s controversial claim that “hip-hop is dead.”
Speaking in an interview with Hip TV, Skales said: “Everybody has their opinion. Wizkid has his own opinion so that [‘hip-hop is dead’] is his opinion. But for me, my own logic for life is that everything has time and season.
“Everything is going to come and go, and there is going to be another recycle, which means, if you are hot today, you might not be hot tomorrow. Today, if it’s rap that everybody is feeling, tomorrow it will be Afrobeats, and next tomorrow it will be Amapiano, and so on.
“So I won’t say hip-hop is dead. You can’t say something is dead; it’s just not its time anymore. The excitement has moved somewhere else. I’m sure very soon, they will say Afrobeats is dead. It’s just timing. Nothing is meant to last forever. That’s why we all die one day.”
In an interview with 10 Magazine, published in 2022, Nigerian music superstar, Wizkid said the rap genre is dead and it bores him.
“Afrobeats is the new pop. I sold two million copies in America off of one song! Even some American artists don’t have a diamond record.
“If I’m being honest, I don’t listen to any other genre of music anymore. I don’t listen to rap – that sh*t is boring to me. It’s dead now, it’s tired. These guys do the same shit, rap on the same beats and the same flows.”
However, the views of the multiple award-winning artiste did not sit well with Nigerian rap artistes who took to their various social media accounts to air their opinion.