Back when the Nigerian singer released his debut album, 2012’s underrated Omo Baba Olowo, there wasn’t much of an international market for Afrobeats, the fusion of West African highlife music with contemporary pop and hip-hop that’s slowly infiltrated Top 40 radio. (Think less Fela Kuti, more Drake’s “One Dance”.) Seven years later, Davido’s second album arrives on a cresting wave of popularity for the genre, and A Good Time feels like a serious bid for American crossover, expanding his palette without sacrificing the Afrobeats essence. These moments of global fusion are the highlights here: Gunna fits in seamlessly on “Big Picture” (it helps that Davido spent some of his childhood in Atlanta), and on “Risky”, he recruits Jamaican dancehall mainstay Popcaan for a slow-wind anthem that sounds like a canticle for bad decisions.
- Apple Music
- Peruzzi
- Kizz Daniel
- Naira Marley