Wizkid

Wizkid's embrace of Fela wasn't inherited in the crib — as a child he found his parents' Fela and King Sunny Ade records incomprehensible, chasing Snoop Dogg instead. The reverence came later, as a working artist, and it runs deep enough that he has Fela's face tattooed across his body. Defending himself in a 2026 spat with Fela's son Seun Kuti, he refused the comparison outright: "Fela is like someone that inspires me... Everything he has done with his music, his legacy, inspires me to be great." He has paid that debt in the studio too, sampling Fela twice — once with Fela's own son Femi supplying the saxophone.

listen: upstream & heresource: The DIY Collective — Iconic Samples From Fela Kuti's Music (Jaiye Jaiye/Lady, Sweet Love/Shakara samples) ↗share

1972

LadyFela Kuti

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2014

Jaiye JaiyeWizkid

listen forFela's "Lady" rides a spiraling horn vamp built to stretch past ten minutes onstage; Wizkid's "Jaiye Jaiye" lifts that same saxophone line, now played by Fela's son Femi Kuti, and folds it into a tight, three-minute pop chorus. Listen for the horn hook itself crossing eras — Afrobeat's slow-building riff compressed into a radio-length hook, the loose, joyful bounce intact even as the running time shrinks by two-thirds and the political vamp gives way to a straightforward love song.

No influence gets more literal in Wizkid's telling than Wande Coal, the Mo'Hits singer he lived alongside as a teenager breaking into Lagos's music scene. Introducing Coal onstage at a 2021 festival, Wizkid named the exact songs he was recording at the time: "Wande Coal was always there for me. He let me sleep in his room when I had nowhere to go... That's the man that inspired me." Coal has since returned the credit, naming Wizkid among the generation of Nigerian stars who picked up his sound and ran with it.

listen: upstream & heresource: A Nation of Billions — Wizkid To The World, DJ Semtex interview (formative rap/reggae/Fela/Marley listening, Mo'Hits-era proximity to Wande Coal) ↗share

2009

You BadWande Coal

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2010

Holla at Your BoyWizkid

listen forCoal's 2009 "You Bad" set the template Wizkid was living inside while cutting his own debut single a year later: sung-Yoruba hooks riding a bright, mid-tempo Mo'Hits groove built for the dancefloor and the radio alike. Play it against "Holla at Your Boy" and hear the same unhurried, melodic phrasing over a bouncing, percussion-forward beat — the sound of a teenager's apprenticeship, absorbed while sleeping on his mentor's floor, turned into his own breakout single.

Marley entered Wizkid's ears the same way Fela eventually did — while "growing up," not as a child, when he "started listening to Bob Marley a lot" alongside the reggae and rap he loved. The devotion only deepened: a 2019 songwriting trip to Jamaica, a Made in Lagos feature with Marley's son Damian, and, after watching a Bob Marley stage musical, a stated ambition to build a legacy like his — "I didn't even know that he died at 36. He did so much at a young age. It just reaffirms what I do."

listen: upstream & heresource: DancehallMag — Wizkid Eyes A Legacy Like Bob Marley (Jamaica trip, Damian Marley collaboration, legacy remarks) ↗share

1974

No Woman, No CryBob Marley

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2011

JoyWizkid

listen for"No Woman, No Cry" rides Marley's unhurried one-drop sway under a lyric of plain, aching devotion. Wizkid's "Joy," from his 2011 debut Superstar, borrows that same chord progression wholesale — critics call it a direct flip — but redirects the tenderness inward, an autobiographical ode to his mother rather than a lover. Listen for the reggae lope surviving the transplant, still carrying the song's warmth into Wizkid's lighter, Lagos-pop frame.