Nigerian hip-hop (NHH) is often dismissed as a mindless imitation of the American hip-hop from which it is derived, which consequently implies that NHH is not taken to be the music of the ordinary people and is therefore deemed unworthy of rigorous study. To address this misconstrual of NHH, Tosin Gbogi highlights the undertheorized interventions of NHH in issues of identity and African postcoloniality, thereby challenging this simplistic perception. To put the notion of NHH being an imitation to rest, Gbogi seeks to present it ‘as a distinct, fully-fledged culture in its own right, even as it remains fully anchored in a global hip-hop culture’ (p. 251).

Notably, this book is the first sustained study of NHH. In it, Gbogi demonstrates a commanding grasp of NHH scholarship, weaving it together with broader theoretical debates on race, postcoloniality, and African music scholarship. Also worth mentioning is that Gbogi grew up amidst the rise of NHH and even had a brother who was a rapper. Drawing on this close connection with key actors in the NHH scene, the book benefits from extensive interviews with pioneering, influential, and contemporary rappers and DJs, as well as other key actors in NHH. As a result, this is a book that a few music scholars would have been equally well positioned to write. However, given its scope and the author’s disciplinary background as a literary scholar and poet, his primary concern is with reading the race-conscious texts of NHH, with ‘texts’ referring broadly to the cultural forms and practices of NHH that can be interpreted to uncover underlying meanings, social values, and power structures. As a result, the book privileges lyrical and cultural analysis over musical analysis.

A major theme that runs through this book is American cultural hegemony, which explains the spread of hip-hop culture to Nigeria, a former British colony. Ironically, however, rappers use hip-hop itself to address this hegemony, turning it on its head and making NHH a vehicle for counterhegemonic expression. With the exception of the introduction and conclusion, the book is organized into seven chapters. Chapter One traces the emergence of NHH in 1980s Nigeria, where it was propagated primarily through rap, while radio, clubs, and mobile DJs served as the primary means of musical entertainment. It challenges the normative America–Nigeria flow by showing crossings from Europe as well, examining the impact of rappers and DJs from the diaspora who were instrumental in the sonic and lyrical redirection of NHH, such as Eno Louis and Odion-Iruoje.

The second and third chapters contextualize NHH within the political, economic, and technological changes of 1980s Nigeria, which further propagated NHH while also enabling its localization. The localization of hip-hop in Nigeria occurred through the infusion of pan-African ideas, the rise of local record labels and media, as well as the use of Nigerian languages in rap rather than English alone. As NHH rappers sought to detach themselves from American hip-hop, Gbogi notes attempts to further localize hip-hop such as likening rap to Yorùbá speech acts of ewì poetry, Ìjálá, improvisation in ‘town crying’, and the vocal practices of African griots. Break-dancing (an important aspect of hip-hop) is likewise likened to the bàtá dance of the Yorùbá, while graffiti is compared to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Though Gbogi is primarily presenting the views of his interlocutors, the argument that localization was a process of creative reinterpretation rooted in African cultural practices is compelling. As one expression of the sense of difference that such localization fostered, Gbogi explores the relationship between NHH rappers and their metaphorical Black American cousins, citing an altercation between the Nigerian rapper Idris Abdulkareem and the American rapper 50 Cent in the context of global hip-hop rivalry.

Chapter Four further explores the counterhegemonic paradox of NHH by examining the use of Nigerian languages as a decolonial expression. This proceeds from the notion that, despite colonialism having formally ended, Africa continues to contend with imperialism, understood as a colonization of the mind. It is worth noting that, for a time, Nigerian rappers who made use of Nigerian languages were not taken seriously, as English was considered the standard. This has, however, changed, as Gbogi shows that linguistic choices in Nigerian languages produce a sense of ‘realness’ for performers and audiences alike. The decolonial expression of NHH continues in Chapter Five, which examines ‘the durability, iterability, and continuity of Africa’s entrapment in the prison house of coloniality’ (p. 167).

In Chapter Six – which perhaps would have benefited from appearing earlier, lest its placement be mistaken for tokenism – Gbogi examines the often-overlooked influence of Nigerian female rappers such as the legendary Weird MC, Phlowetry, and Sasha P, showing how, through rap, they address the intersecting dynamics of gender and race while confronting the sexism and misogyny that so often plague the NHH scene. As Gbogi rightly notes, women’s rap and women’s contribution to rap suffer neglect because what counts as history in Africa is often framed in masculine terms. The other reason is that relatively few women are involved in the NHH scene. There is a return to the broader issue of race in Chapter Seven. Given Nigeria’s relative racial homogeneity, one might expect rappers to only be concerned with salient social categories such as ethnicity, religion, and class. Instead, Gbogi points out that NHH artists are often deeply concerned with race. He argues that race remains significant to NHH rappers because of colonialism’s enduring legacies, in which ‘race is always already open to multiplex resignifications and retranslations at the local level’ (p. 219). Accordingly, this chapter examines race-centred lyrics, thereby presenting NHH as a site of global racial discourse.

While the book successfully establishes NHH as a distinct cultural formation, readers may nevertheless seek further discussion of certain issues. Given the book’s sustained engagement with race and its treatment of the tensions between Nigerian and African American rappers, one question that remains largely unexplored concerns the use – or absence – of the ‘N-word’ within Nigerian hip-hop. Likewise, apart from a brief mention, Nigeria’s underground battle rap scene receives little attention despite being a fundamental component of hip-hop culture. However, these omissions do little to diminish the book’s overall contribution. Nigerian Hip-Hop is an invaluable addition to the study of Nigerian popular music, African hip-hop, and global hip-hop culture more broadly. As Gbogi convincingly demonstrates, beyond debates over the roots and routes of hip-hop, NHH – and, by extension, hip-hop in Africa – is not a mindless adaptation of American hip-hop, but a distinct cultural formation whose recognition is essential to restoring agency to African cultural production.