Media outfit Billboard has listed 5 songs that are potential nominees for the newly introduced Best African Music Performance category at the Grammy Awards.
As fans prepare for the Grammy Awards 2024 nomination announcement, which will be on November 10, 2023, popular media outfit Billboard has given an insight on the songs that could receive a nomination in the Best African Performance category at the 66th edition of the award ceremony.
The Best African Performance category is part of the newly introduced category at the Grammy Awards ahead of the 66th edition of the award ceremony itself. Discussing the importance of this category, the Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. revealed the reason behind its creation. He said, “There’s a threshold that you like to see for a genre of music before it actually could make for a healthy category. When you talk about music coming from Africa, you’re seeing Afrobeats grow, you’re seeing amapiano and other genres coming out of the continent over the last three to five years. That started the discussions around, ‘Is it the right time?’ ”
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Billboard also shared an insight as to what the category is viewed as. The entertainment outfit revealed, "The new category reflects the exploding commercial and cultural appeal of music by African artists in the United States. Its growth over the past few years has been almost linear: Davido’s 2017 single “Fall” was the first Nigerian song to be certified gold in the United States by the RIAA in 2020; Wizkid and Tems’ “Essence” became the first Afropop song to reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 2021; Burna Boy’s Love, Damini debuted at No. 14 on the Billboard 200 in 2022, becoming the highest-charting Afro-fusion album in chart history; and in May, Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” became the first song to ever top both the U.S. Afrobeats Songs and Pop Airplay charts and peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100. (“Calm Down” was released too early to be eligible.)"
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Discussing the possible nominees for this newly introduced category, the following songs were listed as the possible contenders for this award:
2 Sugar - Wizkid ft. Ayra Starr
People - Libianca
Unavailable - Davido ft. Musa Keys
PNDS - Adekunle Gold ft. Zinoleesky Amapiano - Asake ft. Olamide
