In the ever-complicated jungle of Nigeria’s music industry, the A&R has become an invisible but powerful force, often felt more than seen. They are the gatekeepers who decide who gets in the room, what the room sounds like, and sometimes, how long the artist stays relevant. But lately, many of these A&R-curated collaborations between artists and producers have started to feel like forced pairings with no real magic.
Gone are the days when A&Rs were legendary figures with street smarts, club ears, and long-term vision. Today, many operate more like corporate DJs, plugging artists into whatever sound is trending and calling it strategy. The result is a flurry of artist and producer linkups that look great on paper but lack chemistry in practice.
At the heart of this disconnect is a growing industry obsession with chasing the next hit instead of developing the next legacy. A&Rs are no longer pairing artists based on creative synergy or emotional range. They are pairing them based on metrics. An artist who built their earliest success with a low-key producer who understands their voice and story is suddenly told to work with a certified hitmaker who has five songs on the radio but zero connection to the artist’s essence.
It is matchmaking without intuition. Just vibes and buzzwords.
Music, unlike data, is not plug-and-play. You cannot just drop a soulful storyteller into a studio with a party anthem specialist and expect genius. Yet this is the norm in many label strategies. And when it fails, and it often does, the artist is the one left sounding inauthentic, while the A&R moves on to their next quickfire experiment.
The songs themselves might be well-produced, even catchy. But they often ring hollow. Glossy. Unrooted. Like cosplay of something deeper. Because when there is no creative alignment between artist and producer, the music suffers. It becomes a product, not an expression.
And then comes the rollout, or lack of one. A&Rs, increasingly stretched thin and hyper-focused on virality, treat singles like disposable tweets. Tracks drop with no narrative, no tension, no buildup. Just another out now announcement on Instagram and a hope that TikTok picks it up.
The problem is not just sound. It is structured. Or rather, the absence of it. Great A&Rs are meant to be translators between vision and market. Instead, many are operating as playlist curators with access to studios and no real game plan. They do not ask who this artist is becoming. They ask what is trending this week.
And let us be clear. This is not a blanket condemnation. There are still A&Rs in Nigeria who deeply understand how to marry an artist’s potential with the right production direction. These are the ones who study their artists’ evolution, protect their sonic identity, and know how to challenge them without miscasting them.
But those A&Rs are rare. What we have more of are glorified content managers throwing artists into producer pairings for the sake of speed, numbers, and hype.
The tragedy is that artists suffer the most. They lose the emotional intimacy of their sound, the resonance that made their fans care in the first place, and sometimes, their entire identity. They are told to try a mainstream sound or experiment with amapiano by someone who does not fully understand what made them special in the first place.
So yes, A&Rs are necessary. Absolutely. But they must return to what made them essential in the first place. Not speed. Not hype. Not chart chasing. Vision. Chemistry. Intuition. Long-term thinking.
Because right now, too many A&R curated pairings feel less like creative experiments and more like arranged marriages between strangers. Polished. Packaged. Painfully forgettable.
And the music does not lie.
