Eleven volumes in, The Upper Quintet still does what it promised: spotlight African talent wherever it happens to be made. The series has long tracked artists on the continent and beyond, not to fetishize distance, but to show how African music mutates when it meets other geographies, technologies and temperaments.
Volume XI collects five distinct articulations of that idea: two artists working from the diaspora — Töme (Toronto/Canada) and Ch! Nonso (Auckland/New Zealand), and three artists steeped in Nigeria’s current: Wavestar, Zaylevelten, and Straffitti. This is not a diaspora-first piece; it’s a map of African imagination in multiple registers — local, migratory, digital, tactile.
What ties them is not passport or playlist placement but a shared urgency: to shape what “African music” can mean in 2025 without letting any single label do the heavy lifting.
Tome:
Töme is the kind of artist who makes identity sound like jazz, fluid, full-bodied, and occasionally defiant. The Nigerian-Canadian singer’s voice is a velvet protest against genre policing. On Bigger Than Four Walls and her Juno-winning I Pray with Sean Kingston, she crafts soundtracks for soft resistance: R&B soul that remembers its African percussions.
Born Michelle Oluwatomi Akanbi in Montreal, Töme’s artistry is a negotiation between worlds, Nigerian heritage and Canadian polish, Lagos grit and Toronto gloss. But Töme’s true charm lies not in her crossover success, it’s in her refusal to perform identity. She doesn’t flatten her Nigerian side to fit Western ears, nor does she force African clichés to sound authentic. Her music flows in hybrid motion: guitars like liquid honey, hooks like whispered affirmations, percussion that nods to Lagos but grooves like London.
Wavestar:
If Töme sounds like silk, Wavestar is grit wrapped in gasoline. He’s the voice of Nigeria’s expressive youth, a raw, unfiltered prophet of post-hope Lagos. While mainstream rap courts luxury, Wavestar makes honesty sound expensive. Wavestar raps with the urgency of someone aware that his next meal might depend on it. There’s an undercurrent of melancholy in his bravado; he sounds like a generation raised on promise but fed disappointment.
While Wavestar’s most resonating stint yet… as far as commercial music goes, might be his work on Mavo’s ‘Escaladizzy’, make no mistake, this rapper is far from vibes. His music slices beyond the surface. With songs like ‘Trust Fund Syndrome‘, a diss track disguised as class war that sees him call out media platforms for their favoritism, industry gatekeepers for nepotism, and fellow rappers for performative struggle, he shows a candor that is revolutionary.
Straffiti:
Somewhere between music, fashion, and visual art stands Straffitti, Lagos’ resident polymath and proof that culture now wears sneakers.
Born Olawale Olukolade, Straffitti first entered the scene as a rapper, but his evolution has been nothing short of multimedia. His early records, Vanilla Sky and Molotov, were experimental sketches: trap-heavy, graffiti-styled bursts of rebellion. But with Straff From Nigeria and his later singles, he’s matured into an Afrofusion artisan, slicker, more confident, but still irreverent.
His music feels like a collage, trap drums meet Yoruba rhythm, slick melodies meet sharp sarcasm. On Kuronbe, featuring Zlatan, Ice Prince, and Prettyboy D.O., he plays curator, blending old and new-school energy with the ease of someone who understands culture’s elasticity. And on Personally, he strips down to melody and confession, showing that beneath the swagger lies soul.
Ch! Nonso:
In another life, Ch! Nonso might have been a poet. But in this one, he makes songs that feel like slow-burning essays about identity, belonging, and migration. He’s the kind of artist who doesn’t just sing, he meditates.
Born in Enugu, now based in New Zealand, Nonso’s sound is the quiet renaissance of AfroSoul. His 2023 EP Kola Nuts & Chardonnay is a lyrical dance between cultures: the kola nut symbolizing tradition, the chardonnay representing the Western world. The result is a sonic dialogue between heritage and assimilation, the story of a man learning to love both.
Nonso’s voice sits somewhere between velvet and vulnerability. On Ka Home, he sings about the ache of displacement, a spiritual homesickness wrapped in soft percussion and lingering horns. On Liar, he wrestles with truth as both burden and beauty. His lyrics are intimate, often autobiographical, yet his tone feels collective, as if he’s speaking for every African caught between time zones.
Zaylevel:
If Wavestar is the rebel, Zaylevelten is the scientist, the sonic anarchist experimenting with trap rage and Lagos energy in the same petri dish.
Born and raised in Ikorodu, Zaylevelten is the kind of artist who learned rap through Wi-Fi and survival. His rise from SoundCloud obscurity to alt-rap recognition mirrors the new Nigerian dream: digital, independent, and entirely self-made.
His breakout track Watching Me feels like a manifesto for the hyper-online generation, pulsating bass, punch-in vocals, and the confessional tone of a youth raised on DMs instead of diaries. He doesn’t rap at you; he raps around you, looping disillusionment and swagger into a sonic trance.
In the end, Volume XI doesn’t chase a new sound, it chronicles a new posture. Töme, Ch! Nonso, Wavestar, Zaylevelten, and Straffitti aren’t performing Africanness for global validation; they’re simply making music that feels true to where they stand. Each one bends the map in their own direction, proving that African music today isn’t a genre, it’s a condition.
The Upper Quintet has never been about trends; it’s about temperature, about capturing the pulse before the playlist does. And if this volume says anything, it’s that Africa’s music no longer travels looking for home. It is home, everywhere it goes.
