Artists Reimagining Wizkid’s Greatest Songs

You know a song has really entered the culture when people start borrowing from it.

A melody turns up somewhere unexpected. A familiar cadence sneaks into a new verse. Somebody takes the beat, adds their own voice and suddenly a song you thought you knew has acquired another life.

Wizkid has quite a few of those songs.

His catalogue has been around long enough to become part of the musical memory of an entire generation. For younger Nigerian artists who grew up hearing “Pakurumo,” “Don’t Dull” and “Tease Me,” those records are no longer simply old Wizkid songs. They are part of the musical environment they came from.

So when artists return to them, the results can feel strangely familiar without becoming completely nostalgic.

Young Jonn’s “Hold Somebody” is a good place to start.

Young Jonn — “Hold Somebody”

There is a moment in “Hold Somebody” that feels like a little wink to anyone who knows their Wizkid.

Young Jonn‘s second verse carries the playful, flirtatious cadence of “Pakurumo”, the 2010 Wizkid record that remains one of the clearest examples of his early ability to make desire sound completely effortless.

“Pakurumo” was young Wizkid having fun with attraction. He was singing about a woman who could dance, the things he wanted to do with her and the general excitement of being around somebody he found irresistible.

Young Jonn understands that language very well.

“Hold Somebody” is full of the same uncomplicated pleasure. Fine girls on the internet. Money. A woman who knows how to move. A “jiggy life.” Somebody who is not needy and apparently knows exactly how to keep his attention.

The “Pakurumo” connection therefore feels natural because Young Jonn is not borrowing an emotion that does not belong to him. He is picking up a familiar piece of Nigerian pop vocabulary and speaking it in his own accent.

There is also something satisfying about hearing a producer who has spent years helping shape contemporary Nigerian pop reach backwards into an older generation of it.

Young Jonn has worked behind the scenes long enough to understand how songs become memories. Now, as an artist himself, he gets to play with some of those memories.

Zaylevelten — “Tease Me”

Zaylevelten takes the Wizkid connection somewhere stranger.

“Tease Me” immediately points towards Wizkid’s “Tease Me/Bad Guys”, one of the records from his early career that helped establish the playful, slightly mischievous personality that would become such an important part of his music.

The new “Tease Me” does not attempt to preserve that moment in amber.

It takes the familiar material and lets it live inside Zaylevelten’s own world.

That world is considerably messier.

There is an internet-born quality to the record, the sort of sound that makes sense in a musical era where artists can grow up listening to Afrobeats, hip-hop, trap, rage and alternative music without treating those genres like separate rooms.

The result is less a recreation of Wizkid’s record than a younger artist testing out what happens when an old reference is dropped into a new environment.

Zaylevelten’s “Tease Me.” feels familiar enough to trigger the memory, but strange enough to remain his own record.

Taves — “Uche Jombo”

Taves takes an even more recognisable Wizkid record and does something particularly cheeky with it.

“Uche Jombo” samples “Don’t Dull”, and the opening seconds immediately create that little moment of recognition.

You know the song.

You know the voice that used to occupy that space.

Then Taves starts singing.

The clever part is that he does not spend the rest of the record trying to convince you that he has somehow improved on the original.

He simply has fun.

“Uche Jombo” is basically an extended appreciation session for a very beautiful woman. Taves runs through comparisons with Uche Jombo, Agbani Darego and even the Mona Lisa, because apparently one famous woman was not enough to communicate the seriousness of the situation.

It is excessive.

It is flirtatious.

It is also very Nigerian.For anyone who remembers Wizkid’s early years, the song carries a little piece of that era with it.

However, Taves uses the familiar opening as a doorway and then gets on with his own thing.

That is probably the smartest way to approach a song this recognisable.

You acknowledge the memory.

Then you make another one.

Doja Cat — “Sleep on It”

Doja Cat‘s “Sleep on It” offers another fascinating example of what can happen when a Wizkid record travels outside the Nigerian music ecosystem.

The song samples “Ojuelegba”, one of Wizkid’s most personal records.

That original song carries the memory of Lagos, ambition, gratitude and the journey from Ojuelegba to the kind of international success that once seemed almost impossible to imagine.

Then you hear it underneath Doja Cat.

What makes the sample especially interesting is how recognisable the Wizkid material remains. You do not have to know the entire history of “Ojuelegba” to feel that there is another song hiding underneath “Sleep on It.”

DaBaby — “Essence Freestyle”

By the time DaBaby got on the production of Wizkid and Tems’ “Essence”, the song had already travelled far beyond the world in which it was originally made.

“Essence” had become one of those records artists could immediately recognise and audiences could immediately respond to.

DaBaby’s “Essence Freestyle” essentially turns the record into a space for his own verse.

There is something slightly funny about hearing a song so associated with Wizkid and Tems suddenly being approached from a rapper’s perspective, but that is exactly what makes the freestyle interesting.

The production is already doing so much of the emotional work.

That familiar rhythm is still there.

The atmosphere is still recognisable.

Then another artist walks into it and starts talking.

It is a reminder of how quickly a successful record can become communal property in the imagination of other musicians.

“Pakurumo” belongs to the young Wizkid who was still establishing himself as one of Nigerian pop’s most exciting new voices.

“Tease Me” takes us back even further into that early catalogue.

“Don’t Dull” carries another piece of that period.

“Ojuelegba” represents the more reflective Wizkid whose personal story became inseparable from the music.

And “Essence” belongs to the period when Wizkid’s sound had become so globally recognisable that artists outside Nigeria could step into it without needing to explain why.

That is a lot of musical history sitting inside a handful of references.

And perhaps that is why these songs keep coming back.

There is something useful about having a catalogue that younger artists can touch without needing to treat it like a museum exhibit.

They can pull out a cadence.

They can borrow a beat.

They can sample a vocal.

They can take a title and run in a completely different direction.

Sometimes the result is subtle enough that you only notice it after a few listens.

Sometimes it is impossible to miss.

Either way, the original song gets another moment in the room.

For Wizkid, that may be one of the more interesting forms of longevity.

A hit can spend a few weeks at the top of a chart and disappear.

A truly influential song keeps turning up in places you were not expecting to hear it.

Years later, somebody hears “Pakurumo” and thinks there is something in that cadence worth bringing back.

Somebody else hears “Don’t Dull” and hears a new love song waiting inside it.

Somebody hears “Ojuelegba” and decides the song still has something to give.

That is when a catalogue stops belonging entirely to its original moment.

People begin carrying pieces of it with them.

And every time they put those pieces into something new, Wizkid’s music gets another life.