Long before Afrobeats conquered streaming charts and filled arenas from London to Los Angeles, a handful of artists and industry figures were laying the groundwork for what would become one of the most remarkable stories in modern music history. For Akon, that story has a clear centre of gravity — and it runs straight through Nigeria.
The Senegalese-American superstar has offered a sweeping tribute to Nigerian musicians, describing them as the driving force behind Afrobeats’ transformation from a regional sound into a worldwide cultural phenomenon — and reserving some of his highest praise for the people themselves.
“Nigerians are the most intelligent people on the planet,” Akon said during an appearance on the We Need To Talk podcast. “They have done amazingly well with Afrobeats.”
Akon’s admiration is not that of a distant observer. The ‘Lonely’ hitmaker has been embedded in the African music ecosystem for years, working alongside some of Nigeria’s biggest names — including Wizkid and P-Square — during the critical early phase of Afrobeats’ international expansion. He credits Nigerian entertainers with doing what few could have imagined at the time: taking a sound rooted in West African culture and making it genuinely, durably global.
Speaking on the podcast, Akon reflected at length on his music journey, the broader rise of African entertainment, and what he believes Nigeria’s artists have accomplished that sets them apart from their peers across the continent and beyond.
For Akon, their success is not accidental. It is the product of intelligence, creativity, and an almost instinctive understanding of how to translate cultural identity into universal appeal — a combination he believes Nigerian musicians possess in rare abundance.
Standing Beside the King of Pop
The podcast appearance also offered Akon a platform to revisit one of the most personally meaningful chapters of his career — his relationship with the late Michael Jackson.
Despite reaching the heights of global celebrity himself, Akon spoke about standing beside the King of Pop with a sense of awe that fame alone could not diminish.
“My photo with Michael Jackson is my proudest photo,” he said. “I was already a full-blown celebrity at the point the photo was taken, but I am a child compared to this man.”
It is a striking admission from an artist of Akon’s stature — one that speaks to the singular, almost mythological place Michael Jackson occupies in the popular imagination, even among those who have themselves ascended to the upper reaches of the music industry.
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Taken together, Akon’s remarks paint a picture of a continent whose cultural moment has well and truly arrived — and whose artists, particularly in Nigeria, have earned their place at the top table of global entertainment not through luck or trend cycles, but through sustained excellence and strategic vision.
For an artist who has spent much of his career championing African talent on the world stage, the rise of Afrobeats is not a surprise. It is, if anything, the validation of a belief he has long held: that Africa’s creative power was always world-class — it just needed the right voices to carry it there.
Nigeria, in his telling, provided exactly that.