cousin.world is a regular newsletter on global music.

Each week, I’ll update one of the following playlists with 10 ascendant tracks from world markets and provide analysis to explain how they’re breaking:

• run ⇡ — club tracks from euro & UK dancefloors

• cherry soda ⚭ — breaking k/c/p-pop, city pop and indie

• the grid ✚ — sounds of urbano, reggaeton, funk

• magnitude △ — afrobeat, dancehall and amapiano rising

Today, magnitude △ looks to some of the most dynamic artist development territories across Africa and the Caribbean with a spotlight on genres like dancehall, amapiano and afrobeats. Within is uLazi and Infinity MusiQ’s Tiktok hit ‘Yey’, notes on two of Africa’s biggest streaming services Boomplay and Mdundo and a discussion on dancehall’s need for a new superstar.

Next week, it’s back to run ⇡ for breaking tracks out of UK and euro dance floors.

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magnitude △

1. uLazi — ‘Yey’ ft. Infinity MusiQ (South Africa)

PAM (Pan African Music) is a publication dedicated to promoting music from the African continent and diaspora. Per their website, the title was founded in 2017 in partnership with the music distributor IDOL. Both properties are based in Paris and PAM is available to read in both French and English.

Earlier this month, they released part 2 of their ongoing series The Best Amapiano of 2023 (So Far). Near the top of that list is this track from back in late May: ‘Yey’ by uLazi and Infinity MusiQ. Credited with starting one of the most popular Tiktok dance challenges of the year, this track is now sat on over 5.1m views on YouTube and peaked top 5 on Apple Music’s Dance chart in many markets including Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique and South Africa.

‘Yey’ was released via uLazi’s own label MGUZUGUZU Records which is globally distributed by Ingrooves Africa.

2. Asake — ‘Lonely at the Top’ (Nigeria)

Boomplay is the leading streaming service dedicated to music from African markets with 98 million active users (per Business Wire this month). At the time of writing, this track from Nigerian artist Asake is #1 on their Trending chart.

Asake is a member of the Lagos-based record label collective YBNL Nation which is distributed by EMPIRE. This track peaked at #1 in the Daily and Weekly Spotify charts in Nigeria and the overall Apple Music chart in 14 markets including Ghana and Tanzania. Of his 5.6m monthly listeners on Spotify, over a quarter of a million are based in London, which speaks to the huge audience for afro-fusion genres in the UK.

Boomplay is a really interesting DSP. In addition to the usual functionality you’d expect from a streaming service, it combines social elements like a comments section for each track, figures showing how many times a track has been shared outside of the platform and offers downloads on both premium and ad-supported tiers. Boomplay was founded in 2015 but didn’t sign licensing deals with the big three major labels until 2019.

Last week, the managing director of Boomplay Easy Africa, Martha Huro, did an interview with Kenyan tech publication TechArena to discuss how the service has become a crucial part of the Kenyan music industry. You can read that here.

3. Mr Drew — ‘Case Remix’ ft. Mophty (Ghana)

Headquartered in Nairobi is another of Africa’s region-specific DSPs: Mdundo. Offering (per LinkedIn) 135m free downloads every month, the service allows one-click mp3 downloads from its vast catalogue of licensed music. Mdundo also has a weekly Top 100 chart and this song by Mr Drew and Mophty is, at the time of writing, #1.

One consistent element of consumer behaviour in developing markets is that the vast majority of streams and downloads are coming from services that are free to use. Mdundo capitalises on this behaviour by baking short audio adverts into the mp3s themselves. This explainer on how the platform generates and pays its artist royalties is very informative. Mdundo also makes money via telecom partnerships, the biggest of which is with MTN Ghana whose 28 million users get gratis access to Mdundo’s premium (ad-free) tier as a perk of their contract.

‘Case (Remix)’ by Ghanaian artists Mr Drew and Mophty was released just 3 weeks ago and is already approaching 400m views on YouTube.

4. Maureen, Niko — ‘Tell Me Who’ (Martinique)

Martinique — one of the five Francophone islands in the Caribbean — has become known for its own interpretation of dancehall called Shatta. A great primer on the genre is this mix for Crack Magazine from DJ GЯEG.

Two Martiniquais shatta artists Maureen and Niko are currently topping the RADAR FRANCE playlist on Spotify with their collaboration ‘Tell Me Who’. Maureen, who is now based in Paris, was nominated for this year’s BET Awards in the Best New International Act category. The vast majority of her half a million monthly listeners on Spotify are based in France.

Spotify is playing an increasingly large role in the global import/export links between diaspora audiences and a genre’s country of origin. Speaking to Al Jazeera in June, Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy — MD for Spotify in Sub-Saharan Africa — shared her thoughts on how the platform is helping to make these connections.

“Streaming provides a global platform so that artists can find audiences anywhere in the world. [We have] various artist support programmes such as EQUAL, which is aimed at raising the profile of talented female artists, RADAR our programme aimed at supporting emerging artists, and Fresh Finds which is aimed at independent artists… Spotify also works with artists and their teams on a number of different projects to help market their music in a way that drives discovery and enables them to thrive. This includes the use of our billboard in New York’s Times Square, which has featured a number of African artists.”

5. Stefflon Don x BNXN — ‘What’s Poppin’ (UK/Nigeria)

Over the weekend, a video from Donovan Watkis — owner of the Kingston, Jamaica-based publication World Music Views — went viral. In the clip, shared by X user Vandol Harris, Watkis explains why dancehall is lacking the kind of superstar genre representatives currently leading the reggaeton and afrobeats movements. Using this month’s VMAs as an example, he suggests that despite dancehall artists pioneering the export routes now used by reggaeton and afrobeats artists to achieve international success — he cites pop collaborations by artists like Sean Paul and Bounty Killer over a decade ago — the genre is still underrepresented in key music industry spaces like award categories.

“If they [dancehall artists] are complaining that afrobeats stole from them, that reggaeton stole from them… steal it back and make yourself even bigger… ‘cause if you’re the blueprint, certainly you can borrow back from those who copied you, and merge and collaborate…”

Watkis’ platform is dedicated to exploring the music industry with a specific focus on reggae, dancehall and afrobeats. An article on the platform recently highlighted that British artist Stefflon Don is the most-streamed female dancehall artist of all time, a title she humbly rejects while heaping praise on genre innovators like Spice.

Despite already releasing two full length projects on Polydor (both mixtapes), Stefflon Don is still yet to release her “debut” album Island 54 which is currently in production and due to be released under a new agreement with BMG. Her latest single ‘What’s Poppin’ is a collaboration with Nigerian artist BXNX and came out last month.

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6. Zuchu — ‘Honey’ (Tanzania)

Boomplay also has a Daily Trending chart and this track, released a month ago via independent label and management company WCB Wasafi, is number 1 today.

7. Shenseea — ‘Waistline’ (Jamaica)

Shenseea is one of the biggest names in dancehall. Her new single ‘Waistline’ came out two weeks ago via Interscope. This story in Dancehall Magazine gives a great update on where she is at since leaving Jamaica for the US and signing to Universal.

8. Mellow & Sleazy, Sjavasdadeejay & TitoM — ‘Imnandi lento’ ft. Tman Xpress (South Africa)

This track is currently #1 on Spotify’s AMAPIANO Grooves playlist. Last month, Mellow & Sleazy created a mix for Mixmag’s In Session series which you can listen to here.

9. Sean Paul, Skillibeng, Busta Rhymes — ‘Summa Hot Remix’ (Jamaica/US)

This cross-generational dancehall collaboration just came out last week. Sean Paul goes into further detail in a short discussion with dancehall publication Urban Islandz.

10. Mohbad, Bella Shmurda — ‘Pariwo’ (Nigeria)

A global news story in afrobeats this week was the death of Nigerian artist Mohbad which has sparked a wave of protest action in Lagos. Nyasha Michelle’s video for BBC News Africa explains the situation. Mohbad’s latest single was a collaboration with Bella Shmurda called ‘Pariwo’.

The Playlists