The global Afrobeats boom is bigger than ever in the U.S., and its starting to have a meaningful and lasting effect on the American music industry. Everyone wants to be in the Afrobeats game, even industry bigwigs like Chris Brown and Selena Gomez. The Afropop mania is affecting the genre itself, too. Afrobeats has never been a monolithic genre, but now, artists are more fearless while blending African sounds with those of the Western world, creating something new, fresh and exciting. Nola Adé is one of those artists.

For Adé, blending genres and experimenting with different sounds is instinctive. It’s how she grew up.

“I’m Nigerian American,” she said in an interview with Blavity. “I grew up listening to R&B and, you know, pop music. I also went to a Nigerian church, and I got those experiences with the music there. My parents would play Nigerian music, we have a bunch of cousins, you know what I’m saying? So it’s just kind of like, a blending of cultures.”

Adé’s family and heritage are clearly influential to her music. She and her siblings are intertwined when it comes to her career.

“My sister and I have a label or management company that we’ve started,” she shared. “It’s just kind of between us right now. I’m the first artist.”

Adé’s brother is her manager, and she said her sister “does engineering for me” and has been a “live engineer at shows and stuff like that, too.”

The singer’s music is an exciting mix of R&B, soul and Afrobeats that make her songs compelling and fresh. Her biggest single of 2023, “Royal,” is no exception. The self-love anthem means a lot to Adé, who told Blavity she wrote it while she was in a dark place.

“I wrote it for myself,” she explained. “I feel like I was going through, almost maybe depression. It was a breakup. Things were happening where I felt like life wasn’t necessarily going my way.”

Adé said restoring her faith helped her see things differently.

“I had to get back into my faith and be like, ‘Okay, look, this is what God says that I am.’ I wrote about that pretty much at the end of the day.”

Adé’s music is proof that Afrobeats is reforming and expanding — and she’s here for it.

“I’m seeing up-and-coming artists and local artists, well local in the U.S., doing a lot of merges with artists that are from overseas. I’m starting to see that more, which is awesome.”

Adé said seeing how artists in the U.S. are using elements of African music is impressive and inspiring.

“Specifically in Nigeria, there’s this divide between the people who speak local languages, like Yoruba, the ‘right way,’ and those who don’t,” she explained. “I’m seeing people here in the U.S. speak full-on Yoruba music, and I’m loving to see it, and then just you know, doing it eloquently and beautifully.”

As for the future, Adé wants to work with Afropop greats.

“I’ve wanted to work with Adekunle Gold,” she said. “Yeah. That would be such a cool collab.”

She wants to play around with her sound too.

“I want to do more. I just want to do more sounds of soul with Afrobeat elements. I want it to feel different and have the right blend.”

Adé is gearing up to release a deluxe edition of Royal on Jan. 11.

Nigerian American

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