The never ending social media spat between Nigerians and South Africans took another twist as both factions clash over the ownership of one of Africa’s biggest music sub-genre export, Amapiano.
Trouble started when American rapper Swae Lee tweeted his intention to tap into the popularity of the genre by releasing an Amapiano song.
Lee had tweeted, “Wait till y’all hear Swae Lee on Amapiano” and attached the Nigerian flag to the end of his post.
The South African community took the Nigerian flag attached to the tweet to mean that he was giving Nigeria the credit for the creation of Amapiano instead of South Africa.
According to Wikipaedia, Amapiano is a music sound that originated from southern Africa. The genre is a mash-up of House music and Kwaito and is well known for dominant synths and heavy basslines.
However, the fact that it has become a household name in the Nigerian music industry and has now been integrated into Afrobeat has made it easy for people to credit its creation to Nigeria.
The fact that Nigerian music acts tend to dominate the African music scene and represent the continent more on the international music stage also further puts the country in the spotlight, making it easier for it to be recognised ahead of others.
Lee has since reversed himself. He tweeted a response, “Woooah, I never said anything about who was the first guys I just said wait until y’all hear my Amapiano songs y’all reached for that one.”
Seeing that that didn’t do the trick and, in fact, seemed to have further riled up the South Africans, he made another attempt to pacify them by tweeting, “Bigs up to the South Africans for creating this beautiful sh-t (sic).”
The tweet seems to have come a little too late as both sides won’t let go of each other’s jugular.
Below are some of the most interesting reactions to the issue:
@GeorgeBeatsSA who seems to be a South African producer was the first to counter Swae’s tweet: he did with “Amapiano is a south African genre bro bro!!!.
Another tweeter user, a Nigerian who obviously knows what was about to come quickly tweeted “This guy will set us up with our Southy brothers. Afrobeats is 9ja, Amapiano is South Africa”.
A South African tweeter handle @Krugersville came out, fork in hands with “Nigeria found Amapiano? Hae wena msunu remove that flag before we come to America with our functional submarines and Swae your ass.”
Another user @Povertykiller said, “Dear South Africans, if Swae Lee doesn’t apologise or tweet again and use the right flag before 00am(in 5 hours), we are reporting his account. Like or retweet if you agree with this”. And then he ended it with “we can’t be disrespected like this.”
While Swae Lee was trying so hard to put out the flames he inadvertently started, Nigerians were in thread making his job even harder by trolling South Africans and insisting that they are indeed the true owners of the sound, some others claimed the sound was nothing until Nigerians took it and made it popular by conquering the world with it.
@Adex_smithjr defiantly tweeted “South Africans under this thread wailing. We all know Nigerians modernized the amapiano and ate it”.
Another Nigerian @thequestempire added more fuel to the fire by simply attaching a picture of Davido to the thread and capturing it with “THE KING OF AMAPIANO”.
@dotboyswag10 posted “Now South Africans will hate us more, but we don’t care” he added laughter emojis to his tweet.
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According to Wikipaedia, Amapiano is a subgenre of house music and kwaito that emerged in South Africa, Vosloorus in the mid-2010s. It is a hybrid of deep house, jazz and lounge music characterized by synths and wide percussive basslines.
