Threads of influence
Records in circulation, musicians meeting, people on the move: 52 routes by which music crossed from one place to another and became something new. On the globe they appear as glowing arcs.
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1927–1962 · Records
The Journey of “Misirlou”
“Misirlou,” sung around the eastern Mediterranean, was put on record in 1927 by the Greek singer Tetos Demetriades. In 1962 the Lebanese American guitarist Dick Dale turned it into blistering surf rock, later made world-famous by the film Pulp Fiction (1994).
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1929–1997 · Songs & rhythms
The Journey of “Guantanamera”
Cuban singer Joseíto Fernández spread “Guantanamera” on the radio from around 1929. Later set to verses by José Martí, it was sung in the US by Pete Seeger in 1963 as a song of peace. In 1997 Haiti-born Wyclef Jean reworked it inside hip-hop with Celia Cruz, Lauryn Hill and others.
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1931–1967 · Musicians meeting
The Hawaiian Guitar Goes to India
The Hawaiian steel guitar — laid flat and played with a sliding steel bar — spread worldwide in the early 20th century through records and touring bands, reaching India too. Brij Bhushan Kabra discovered it in Calcutta and, adding sympathetic strings, turned it into an instrument for raga; with Call of the Valley (1967), the guitar became known as an instrument of Indian classical music. Compare the sound of the instrument rather than the same song.
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1933–1960 · Records
Son on Shellac
From the 1930s, 78s such as HMV’s GV series carried Cuban son across Africa. In Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the Belgian Congo, musicians re-sang it in Lingala and wedded it to new guitar styles — Congolese rumba. Grand Kallé’s African Jazz even recorded Trío Matamoros’ “El que siembra su maíz.”
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1939–1961 · Records
“Mbube” Becomes “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”
In 1939 Zulu singer Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds recorded “Mbube” for Gallo in Johannesburg. The record crossed the ocean: New York’s Weavers sang it as “Wimoweh” (1951), and in 1961 The Tokens, with English lyrics, took “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” to No. 1 in the US. Linda earned almost nothing; only in a 2006 settlement was he recognised as the song’s source and co-composer. Here, compare South African Miriam Makeba’s “Mbube” (1960).
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1940–1958 · Songs & rhythms
“La Bamba” Becomes Rock ’n’ Roll
“La Bamba” is a traditional son jarocho from Veracruz, long sung at weddings. In 1958 Ritchie Valens, a Mexican American who grew up near Los Angeles, recorded it as rock ’n’ roll and made a Spanish-language song a US hit.
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1941–1950 · Migration
From the Delta to Chicago
In the first half of the 20th century, millions of African Americans moved from the South to the industrial cities of the North — the Great Migration. Recorded on a Mississippi plantation in 1941, Muddy Waters moved to Chicago in 1943 and plugged in. The same song was reborn as urban electric blues.
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1948–1994 · Records
Where the Blues Came From
John Lee Hooker recorded “Boogie Chillen’” in Detroit in 1948. When Mali’s Ali Farka Touré first heard that one-chord, hypnotic guitar, he reportedly felt “this is something that belongs to us.” Touré was called “the African John Lee Hooker,” yet also said his music was older than the blues. Compare the two guitars rather than the same song.
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1949–1978 · Songs & rhythms
From Beny Moré to Salsa
Cuban singer Beny Moré recorded “Bonito y sabroso” in Mexico in the late 1940s, with Pérez Prado and others, and later led his Banda Gigante in Havana. New York’s Latin music had long learned from Cuban bands, and in 1978 timbalero Tito Puente released Homenaje a Beny, a Grammy-winning tribute of Moré’s songs.
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1952–1956 · Songs & rhythms
“Day-O,” the Banana Loaders’ Song
“Day-O” is the call-and-response song of Jamaican dockworkers loading bananas through the night. Edric Connor (1952) and Louise Bennett (1954) recorded it as “Day Dah Light”; Harry Belafonte drew on their versions and made it a worldwide hit on Calypso (1956).
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1956–1967 · Musicians meeting
The Sitar Comes to London
In 1966 the Beatles’ George Harrison studied sitar with Ravi Shankar in Bombay. On “Within You Without You,” from 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, he worked with Indian musicians in London, bringing in Hindustani instruments and form.
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1959–1962 · Songs & rhythms
Bossa Nova Heads North
Guitarist Charlie Byrd discovered bossa nova on a 1961 South American tour, and back home recorded Jazz Samba with Stan Getz in Washington, D.C. (February 1962). It topped the US album chart and set off a worldwide bossa nova boom. Compare João Gilberto’s “Desafinado” (1959).
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1959–1978 · Songs & rhythms
“Firecracker” — Honolulu to Tokyo
Martin Denny, playing a hotel bar in Honolulu, found fame with “exotica” — bird calls and faux-Oriental melodies. His “Firecracker” (1959) is known as the tune that inspired Haruomi Hosono to start Yellow Magic Orchestra. YMO played it on synthesizers on their debut (1978), and it charted as a single in the US.
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1960–1975 · Songs & rhythms
Cumbia Goes to the Amazon
Cumbia, born on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, spread across Latin America on record. In the late 1960s young musicians in Peru’s Amazon layered Peruvian folk tunes, electric guitar and organ over cumbia — the music later called chicha. Los Mirlos, who came to Lima from Moyobamba in 1972, are among its defining bands. Compare the two cumbias rather than the same song.
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1961–1981 · Records
“Ue o Muite Arukō” Becomes “Sukiyaki”
Kyu Sakamoto’s “Ue o Muite Arukō” (1961) was released in the English-speaking world as “Sukiyaki” and reached No. 1 on the US Billboard singles chart in June 1963 — the first song sung in Japanese to do so. In 1981 Los Angeles group A Taste of Honey sang it with English lyrics and had a US hit with it again.
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1963–1966 · Songs & rhythms
“Mas que nada”
Jorge Ben sang “Mas que nada” on his 1963 debut Samba Esquema Novo, over samba and his own driving guitar. In 1966 the Los Angeles-based Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’66 made it a US hit, and it became one of the best-known Brazilian songs in the world.
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1963–1980 · Migration
Congolese Rumba Moves to Nairobi
In the 1970s many musicians from Zaire (now DR Congo) moved to East Africa. Super Mazembe, formed in Zaire in 1967, relocated to Nairobi in 1974 and made Congolese rumba, sung also in Swahili, Kenya’s popular music; their hit “Shauri Yako” was itself a song by Zairean musician Nguashi Ntimbo. Compare the rumba guitar sound rather than the same song.
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1964–1979 · Migration
Ska Crosses the Atlantic
After the Empire Windrush in 1948, many Caribbean people settled in Britain, and ska and reggae records crossed the ocean with them. In 1979 Coventry’s The Specials (as The Special AKA) built their debut single “Gangsters” on Prince Buster’s “Al Capone” (1964), launching the 2 Tone era.
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1965–1977 · Songs & rhythms
“People Get Ready” in “One Love”
The Impressions’ “People Get Ready” (Chicago, 1965), written by Curtis Mayfield, became a song of the civil-rights era. The Wailers in Jamaica listened closely to American soul, and on Exodus (1977) Bob Marley folded it into his own “One Love” as “One Love/People Get Ready” — with Mayfield credited as a co-writer.
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1969–1976 · Musicians meeting
James Brown and Fela Kuti
Fela Kuti met the Black Power movement during his 1969 stay in the US, and back home forged Afrobeat — highlife and jazz joined to funk. In 1970 James Brown’s band visited Fela’s Afro-Spot club in Lagos, where bassist Bootsy Collins and others were struck by what they heard; the influence ran both ways. Compare the two grooves rather than the same song.
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1970–1979 · Migration
From Toasting to Rap
Around 1970, Jamaican sound-system DJs flourished as “toasters,” chanting over records. In 1973 the Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc brought his own sound system to a party in the Bronx — the birth of hip-hop. In 1979 “Rapper’s Delight” became hip-hop’s first big hit.
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1972–2005 · Records
From a Bombay Film Song to the Black Eyed Peas
“Ae Naujawan Hai Sab Kuchh Yahan,” written by the composer duo Kalyanji–Anandji for the Bombay film Apradh (1972) and sung by Asha Bhosle, is known as an Indian funk-rock song. The Los Angeles group the Black Eyed Peas built “Don’t Phunk with My Heart” (2005) from it and from a song in the film Don (1978), and Kalyanji–Anandji received a BMI award as originators of the melodies.
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1972–2010 · Records
Ethio-Jazz Meets Hip-Hop
Mulatu Astatke’s “Yègellé Tezeta” came out on Amha Records in Addis Ababa in the early 1970s. In 1998 the Paris label Buda Musique reissued his recordings from that period as Éthiopiques 4, bringing Ethio-jazz to listeners abroad. In 2010 Nas and Damian Marley built “As We Enter” on the track’s bass line and melodies, crediting Astatke as a co-writer.
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1973–1998 · Migration
“Ya Rayah” — O You Who Leave
In 1973 the Algiers chaâbi singer Dahmane El Harrachi released “Ya Rayah” (“O you who leave”), about emigrants working far from home. A song by a man who had himself lived in France, it was re-sung in the late 1990s by Rachid Taha, raised in France, and became a hit again across France and the Arab world.
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1973–1986 · Musicians meeting
Reggae Comes to West Africa
Bob Marley & The Wailers’ records were heard across Africa, where reggae took root as music of liberation and resistance. Ivorian Alpha Blondy recorded Jerusalem (1986) at Tuff Gong in Kingston with The Wailers and became the leading voice of African reggae. Compare the lineage rather than the same song.
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1974–1992 · Songs & rhythms
“Sodade” — Cape Verde to Paris
“Sodade” is credited to the Cape Verdean composer Armando Zeferino Soares, who said he wrote it in the 1950s for friends leaving to work in São Tomé and Príncipe. The Angolan singer Bonga, then in exile in Europe, recorded it on Angola 74. Cesária Évora, from Mindelo, recorded Miss Perfumado in Paris in 1992 and opened it with the song; the album won her a large following in France and beyond.
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1974–2018 · Songs & rhythms
“Cemalim” — Anatolian Rock Revived
On Elektronik Türküler (1974), Turkish rock guitarist Erkin Koray played Turkish folk songs (türkü) on electric guitar; one of them, “Cemalim,” is credited to Refik Başaran of Ürgüp. In 2016, after a trip to Istanbul, Dutch bassist Jasper Verhulst formed Altın Gün in Amsterdam with Turkish singers, modelling the band on Koray, Barış Manço and Selda Bağcan. Their debut album On (2018) includes “Cemalım.”
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1977–1982 · Records
From Düsseldorf to the Bronx
Kraftwerk’s records were loved by New York DJs too. In 1982 the Bronx’s Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force rebuilt the melody of “Trans-Europe Express” (1977) and the rhythm of “Numbers” (1981) on a TR-808 drum machine for “Planet Rock” — a starting point for electro, electronic hip-hop, and a road towards techno.
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1980–1987 · Songs & rhythms
“Caballo Viejo” Becomes “Bamboléo”
Venezuelan singer Simón Díaz released his own “Caballo Viejo” on a 1980 album. The Gipsy Kings — Romani families from Arles and Montpellier in southern France — stitched it together with the Brazilian “Bamboleô” as “Bamboléo” on their album Gipsy Kings (1987), the song that broke them internationally. Díaz is credited among its writers.
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1981–1989 · Songs & rhythms
From “Llorando se fue” to “Lambada”
The melody of “Llorando se fue,” released by Bolivia’s Los Kjarkas in 1981, was later given Portuguese lyrics and became a worldwide hit as “Lambada” (1989) by the Paris-based group Kaoma. The composers took legal action and were recognised as its authors.
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1982–2005 · Records
“Kokoro no Tomo” — Tokyo to Jakarta
Mayumi Itsuwa’s “Kokoro no Tomo” was a little-noticed album track on Shiosai (1982) in Japan. In Indonesia, the story goes, a DJ brought it home from a trip to Japan and played it on the radio, and it became a Japanese song that most Indonesians know. In 2005 Itsuwa re-recorded it in Japanese and Indonesian with Delon Thamrin, runner-up on Indonesian Idol, as a charity release after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
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1982–1994 · Musicians meeting
Horace Andy and Massive Attack
The Jamaican singer Horace Andy recorded Dance Hall Style in 1982 for Lloyd Barnes’s Wackie’s label in the Bronx; “Spying Glass” was on it. Massive Attack, who grew out of Bristol’s sound-system scene, brought Andy in as a vocalist from Blue Lines (1991) onward and featured him on every album after. On Protection (1994) Andy sang “Spying Glass” again, over a new rhythm.
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1982–1987 · Songs & rhythms
“Hot Hot Hot” — Soca from Montserrat
Arrow (Alphonsus Cassell), a singer from the small Caribbean island of Montserrat, released his own soca song “Hot Hot Hot” on a 1982 album, and it charted in Britain. In 1987 David Johansen, once of the New York Dolls, covered it in New York as Buster Poindexter and had an American hit. It went on to be covered in many countries as a party standard.
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1983–1995 · Musicians meeting
From Detroit to Berlin
Detroit techno, which began with Juan Atkins’s Cybotron, found a new home in Berlin after the Wall fell in 1989. The record shop Hard Wax imported Detroit records, and Tresor — club and label, opened in 1991 — made Underground Resistance its first release. Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus’s Basic Channel joined the Detroit sound to Jamaican dub. Compare the two cities’ sounds rather than the same song.
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1983–1995 · Songs & rhythms
From Teresa Teng to Faye Wong
On Dandan youqing (1983), Taiwan’s Teresa Teng sang classical Tang and Song poems set to new music, among them “Dan Yuan Ren Chang Jiu” on a poem by Su Shi. On the mainland her songs were attacked as “spiritual pollution” in the same years, yet they spread everywhere on cassettes brought in from Hong Kong. Faye Wong, born in Beijing and in Hong Kong since 1987, recorded a whole album of Teng’s songs, Fei Mi Mi Zhi Yin (1995), including this one; Teng died while it was being made.
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1983–2022 · Records
“Midnight Pretenders” to “Out of Time”
Tomoko Aran sang “Midnight Pretenders,” written with Tetsurō Oda, on her 1983 album Fuyū Kūkan. Toronto’s The Weeknd sampled the song for “Out of Time” on Dawn FM (2022), with Aran and Oda credited as songwriters; it became the album’s third single.
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1984–1986 · Musicians meeting
Youssou N’Dour and Peter Gabriel
In Dakar, Youssou N’Dour sang at the head of the Étoile de Dakar. Peter Gabriel said N’Dour’s album Immigrés (1984) got him hooked on African rhythm. He invited N’Dour to Ashcombe House, his home studio near Bath, where N’Dour translated lines of “In Your Eyes” into Wolof and improvised them — the coda of the song on So (1986).
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1985–1989 · Musicians meeting
Bulgarian Voices in London
Recordings of the Bulgarian State Radio and Television women’s choir were issued by the Swiss producer Marcel Cellier as Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares in 1975, then reissued by London’s 4AD in 1986, to wide acclaim. Trio Bulgarka — three singers from the same tradition, including Yanka Rupkina — went on to sing on three songs of Kate Bush’s The Sensual World (1989): “Deeper Understanding,” “Never Be Mine” and “Rocket’s Tail.” Here the trio’s “Pilentse pee” with the Radio folk orchestra is set against their voices on “Rocket’s Tail.”
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1987–1988 · Records
Acid House, Chicago to Manchester
In Chicago, Phuture brought the squelch of Roland’s TB-303 bass machine into house music with “Acid Tracks,” released on Trax in 1987. “Acid house” took off in Britain the following year, centred on Shoom in London and the Haçienda in Manchester. That same year Manchester’s Gerald Simpson recorded “Voodoo Ray” in two days at a local studio; it is regarded as one of the first British-made acid house records and reached No. 12 in the UK.
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1988–1993 · Records
An Amis Song and “Return to Innocence”
In 1988 the Amis singers Kuo Ying-nan (Difang) and the Malan Chorus from eastern Taiwan performed the “Elders’ Drinking Song” on a European tour, and the recording was released on CD in France. In 1993 Enigma used their voices, without the singers’ permission, in the hit “Return to Innocence.” A lawsuit followed and was settled in 1999.
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1988–1996 · Records
The “Volt Mix” — an LA Record Becomes Rio Funk
In the 1980s Rio DJs brought back Miami bass and other American records for the favela dances (bailes). The B-side beat of DJ Battery Brain’s (Mark Rogers) “8 Volt Mix,” released in 1988 on Los Angeles’s Techno Hop Records, became known in Rio as the “Volt Mix” and turned into a foundation of funk carioca. Claudinho & Buchecha’s “Nosso Sonho” (1996) is one of the hits sung over it.
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1990–1991 · Songs & rhythms
“Manatsu no Kajitsu” Becomes “Mei Tian Ai Ni Duo Yi Xie”
Southern All Stars’ “Manatsu no Kajitsu” (1990) was written by Keisuke Kuwata as the theme for Inamura Jane, the film he directed. In Hong Kong, Jacky Cheung sang it with new Cantonese lyrics as “Mei Tian Ai Ni Duo Yi Xie” on his 1991 album Qing Bu Jin, and it stayed on the city’s radio charts for months. A Mandarin version followed on his 1993 album Wen Bie.
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1990–1990 · Songs & rhythms
“Dem Bow” — the Rhythm That Named Reggaeton’s Beat
In 1990 Shabba Ranks cut “Dem Bow” in Kingston with producer Bobby Digital. Panamanian singer Nando Boom, working in New York with Jamaican producers Dennis “The Menace” Haliburton and Philip Smart, answered with a Spanish-language version, “Ellos Benia.” Panama’s reggae en español later grew into reggaeton in Puerto Rico, whose core beat is still called “dembow” after Shabba’s song.
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1992–2002 · Songs & rhythms
“Shima Uta” — Okinawa to Buenos Aires
Kazufumi Miyazawa of THE BOOM wrote “Shima Uta” after a visit to Okinawa. It appeared on the album Shishunki (January 1992), and after a single in the Okinawan language, the standard-Japanese “original version” of 1993 became a hit. In Argentina, Alfredo Casero released his own version at the end of 2001, sung entirely in Japanese; it reached No. 1 in 2002 and was included on Argentina’s official World Cup album that year.
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1992–2019 · Songs & rhythms
“Informer” Becomes “Con Calma”
Snow, a singer raised in Toronto, topped the Billboard Hot 100 with the dancehall-styled “Informer” (1992). In 2019 Puerto Rico’s Daddy Yankee built the Spanish-language “Con Calma” on its hook, with Snow recording new parts himself. It held No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs for weeks and became a worldwide hit.
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1993–1998 · Musicians meeting
Cheiron Studios, Stockholm
Denniz Pop, who ran Cheiron Studios in Stockholm, co-produced Ace of Base’s “The Sign,” a US No. 1 that Billboard ranked the top song of 1994. His protégé Max Martin wrote “...Baby One More Time,” and in May 1998 Britney Spears, signed to New York’s Jive Records, recorded half of her debut album at Cheiron. The single came out that September and topped the charts in more than twenty countries.
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1997–2002 · Songs & rhythms
“Şımarık” Becomes “Kiss Kiss”
Tarkan’s “Şımarık,” with words by Sezen Aksu, appeared on his 1997 album Ölürüm Sana and became a hit across Europe when it was released there in 1998–99. In 2001 the American singer Stella Soleil recorded an English version, “Kiss Kiss”; in 2002 the Australian Holly Valance made it her debut single and took it to No. 1 in both the UK and Australia. Aksu and Tarkan remain among the credited writers of the English version.
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2003–2004 · Songs & rhythms
“Yuki no Hana” Becomes “Snow Flower”
Mika Nakashima’s “Yuki no Hana” came out as a single in October 2003 and reached No. 3 in Japan. South Korea was lifting its ban on Japanese popular culture in stages between 1998 and 2004. In November 2004 Park Hyo-shin sang the song in Korean as “Snow Flower” (Nun-ui kkot) for the soundtrack of the drama I’m Sorry, I Love You; it became a hit, and reportedly lifted sales of Nakashima’s own album in Korea.
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2012–2016 · Records
Drill, Chicago to London
Drill took shape on Chicago’s South Side in the early 2010s, and Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like” (2012, produced by Young Chop) brought it to wide attention. In Brixton, south London, groups such as 67 began by rapping over American beats in imitation of the Chicago sound, then built a distinct British style. 67’s “Let’s Lurk” with Giggs (2016) is taken as the peak of UK drill’s first wave.
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2014–2016 · Records
From “Ojuelegba” to “One Dance”
Wizkid’s “Ojuelegba” (on Ayo, 2014) is named after the part of Surulere, Lagos, where he grew up, and recalls his struggling years there. In July 2015 a remix added verses by Drake and the London grime MC Skepta. While working on that remix, Drake’s team approached the British singer Kyla about her 2008 UK funky track “Do You Mind” — the sample under “One Dance” (2016), on which Wizkid sings. The pair compares Wizkid’s Lagos original with the global hit his voice later appeared on.
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2018–2019 · Musicians meeting
808Melo — London to Brooklyn
The London producer 808Melo made his name with UK drill beats such as Headie One’s “Know Better” (2018). Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke picked up on his sound and enlisted him for his debut mixtape, Meet the Woo; its first single, “Welcome to the Party” (April 2019), produced by 808Melo, became a defining Brooklyn drill record, and a remix with London’s Skepta followed that year. The pair here compares the two beats.
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2020–2021 · Musicians meeting
Amapiano from Pretoria to Lagos
Amapiano is a South African dance style built on a deep “log drum” bass. Focalistic, a rapper from Ga-Rankuwa north of Pretoria, released “Ke Star” in April 2020, produced by Vigro Deep and rapped in Pretoria’s township tongue Sepitori. In February 2021 a remix opening with vocals by the Nigerian star Davido — after sessions in Nigeria — was released worldwide and entered a Billboard chart.