MEET THE WILDEST CHARACTER IN THE WORLD'S MOST INFLUENTIAL MUSIC SCENE

Right now, to be the most important new voice in Afrobeats means you might just be the most important new voice in global music, period. That title currently belongs to Asake, a Nigerian singer with bonkers style and a penchant for making speaker-melting hits.

- FRAZIER THARPE

One of the first things you notice upon meeting Asake is his name-all five letters of the Nigerian singer's stage moniker are tattooed in big, unmissable ink across his neck.

For another entertainer, this might imply bold vanity and solipsism; for the 29-year-old artist, it symbolizes determination. "In Nigeria, if you have a tattoo on your neck, you can't work anywhere," Asake explains. "I can't work for any company. I can't sell anything." Asake got the tattoo at a time when he felt especially discouraged, beaten down, and unsure about this music thing. "I was tired," he recalls. "I felt like, I don't want to keep trying." His response to those feelings of doubt? To double down and give himself no other option. To get the tattoo as he was still becoming the Asake we know now-the chart-topping Afrobeats singer poised to be the genre's next big crossover star-was to essentially lock himself into staying the course, and conquering. There could be no other move.

Much has been made of Asake's so-called meteoric rise, how he burst onto the Afrobeats scene with his debut album, 2022's Mr. Money With the Vibe, and hasn't stopped climbing to new heights since. It didn't feel so quick to Asake. "You have to understand: I got there in two years, but I've been working for years," he says. "People are counting the days you're successful. They don't count the days you've been working toward it. Nobody gives a fuck about that."