Last year, the Nigerian star Tekno heard an instrumental that
reminded him of his breakout hit, "Duro." Though the producer,
Krizbeatz, was planning to send the beat elsewhere, Tekno asked to take a
crack at it. "Then I went upstairs and ate the beat up," the singer
tells
Billboard. "The feeling I had when I recorded that? I fell in love with my own song like it wasn't mine."
That
single, titled "Pana," has gone on to entrap other listeners the same
way it conquered its creator, accumulating 30 million streams between
YouTube and Spotify. Veterans like Trey Songz and Ludacris have posted clips of themselves listening to the song
on Instagram, and "Pana" also caught the attention of Imran Majid,
senior vice president of A&R at Columbia, who signed the track and
re-released it in December.
Tekno's connection with Columbia is
the latest step forward in an inch-by-inch acknowledgement of the
commercial viability of Nigerian pop in the U.S. Most of those steps
have come via collaborations sprinkled over the last five years
-- P-Square and Rick Ross, D'banj and Kanye West, Davido and Meek Mill, Wizkid and Major Lazer, Wizkid and R. Kelly. Nigerian-born Ayo Jay had a minor hit with "Your Number" last year, which got some attention when Fetty Wap appeared on one remix, and Chris Brown and Kid Ink on another. The best-known recent example of a Nigerian-Western team-up is Drake's
"One Dance," which included Wizkid. Wizkid is now signed to RCA -- also
the home of Davido and Ayo Jay -- with an album due out on the label
this summer.