Let’s get something straight before we go any further: African artists sampling African music is not new. Burna Boy has sampled Fela Kuti so many times a Medium article exists just to count them. Tems won a Grammy off a Seyi Sodimu sample. Ayra Starr interpolated Wande Coal on “Jazzy’s Song.” Asake built “Active” around Adewale Ayuba’s fuji vocals. Flavour, Adekunle Gold, Tiwa Savage, Pheelz — the list of Nigerian artists who have dipped into the country’s own classics is long, and growing. So when Sample Chief flagged that BNXN’s latest single “Back Outside,” produced by Sarz and released April 2026, carries an interpolation of Amadou & Mariam’s “Ko Neye Mounka Allah La,” the Malian desert blues classic, the question isn’t “is this the first time Afrobeats has sampled Africa?” It isn’t. The question is why this particular interpolation feels like it crossed a line that most others haven’t.
If you map the sampling choices of the biggest Afrobeats artists over the past decade, a clear pattern emerges. The overwhelming majority of samples fall into two categories: Nigerian classics (Fela, Wande Coal, Seyi Sodimu, Styl-Plus, the Lijadu Sisters, Yinka Ayefele) and Western records (James Brown, Sade, Amerie, Mary J. Blige, Brick & Lace). The Nigerian-to-Nigerian pipeline is now firmly established. Burna Boy sampled Fela’s “Sorrow, Tears & Blood” for “Ye” (2018), “Shakara” for “My Money, My Baby” (2019), and “Lady” for “Boom Boom Boom.” Falz sampled “Coffin for Head of State” for “Amen” on his 2019 album Moral Instruction. Ghanaian rapper Sarkodie sampled Fela’s “Lady” for “Dumsor” in 2015. Tems’ “Love Me Jeje” (2024), sampling Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 classic, won the Grammy for Best African Music Performance. Ayra Starr interpolated Wande Coal and D’banj’s “You Bad” on “Jazzy’s Song,” and sampled the Lijadu Sisters’ “Orere Elegibo” on “Sare.” Fireboy DML interpolated Musiliu Haruna Ishola’s 2000 song “Ise Oluwa Ko Seni Toye” on “Iseoluwa.” ID Cabasa reassembled Styl-Plus’s “Olufunmi” with Fireboy, Joeboy, and ODUMODUBLVCK. Pheelz sampled both Rasheed Ayinde and Jazzman Olofin on “Majo.” And Rema’s 2025 single “Baby (Is It A Crime)” sampled Sade Adu, British-Nigerian, but still pointing the arrow back home.
This is all welcome. As music journalist Joey Akan told African Arguments, Nigerian artists “weren’t able to step off from sampling foreign musicians or other African artists” partly because earlier generations of Nigerian music were “tied up in Europe, and America. Tied up with people who came here in the seventies and did deals with content.” Time has passed. Records have aged into Nigerian-owned territory. The clearing of domestic samples is now commercially viable. And the results have been extraordinary, an entire generation reconnecting with its own sonic heritage.
