A few acts like Ladipoe, Blaqbonez<\/a>, Yung 6ix, Skales<\/a>, or Psycho YP<\/a> struck success with their hip-hop fusions, managing to keep the genre afloat. But these artists suffered disrespect and harsh criticism from its core audience. Another handful of rappers like MI Abaga, Olamide, Show Dem Camp<\/a>, Reminisce, Phyno, and Illbliss kept pushing the sound\u2019s boundaries, but their efforts felt like a drop in the ocean. Hip-hop needed much more than a few willing crusaders; it needed an army – of people, structures, and funding – to rise back to glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How could hip-hop survive this coup-de-\u00e9tat when its source, the West, had shifted its devotion to Naija Pop? When rap heavyweights like Skepta and Drake were mostly making music with pop stars like Wizkid, how could it stand a chance? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The answer was hidden in the example of the \u201880s and \u201890s when pioneering juggernauts DJ Ron Ekundayo,<\/a> the trio Emphasis<\/a>, the four-member group Pretty Busy Boys,<\/a> the Run DMC\u2019s of Nigeria Trybesmen<\/a>, Remedies, Ruggedman, and Weird MC soundtracked the funk and disco-heavy American hip-hop into a creolised, local version. Or in the 2000s, when Eedris Abdulkareem (lead rap act of The Remedies), Dagrin, Reminisce and others began to release more rap music in indigenous languages like Yoruba, Hausa and Pidgin English. Nigerian hip-hop always found its future in creative fusions. Now, Nigerian hip-hop has been reinventing itself once again with likes of drill, grime and trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The collectives are born<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When it was evident that major label funding for rappers was drying up, a pocket of young rappers within Abuja started building their own momentum within the hip-hop scene, with frequent releases, local show performances, and social media. Within the city\u2019s hilly suburbs, these rappers began to connect with each other and establish friendships. As these friendships, a handful of which started at university, strengthened, they clustered into several collectives. By the end of the 2010s, we had groups like Apex Village, Kinfxlk (Kinfolk), Double Energy, Anti-world Gangstars<\/em>, and CMG spring up as the newest knights of Nigerian hip-hop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While some of the collectives also have RnB and Pop acts, especially as they also feature those genres in their work, the key focus of their work, for now, remains hip-hop. Some of them like Anti-world Gangsters with newer records<\/a> are still using this template, with hip-hop in the focus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were always just linking up around Gwarinpa, chilling. I make most of my music in Abuja and I barely record in Lagos or other places I go to. So, it was always a routine of just linking up and going to the studio, recording. Around 2018, I told them that we can do something more than just chilling and making music, and that\u2019s how Apex Village started,<\/em>\u201d Psycho YP quips. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, other rappers across the city began to attach themselves to collectives, each differentiated by their ideology and style. While YP\u2019s Apex Village embraced the hustler\u2019s mentality with their Welcome To The Ville <\/em>series, other groups like Anti-world Gangsters represented a resistance to \u2018worldly\u2019 institutions and the cultural status quo, like on their Gang Business <\/em>mixtape. Then there was Kinfolk who documented the underground life of gangs in the individual releases of its progenitor Tomi Obanure, while Double Energy\u2019s frontman, Eeskay, soared with similar machismo and rich storytelling in classics such as \u201cAgbalagba<\/a>\u201d and \u201cCheffing<\/a>\u201d . <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/IMG_0535-1010x1034.jpg\")