oSHAMO’s unveiling of “Superfuji (GOBE)” as a standalone single in June of 2025 was a statement piece about what could become of Fuji as a composite genre when explored by a mind that is eclectic in its cultural rootedness. In a viral video series recorded in the streets of Peckham and Birmingham we see spirits lifted through the percussion of “Superfuji” even though it is a rather unusual sound for an especially non-African crowd. We see white, brown, black and people of other ethnicities move their bodies to its cadence, and this Afro-fusion is just right.

In many of his other songs, the London-based singer-songwriter fuses Arabic, Nigerian Pidgin English, and Yoruba over amapiano beats with acoustic choruses. It brings to mind the likes of Nigerian artists Burna Boy and Asake, but the imagination for Superfuji as a genre is something different, presented as a refreshing portal into 1970s Nigerian music scenery. The music video is vibrational in the way that Yoruba culture is layered: oSHAMO wears the traditional agbádá in an aṣọ-òkè fabric in a market in London and dances in a crowd with traditional “talking drums” playing in the background.

In “Alaska” ─ the fifth track from oSHAMO’s debut EP, First of My Kind ─  he sings: “I might be from London town, but then I’ll do it my way”. His “way” is a dual religious background rooted in Lagos suburbs of Agege and Ayobo-Ipaja, where fuji and gospel music radicalized his sonic vocabulary and zeal for making good music. Fuji isn’t a new sound—it has existed since the 1970s Afro-beat era through pioneers Ayinde Barrister, Wasiu Ayinde Marshal (K1 De Ultimate), and Ayinla Kollington. Now oSHAMO is rekindling the same intensity that Barrister and K1 De Ultimate let out over 50 years ago. Before his development of  Superfuji, his viral single “Why You Lying”, sparked a sensation in 2023, and, like every breakout sound by an emerging artist, there was the question of whether he could hold the spotlight long enough. With the 2024 single “Life of the party”, he answered this question swiftly, announcing that he’s in the scene for a long time and a good time. Superfuji does more than enough to prove his point. 

There is something evidently contagious about the crispness of oSHAMO’s tonality in this single that makes it difficult to reconcile with a twenty-two-year-old. He sounds almost ancient, like an embodiment of a spirit that, in a past life, has spoken through countless fuji beats. He does well to modernize the genre, but never flattens its textures—it’s easy to hear this immediately. Fuji is an inherently percussive sequence of talking drums, bàtá and shekere, followed by a call-and-response chant, and oSHAMO lets all the elements flourish. He then frames them with contemporary production, so that the bass hits like club music, and the midrange still carries language. The result sounds familiar and unexpected at once.

Many Nigerian artists who have attempted to reinvent fuji in the past have faced the challenge of marketing its sound to a global audience, and for newer artists it is simply not a genre that lends itself easily to experimentation within popular culture. This is because the sound has long been branded as old-fashioned and tied to Nigeria’s distinct religious and social registers. oSHAMO approaches this differently. For him it is about the legacy he sets as a young artist in a foreign country experimenting with a sound that resists easy categorization. “We’re breaking that rule by every means possible,” he says in response to the stereotype of artists who seek foreign recognition without first establishing solid footing in their native countries. What this legacy proposes beyond Superfuji is a new model for diaspora artists.