Akwaeke Emezi’s Live Performance at Afropunk Festival Was Lit!

September 14, 2023

Nigerian-Tamil author Akwaeke Emezi, who recently launch a music career, performed live for the first time at the renowned Afropunk festival in Brooklyn.

Earlier in the year, in May, Emezi surprised fans with the release of a rap single titled “Yung Dead Thing.” They subsequently released another single titled “Banye”, followed by this performance in one of the most coveted stages in the American music festival circuit.

Emezi has been open about the challenges of going from one creative space to another, especially considering the significant success they achieved in the literary world. In an Instagram caption, in which they shared a vide of the live performance, they wrote: “debuting in a new artistic field as someone who’s already a public figure feels hella vulnerable — you know you’re constantly surveilled and some folks are lowkey slavering for you to stumble.” However, the outpouring of encouragement from fans and readers has been heartwarming. They further added: “this debut showed me how much LOVE is out there fr 😭 it showed me how my family shows up for me, how many people are rooting for me, and it makes me so grateful to be a working artist even in this dystopia.”

Congrats to Emezi on pulling off their first ever live musical performance. Their makeup and outfit was on point, plus they made the raffia chaps themselves.

See snippets of the performances below:

[Images via Instagram by @larufoto.]

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A post shared by AKWAEKE (@yungdeadthing)

In an interview, Emezi remarks that their sound is hard to define but “you can dance to it! I thought that I could go more of like a spoken word, you know, conscious rap angle, but then I was like, “I want to shake my ass.””

Emezi’s successful leap from writing to music has given them confidence in being able to breach creative boundaries. They add:

Working on this EP has given me almost a drunken sense of ambition, where I’m like, “My God, I can do anything.” When I started making music and talking to people about how difficult it might be for others to see me as this whole artist instead of trying to fit me into a box, the point of reference I heard the most was Donald Glover. There’s so much more I want to do. And there’s so much more that I am doing, you know, just quietly. It will all get rolled out in due time.

At Afropunk, Emezi’s powerful performance definitely wowed both their literary and musical fans alike. They displayed their enthusiasm at executing a successful debut show, with the following caption on Instagram:

WE DID IT!!! debuting in a new artistic field as someone who’s already a public figure feels hella vulnerable — you know you’re constantly surveilled and some folks are lowkey slavering for you to stumble, but this debut showed me how much LOVE is out there fr it showed me how my family shows up for me, how many people are rooting for me, and it makes me so grateful to be a working artist even in this dystopia. more soon!

We are proud of Emezi for following their creative dreams! Check out the videos and photos of them performing at Afropunk below.