A Good Time
Back when the Nigerian singer released his debut album, 2012’s underrated *Omo Baba Olowo*, there wasn’t much of an international market for Afrobeats, the fusion of West African highlife music with contemporary pop and hip-hop that’s slowly infiltrated Top 40 radio. (Think less Fela Kuti, more Drake’s “One Dance.”) Seven years later, Davido’s second album arrives on a cresting wave of popularity for the genre, and *A Good Time* feels like a serious bid for American crossover, expanding his palette without sacrificing the Afrobeats essence. These moments of global fusion are the highlights here: Gunna fits in seamlessly on “Big Picture” (it helps that Davido spent some of his childhood in Atlanta), and on “Risky,” he recruits Jamaican dancehall mainstay Popcaan for a slow-wind anthem that sounds like a canticle for bad decisions.
On his second album, the Nigerian pop artist provides not just an integrated sound all his own but a clear vision for its future. It is a buoyant, unsinkable record, one of the genre’s finest ever.