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Def Jam Africa artist Nasty C

The legendary hip hop label Def Jam has been launched in Africa

Yinka Adegoke
By Yinka Adegoke

Africa editor

One of the well-known clichés of the music business is the tension between record labels and their artists. That’s sometimes because while the few successful artists get all the glory, few labels are ever recognized as anything other than a corporate entity. This is even more so in the streaming age.

But a few labels captured the artistic spirit or zeitgeist of their time, names like Detroit’s Motown or Jamaica’s Studio One come readily to mind. Another, of course, was New York’s Def Jam, whose co-founders Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin helped launch modern hip hop to the world in the early 1980s with genre-defining artists including Run DMC, LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys.



Courtesy: Def Jam Africa
Def Jam Africa artists L-R: Larry Gaaga, Boity, Cassper Nyovest, Nadia Nakai

The label announced a flagship roster of artists including established hip hop acts Cassper Nyovest, Nasty C, Nadia Nakai and Boity (South Africa) and Nigerian Afrobeats act Larry Gaaga.


Def Jam Africa is the first of UMG’s flagship labels to exist as a standalone label in Africa as everything before now had been released under the “UMG Africa” banner, according to Dlamini. “This way, you have a team that is solely working these artists, so that they understand the DNA of the label, and the importance of developing a quality and authenticity of sound, that has a focused roster of talent that reflects those values.”

The sound of urban African youth, best captured by Nigeria/Ghana’s Afrobeats and South Africa’s gqom/House have found their way into the mainstream of global pop charts and radio with artists including Nigeria’s Davido and WizKid and South Africa’s Black Coffee and Distruction Boyz.

In many African markets outside South Africa, the music business has an abundance of talent and thousands of independent labels and artist managers, but not the formal distribution and legal infrastructure, which underpins the $50 billion global industry across recording music, publishing, TV/film and live performances.

Universal, Sony Music and more recently Warner Music Group are each looking to build organically as well as strategic partnerships alongside their respective A&R  efforts to establish a more formal music business imprint that plugs local music industries more seamlessly into the global ecosystem.


