This article looks through a critical feminist cultural lens into the music of famous female and queer Nigerian musicians whose artistic expression has been tagged sexualization and objectification. One question primarily animates the article: Does the vulgarity, eroticism, and pleasure in famous female and queer Nigerian artists’ music have a political or ideological undertone? Drawing from selected music by female and queer artists (Tiwa Savage, Teni Apata, and Temmie Ovwasa), complemented by specialized literature in gender, sexuality, and cultural studies, I examine pleasure and sexuality as defiance, not deviance, in Nigerian popular music. Specifically, using textual analysis of selected lyrics and close reading of accompanying images, whether moving or static, I argue that through a genre I call “moaning music,” artists challenge and resist hegemonic masculinity, assert agency, and decolonize gender and sexuality in Nigerian popular music. Moaning music also serves as a form of “politics of redressing” African female bodies and sexuality, which have historically been racialized, objectified, vilified, and demonized. Although moaning marks many registers, I use it here within the context of sounds and images of sexual pleasure. Moaning music subverts the gaze, expectations, and sexual discipline of heteropatriarchy through lyrics, sounds, visuals, stylistic choices, and bodily and beauty repertoire.
Rosemary Oyinlola Popoola (Sun,) studied this question.