Love Letters to Legends: The Night Wizkid Turned Silence Into Stardust

Illustration by ARMSTRONG THE-FUTURE

✨ *Wizkid — Made in Lagos

A Literary Memoir on The Art of Homecoming

Imagine a novel where the rhythm of Lagos pulses in every chapter — streets slick with rain, headlights flickering against potholes like fireflies trapped in glass, and sidewalks where voices rise like hymns at dawn. In this story, the air smells of roasted plantain and gasoline, of longing and possibility. Friends become both ghosts and gods—haunting memories of who you were and divine reminders of who you’ve become.

At the center of this story stands a man — not quite the boy who left, and not quite the icon the world assumes him to be. A prodigal son whose footsteps trace the crooked veins of the city that made him, broke him, and quietly rebuilt him.

This is Made in Lagos, not merely an album but a literary work of art disguised in melody — a novel of homecoming. A journey into the sacred and complicated act of returning… not to reclaim the past, but to reconcile it.

The opening chapter begins not with fireworks, but with silence. A silence heavy with expectation, stretched between two worlds: the bustling chaos of Lagos and the quiet opulence of foreign stages. Fame, after all, is a strange kind of distance. You become both everywhere and nowhere at once — a name that echoes in arenas continents away, yet sometimes feels estranged from the very streets that first taught you rhythm.

Wizkid, the main character of this literary fiction, returns. Not physically — for Lagos has always been tattooed on his skin — but spiritually, creatively, emotionally. This is not the triumphant return of a conqueror, but the vulnerable, poetic drift of a son finding his way back to himself.

As the pages unfold, the city is rendered not as a backdrop, but as a living, breathing organism. The horns, the chants, the ocean breeze sneaking through cracked windows. Each song-chapter becomes a vignette of memory and meaning:

— “Reckless”, the introspective prologue, reads like the internal monologue of a man reconciling who he was with who he’s become. “I don’t come this life to suffer” becomes not just a lyric, but a thesis statement of survival.

— “Ginger”, featuring the spirited presence of Burna Boy, plays like a dialogue between two sons of Africa — brothers who once dreamed from rooftops and now toast from balconies overlooking the same streets they grew up running barefoot through.

— “Essence” — oh, Essence — is a love letter slipped between pages, a story within a story. It's not just about desire for another, but the universal longing to be seen, to be felt, to be essential in someone’s world.

Throughout the book, there’s an ache — a poetic undertone of transformation that only those who’ve left and returned truly understand. The city is the same, yet different. The protagonist is the same, yet unrecognizable to himself at times. Lagos becomes both mirror and maze. Some friends remain, others are reduced to silhouettes of memory. Some streets still carry his laughter; others echo with the ghosts of choices he once made.

The narrative doesn’t shy away from the tension of duality — of being both local and global, rooted and restless. It’s the story of every dreamer who’s ever carried the weight of where they come from while trying to soar beyond it. The art of homecoming, after all, isn’t just about returning to a place. It’s about returning to a version of yourself you thought was lost to the noise of the world.

As the final pages turn, there’s no dramatic crescendo, no heroic standing ovation. Instead, there’s a quieter triumph — the kind that feels like exhaling after holding your breath for years. The kind of triumph that comes from realizing that success doesn’t sever you from home — it threads you back to it in deeper, more meaningful ways.

In the end, Made in Lagos is not a story of fame, but of belonging. It’s about the tension between past and present, about how we carry our homes within us — in the cadence of our speech, in the foods we crave, in the lullabies of our mothers, and in the quiet prayers whispered between stages.

So imagine, for a moment, that this album was indeed a book — stitched together with basslines instead of bookmarks, narrated in melodies instead of paragraphs. A soulful journey for the dreamers, the wanderers, the global citizens searching for the sacred in the familiar.

✨ What if your story was next?

Start crafting your legacy with us.