Here is a deep dive into the project that bridged the gap between Lagos and the world. To understand Sounds from the Other Side , one must look at 2016. Wizkid was featured on Drake’s global smash hit “One Dance.” That song spent ten weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, exposing Wizkid’s signature cadence to millions of listeners who had never heard Afrobeats before.

When Nigerian superstar Wizkid (Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun) released Sounds from the Other Side in July 2017, it was more than just a six-track EP; it was a strategic manifesto. At the time, Wizkid was already a titan in Afrobeats, having dominated the Nigerian charts for nearly a decade. However, this project represented his most direct, focused artillery shot at the American and global mainstream market.

For new listeners, the EP serves as the perfect entry point into Wizkid’s discography: short enough to digest in one commute, but rich enough to demonstrate why he remains one of the most influential African artists of the 21st century.

However, the project was not without its critics. Some hardcore Afrobeats purists felt the EP was too short and too reliant on American features, arguing that Wizkid had watered down his sound to court Western radio. But this misses the point entirely.

The EP directly paved the way for his 2020 masterpiece, Made in Lagos (which featured the record-breaking hit “Essence”). Without the bridge-building of Sounds from the Other Side , the global embrace of “Essence” would not have happened as smoothly. Sounds from the Other Side is best viewed as a bridge—a short, efficient, and beautifully produced connector between two musical worlds. It represents Wizkid’s realization that to conquer the “other side,” he didn't need to erase his identity; he just needed to translate it.