Magicsticks in a camouflage jacket and cream cap, hands raised

Magicsticks Has Been Nigeria’s No. 1 Producer for 100 Weeks, Close to Half the Chart’s Life

Magicsticks is the No. 1 producer in Nigeria for a 100th week. TurnTable marked it beside his name when it posted this week’s Official Producer Top 100 this afternoon. The weeks aren’t consecutive, and they don’t have to be: going into this chart, TurnTable had him at 222 weeks on the producer list, which puts him first in close to half of them.

What holds him there right now is one album. Asake’s M$NEY came out on May 1, and OkayAfrica counted eight of its 13 tracks as Magicsticks productions; the album’s credits list him somewhere on every song except “Badman Gangsta.” On TurnTable’s last published Top 100, almost six months after release, “Gratitude” sat at No. 11 and “Forgiveness” at No. 16. “MCBH” was at No. 37, and “Oba” had come back in at No. 75.

“Gratitude” is the one that has lasted. Asake walks through the run from where he started to where he is now and thanks God for every step of it, while the drums pump in a way OkayAfrica’s Emmanuel Esomnofu heard as close to Fuji, with trumpets floating on top. On “Amen,” Magicsticks told the same writer, they used three choirs from three countries before the record felt finished.

None of this started in May. DJ Neptune’s “Nobody” put his name in front of the mainstream in 2020. Two years later he produced, mixed and mastered all twelve songs on Mr. Money With The Vibe in his home studio in Ajah, the room where he showed The NATIVE’s Michael Aromolaran a board of artists he wanted to work with. TurnTable named him its No. 1 producer of 2022 and of the first quarter of 2023, and Work of Art followed with “Amapiano” and “Remember.”

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The chart under him is moving, though. SB, who goes by Sbthaproducer on X, rose to No. 2 this week. Shallythechamp is third, Blaise Beatz, whose name sits beside his on “Wa” and “MCBH,” is fourth, and Larrylanes is fifth. Mally Mall, who produced five tracks on Seyi Vibez’s SWAGUU, is at No. 6, and Spynxdoor is back in the top ten at No. 10.

Magicsticks gave The NATIVE his own version of how this happened earlier this year. “If I had been leaning into what people were listening to, I may not have found my own sound,” he said. For 100 weeks now, Nigeria has been listening to what he found.