After several highly coveted nights in Lagos, I was hunting for the right words to sum it all up. Then, as I left for my flight back to Ghana, I passed a plain billboard that said it for me: “YourSpotify knows you best.”
Nobody announced the shows. There was no ticketing link. No countdowns. Yet by the time the gold-drenched lights came up at Livespot, the Lagos venue for Surround Sound, the room was already brimming with anticipation. It was a space so intimate you could hear Tems and Runtown breathe. Guests, drinks in hand, mingled under the glow.
Spotify’s carefully curated guest list gave a select few the rare chance to stand an arm’s
length from their favourite stars. Everyone else could only scroll in disbelief, wondering how they missed it. Every detail felt deliberate, almost to a fault. Tems’ night wore gold and Runtown’s, as we would find out, ran dim-red.
The two-night run opened with Tems, currently the most-streamed female African artist and a two-time Grammy winner in a career not yet a decade old. Six years ago, she released her debut EP, For Broken Ears, a 2020 pandemic-era project that reset how African music will be perceived and measured forever. The 20-minute, 42-second body of work has since racked up nearly a billion streams on Spotify alone.
When Tems jumped ‘In The Round ’ (yes, even the stage had a nickname) with the upbeat
Crazy Tings playing in the background, the hyped audience knew what kind of night it was
going to be. No holds barred. If you made it this far with Tems, jamming was not an option.
A few minutes into her set, when the energy, high right from the start, wouldn’t wane, she
paused with a wry smile. “I was confused; I thought they said I didn’t have fans in Nigeria,”
she noted, quietly dismantling a narrative that never held up at home.
For all its global reach, ‘For Broken Ears’ was proudly crafted in Lagos. Just like all Tems’
music, it carries a DNA that Lagosians claim as their own. Among those invited by Spotify
was Lisa Asowata, a university student, budding model and vlogger based in Lagos, who
was seeing Tems live for the first time. “It was so intimate,” she said. “I could feel her
personality and her humility.”
Beyond Lisa’s Surround Sound experience, her story is the one Spotify wants to amplify, and
it’s easy to see why. Her love for Tems began with “Try Me” in 2019. She remembers
watching the video and connecting with her instantly beyond the sound. Over the next five
years, Lisa would share a bond with Tems that soundtracks all facets of her life.
“Tems’ music definitely makes me feel confident and bold,” she said. “It reminds me that I
shouldn’t be sorry for wanting a healthy kind of love, but at the same time it makes me
realise that without God I’m nothing, and there’s so much out there to see and experience.
So it’s a lot.”
Then came Runtown, on Surround Sound Day 2, whose night ran on the same philosophy
that artist-fan intimacy matters. For a long stretch, the man behind “Mad Over You”, a song
that became a case study for Afrobeats’ global dominance, has been hard to find. Once a
fixture on every playlist, party and wedding reception in the country, he drifted from the
centre of the conversation, and for many fans, seeing him live became something they only
hoped would be possible. Surround Sound gave them a way back to him.
Fans who had stayed with his catalogue through the quiet years, replaying old hits and
defending his legacy on social media, finally got to sing Runtown’s songs back to him.
In the crowd, Ghanaian influencer Gisela stood next to her colleague from Kenya, Temina,
dancing beside another colleague from the UK, Johnson, with South African journalist
Kaunda and Nigerian content creator Abbie playing rearguard, swarmed by hundreds of
fans. They all couldn’t stop screaming at the top of their lungs when Runtown finally cued in
Mad Over You. For a moment, a room of guests from different countries sounded like one
very loud hometown.
Spotify has been vocal about wanting to connect artists and fans more closely, and Surround
Sound is that ambition made physical with an invitation and programming format shaped
predominantly by listening behaviour.
It has been six years since Tems’ For Broken Ears, and ten years since Runtown’s Mad
Over You dropped. Data can tell a platform who is still listening long after the spotlight
moves on. Over these two nights, Spotify acted on that, putting Runtown and Tems in front
of the people who never stopped listening and allowing the music to make them feel special.
Your Spotify knows you best, the billboard said. For two nights in Lagos, it very nearly did
with the Surround Sound experience.
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