Adekunle Gold - Orente

What this video is

Released on 1 July 2015 as the second single from Adekunle Gold's debut album Gold (YBNL Nation, 2016), 'Orente' arrived during the height of the mid-2010s Afrobeats explosion, when Nigerian artists were rapidly gaining continental and international audiences. The song and its video are notable for their deliberate cultural specificity: rather than mimicking Lagos club aesthetics or pan-African pop production…

Why it matters

'Orente' is a landmark of Nigerian urban highlife's 2015 renaissance, produced by Oscar Heman-Ackah with strings by guitarist Fiokee, blending live instrumentation with contemporary Afrobeats production. Its music video's location-based Yoruba cultural aesthetic helped define a culturally grounded…

The director

Emeka Ossai, known professionally as Mex, is a Nigerian music video director, cinematographer, graphic animator, and VFX artist based in Lagos. Born in Lagos and educated at Ladoke Akintola University with a degree in Computer Science, he developed an…