As the artists of the New Age – the so-called ‘SoundCloud artists’ – continue to gain more and more attention, the producers who help to mold their Afro-fusion sound are being left out of a lot of the conversations.

Having learnt from the mistakes of producers who came before them, most of the beat makers of the New Age are savvy enough to not only include tags on the songs they produce, but to also get credited in the song’s metadata or even the song’s title so that anytime it is downloaded or streamed, their name is visible.

However, getting credited for producing a song is one thing, being recognised by the larger music community as a notable producer is another. New Age producer Higo recently voiced his frustration, and that of his his colleagues, with being perennially overlooked by music publications when cataloging the music that they make together.

In a series of posts, he also voltroned for audio engineers and everyone involved in the music delivery value chain, decrying how much their efforts are being under-reported.

Higo is part of the 80 Sound, a production team alongside producers like DOZ, Mav, Sosa and Tobay. He has worked with a number of New Age artists but his most notable work is with rave of the moment Odunsi on his latest singles “Desire” and Situationships”. “Desire” has garnered an impressive 20k+ plays on SoundCloud, while “Situationships” was listed as one of the top 5 most viral tracks in the US just 2 weeks after its release.

Listen to both songs below:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/308504945″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/298347716″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Back to the tweet, Higo does have a point, but everyone also has a role to play – producers have the duty to distinguish themselves by being consistent and making bold moves in order to make overlooking their contribution to the culture unthinkable, BankyOnDBeatz’ brilliant EP Fuego Senoras is one example. And then publications – FilterFree included – have to spotlight producers like Higo who are the musical anchor points when reporting on artists who are the faces and voices of their young movement.

So many of these young producers deserve kudos – the production quality on a number of SoundCloud projects like Odunsi’s Time of Our Lives and Ozzy B’s Suzie’s Funeral is comparable with what you’d hear on a more mainstream release with bigger budgets. Besides, the sonic cohesion of those projects and the musical individuality of the artists that made them are some of the major things that have drawn new fans and listeners to SoundCloud artists – elements that are nigh on impossible to achieve without the guiding hand of a music producer.

That said, producers not being acknowledged  for their work isn’t a new phenomenon in Nigerian music. The truth is that, unless something drastic happens in our music space, your favorite Nigerian producer will become a singer eventually. Higo himself doubles as a singer, listen to his latest single “Good Life” an aspirational song that samples “Water No Get Enemy”, a Fela Kuti record that is more than twice his age. Love it.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/294632268″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Get familiar with Higo, if you haven’t already, something tells me we’ll be either hearing his voice or listening to his beats a lot more often going forward – not to mention reading his frank thoughts about our music on social media.