“All Eyes On Me” is another song about the upbringing of the South African rapper, AKA’s, thriving music career. Here, he partners with other African artists—Burna Boy, JR, and Da L.E.S—in an upbeat dance song. The video shows the four men hosting a pool party, flashing their fancy lives and lots of money, girls twerking all around them.
While AKA is a more mainstream artists, well known throughout America, you can still see a heavy sense of African pride in his music and videos. In this song, particularly, African pride is shown through the chorus of the song when Burna Boy sings, “it’s a robbery…”, telling his audience how they [meaning African rappers] are stealing the rap game from all other rappers. This song seems particularly like a jab at American rappers due to the fact that, in the pre-hook, the artist says “Niggas ain’t running anymore now”. Because the N-word is not commonly used in African language, and was picked up by American influence, this leads one to think that the “niggas” Burna Boy refers to are American rappers—people who use the word more fluidly.
It is very ironic the multiple jabs AKA, as well as these other African artists, make about American artists, especially because of how much they tend to use American culture. Just like in American rap videos, a lot of African rap videos tend to be at parties, where men flash they’re nice clothes, jewelry, and tons of money with a bunch of naked women by their side. Because African rap is used as more of the way to bring about change politically, economically, and culturally, I do not personally see how his music could be identified as African rap. It seems like more unknown artist tend to rap about what is important, while this one in particular only raps about who he is and how much better he is than everyone else. With his type of influence, it maybe best to rap more about some of Africa’s issues and what they may need, while bringing attention to it through his music. His music seems more like “good time music”, which American rappers tend to lead towards more.