The air conditioning sputters to a halt. The TV clicks off. The steady hum of electricity gives way to silence, swallowed by the creeping Lagos heat and the lingering scent of lavender from a diffuser. Everyone in the room sighs.
We’re in the flat of 23-year-old musician M3lon in the suburb of Lekki, talking about Nigeria’s Afro-Adura, also known as trenches music (trench being a slang term for a ghetto or impoverished area). This is raw songcraft drawing together gospel, trap and the energetic Nigerian pop style of fuji, leaning heavily on Yoruba proverbs, idioms and faith – adura translates to prayer.
It feels apt that the electricity has just gone off. Struggle and survival walk hand-in-hand in this music, whose roots are as far back as the late 00s when the popular Afrobeats vocalist Oritse Femi pivoted to faith-centred songwriting with Mercies of the Lord. Afro-Adura cries out and clings desperately to God, and its strongly religious audience use it to weather the daily grind of economic collapse.
M3lon’s track Nepa, the haunting opener of his EP When Life Gives You Melons, captures this tension perfectly – it’s a reference to Nigeria’s electric utility company, and a mirror held up to the quiet powerlessness that millions of Nigerians, himself included, live with daily. “Growing up in thelungu” –a colloquial reference to the trenches – “of Ikorodu, there were times we’d go weeks without light,” he says. “Now I live in one of the poshest areas in Lagos, and there are nights I sleep in [total] darkness. This song is a tribute to that.”
In April 2024, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission approved a sharp tariff hike for electricity users in Band A – customers who receive at least 20 hours of power supply daily – raising rates from ₦68 (three pence) per kilowatt hour to a staggering ₦225 (11 pence). Though later revised slightly, the more than 200% spike sent shock waves through schools, businesses, and homes like M3lon’s. Like many Nigerians, he now lives in a reality where electricity is both inconsistent and unaffordable.
It’s why a lyric like “Nepa no tan na, but my people still turn up” resonates so powerfully. In Nigeria, turning up – ie partying – in the dark isn’t just resilience, it’s ritual, and this defiant joy in the face of systemic failure gives trenches music its inspirational heft.
In a country where over 130 million people live in multidimensional poverty, it’s not just electricity in crisis. Inflation is at its highest in decades: transport fares have nearly doubled since a fuel subsidy removal in May 2023 and bag of rice costs over ₦80,000 (£37) in some cities. 27-year-old Olanrewaju, an aspiring photographer, says Afro-Adura gives him hope when gigs are scarce. “I resonate deeply with the struggles and sombre sonic disposition of the flag bearers of the sound,” he says. “To relish sound in its purest form, you need to have lived it.”
“Electricity has gone up, even the petrol we rely on can’t power our generators at length any more,” says 25-year-old Adekunle, a fuel attendant. M3lon and I have come to refill his generator, and as Adekunle fills our keg, I notice his dangling earphones and ask what he is listening to. “Na Seyi o! No Seyi, no vibes,” he says, naming one of the genre’s most successful artists.
On his 2022 album Billion Dollar Baby, Seyi Vibez charts his escape from poverty. Songs such as Ife and Saro recall life in the trenches, his rise to affluence steeped in gratitude and grief. The pain isn’t just in the lyrics – it pulses in the percussion, the tremble in his voice, the minor keys. The music remembers the cost of the climb.
Bhadboi OML, another rising star, continues in this tradition, bridging struggle and salvation with unfussy candour. His new project Bhad Boi (Deluxe), he says, “is everything I’ve seen and felt. It’s like writing my life with beats.” While OML acknowledges that not all his music fits neatly into the trenches music box any more, the heart of the genre – truth-telling, grit, hope – remains in every bar. “People just want something real,” he adds. “When music speaks to what they’re going through, it hits different. Trenches music isn’t just about hurt but also about power, and turning pain into prayer and community.”
To Diamond Jimma, another prodigy of the genre, faith isn’t just part of Afro-Adura – it’s how he and his listeners make sense of life. “Faith becomes the light we hold on to when everything else is dark – and through Afro-Adura, we turn that light into sound,” he says.
Back at M3lon’s, we step out on to the balcony. The blackout has thickened the silence, broken only by the distant hum of a neighbouring estate’s generator. Below, Lekki stretches out like a glitching constellation – mansions lit up beside others swallowed by darkness. It’s symbolic of who gets to live with ease and who must endure, of who eats three times a day and who prays over empty pots. “This view is crazy,” M3lon says quietly. “Millions in light. Millions in darkness. Same city. Same country.”