How Asake Has Hacked Live Performances

In modern times, only a few Afrobeats artists have the range required to deliver spectacular live performances. In terms of energetically arousing the audience and delivering an immersive experience, Burna Boy has often been praised as one of the finest live performers Afrobeats has ever produced. With his Outsiders band, Burna Boy owns and turns the stage to African music irrespective of wherever he finds himself or which audience he is performing to.

But beyond energy, there are many things that make live performances great. There is the ability to command a stage, connect with an audience, deliver songs with the same or even greater intensity than the recorded versions, and create moments that feel spontaneous and memorable. Great live performances also require musicianship, thoughtful arrangements, strong vocals, and an understanding of how to build and sustain a show from beginning to end. An artist can have all the energy in the world, but without these elements, a performance can still feel flat. Asake has almost everything required.

Using his two famous live performances, the Red Bull Symphonic and Spotify Live Show, we can explore how Asake has mastered the art of live performance and why audiences remain eager to attend his shows.

The first time I saw Asake perform live was in 2023 at the Flytime Fest in Lagos. He has only released Mr Money With the Vibe and Work of Art, but the momentum before releasing the two albums had sealed his name as one of the fastest-rising global stars from Nigeria. What made watching Asake memorable for me was how he performed his songs as though they were yet to be released. Arguably, everyone in the room knew every single song he was performing. Despite this, unlike his peers, he was lip-syncing. He was delivering each line after line, like a Fuji artist at a live show.

And this is what he has maintained and improved upon over the years. Asake performs his already released songs as new songs, which allows the audience to experience a familiar song in a different way. In his Red Bull Symphonic performance, Asake took the audience through his different evolutions across his albums. The performance (which will be addressed in the present tense because it now exists on YouTube) opens with Dull, the opening song from his debut album, and then switches to Why Love, a song off his latest album M$NEY, although it was released in 2025. He performs other songs from his debut album, Sunmomi, Joha, Nzaza, and, as one might be expecting him to perform songs from his sophomore album, Work of Art,  he performs Worldwide, off Lungu Boy, his third studio album. These song arrangements appear scattered but there is orderliness in the disorderliness. Asake always wants his audience to experience and understand that while he has evolved as a person and artist, his songs are still is, and he wants his audience to always experience them at live performances in a way different from how they are used.

Unlike the Red Bull Symphonic, the Spotify Live Show is specifically themed towards his latest album, M$NEY. Yet, there is a similarity between Asake in Red Bull Symphonic and Asake performing at Spotify Live Show. Apart from the orchestra arrangements (which are one of the best inclusions to his live performances), Asake has defined a signature live performance structure that will always make the songs people are familiar with sound different. He treats his live performances like a storyteller building plot layers; you will experience climax and denouement.

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