In June, Nigerian comedian Isaac Olayiwola — known as Layi Wasabi on TikTok and Instagram, where he has more than 3 million combined followers — took his first trip to London. There, he had his beloved skit character “the Law” endure U.K. hijinks as if it was his first time as well. In one skit, the Law — a soft spoken but mischievous lawyer who can’t afford an office — bumps into a local, played by British-Congolese creator Benzo The1st. In sitcom fashion, the Law breaks the fourth wall to wave at an invisible but audible studio audience as Benzo watches on, confused and offended. In another, Olayiwola links with longtime internet comedy creator and British-Nigerian actor Tolu Ogunmefun to have the Law intervene in the relationship of a wannabe gangster and his fed up girlfriend. In another, he goes to therapy complaining that he can’t find clients in London (“Everything seems to work here in the U.K.”).
Olayiwola wasn’t in London just to film content — it was a reconnaissance mission, too, sitting for interviews and testing stand-up sets to see how his humor might translate. After breaking out as one of Lagos’ most popular creators, he’s set on becoming a top comic — not just in his region, but in the world.
He’s not the only Nigerian comedy creator to have captivated the regional market — of the roughly 218 million people in the country, 70 percent are under 30, and local brands are often eager to give social media stars ad deals. Some of these creators say they want to expand their audiences and profitability and are looking elsewhere to do it. They tell Rolling Stone they want to be the kind of megastars that they’ve grown up watching, like Eddie Murphy, Kevin Hart, and Ellen DeGeneres. But instead of assimilating to Western tastes, these creators are keeping their Nigerian communities and culture front of mind — and finding success.
“My latest hobby is making money,” jokes Eniola Olanrewaju, known as Korty EO on YouTube, where she has more than 300,000 subscribers. Her content varies — in her docuseries Flow With Korty, she spends time with Afrobeats artists like Rema and Ayra Starr, while on her show Love or Lies, she sets real singles up on blind dates. Her content is cinematic, emotional, and comedic, and looks into the lives of people she thinks are misunderstood, like when the famously reserved singer Tems opened up to her about having never been in love. “Love is when you see the person — the person’s yansh [Pidgin for buttocks] is open and you’re like ‘I still want it,’” Tems said earnestly. Korty thinks that kind of work transcends place.
“I can do that across the globe and it’ll connect with every single person,” Korty says. “But my roots still remain Nigerian.” Part of her motivation to widen her reach is to build more pathways for Nigerian creatives to tell stories of their communities. “We’re very industrious and ambitious people, but there’s also a lot of poverty here,” she says. “That’s the importance of collaborations with other people on other continents — it just brings more eyes to the beauty happening [here].”
Olufemi Oguntamu is working to build pathways, too. Oguntamu — who goes by Penzaar, a nickname he inherited from his father — was actually a proto-influencer himself, able to rally his entire college campus with a text back in the days of BlackBerry Messenger. He went on to build an agency that has helped about 20 African creators navigate brand deals, cultivate engagement, and structure their content, he says. He’s observed that fashion, tech, and food videos are doing well in Nigeria, but none as well as comedy. While people may just bookmark a great get-ready-with-me or recipe demo, if something makes them laugh, they share it. “With comedy, you tend to become popular faster,” says Oguntamu.
Isaac Olayiwola is one of Oguntamu’s clients. As Layi Wasabi, with his lanky frame and broad smile, Olayiwola has one of the most recognizable faces on the young Nigerian internet. “Layi is extremely ingenious,” says Ibukun Filani, who earned his Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Ibadan studying African comedy. In Pan-African folktales, tricksters have always been an important archetype, Filani explains. They reflecthope and resourcefulness in harsh conditions. Olayiwola has played into that. “What sells Layi is him reflecting what Nigerian life actually is,” says Filani “[His] lawyer is poorly paid, and goes from court to court to get people to bill so [he] can make some money.” Another one of Olayiwola’s characters, Mr. Richard, goes around town promoting a get-rich-quick scheme on WhatsApp with slick words and finesse.
Taaooma, née Maryam Apaokagi, another popular online comic, parodies Nigerian gender roles and social norms while playing every member of a raucous family. Filani compares Apaokagi’s work to Tyler Perry’s. “You might just find the Madea image in Taaooma in some of her skits where she’s the mother. Then, she also represents the struggles of a girl growing up under [that mother’s] strict supervision, who doesn’t have [freedom].” Apaokagi wants to make movies, she says, and “definitely” wants a Western audience. She believes she can stay true to herself to get it. “There’s something that they say — if you want to win the whole world, at least win your community first,” she recalls. “When you stretch your hands out to other places, your community’s going to support you. So, that’s what I’ve tried to do.”
Queens of the Stone Age have canceled the remainder of their 2024 tour dates — including a string of North American shows and festival gigs scheduled for the fall — as Josh Homme continues his recovery from an unspecified surgery he underwent in July.
“QOTSA regret to announce the cancellation and/or postponement of all remaining 2024 shows. Josh has been given no choice but to prioritize his health and to receive essential medical care through the remainder of the year,” the band wrote on social media.
The group was scheduled to perform eight North American shows this autumn, starting with a two-night stand at Boston’s MGM Music Hall on September 27 and 28. All five of the band’s standalone shows — including concerts in Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin — will all be pushed to to-be-announced dates in 2025, while QOTSA had to cancel their festival appearances at Bridgeport’s Soundside, Memphis’ Mempho, and Mexico City’s Corona Capital.
In July, Queens of the Stone Age abruptly canceled their European tour after Homme had to return stateside “immediately for emergency surgery,” the band said in a statement. “Due to continued medical care, it is under doctors’ orders that Josh Homme remain in their care in the United States.”
At that time, QOTSA’s North American shows remained on the schedule before they were ultimately nixed on Friday. “Josh and the QOTSA family are so thankful for your support and the time we were able to spend together over the last year. Hope to see you all again in 2025,” the band added Friday.
The group were touring in support of their latest album, In Times New Roman …, which came out in 2023, the same year that Homme revealed that he’d previously undergone surgery to remove cancer.
After Sabrina Carpenter’s summer takeover with “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” the anticipation for Short n’ Sweet was at an all-time high. On her sixth album, the pop singer keeps the surprises coming as she delivers a masterclass in clever songwriting and hops between R&B and folk-pop with ease. Carpenter writes about the frustration of modern-day romance, all the while cementing herself as a pop classic. Here’s everything we gathered from the new project.
Carpenter gave us a glimpse of her humor on singles “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” — she’s working late because she’s a singer; ceiling fans are a pretty great invention! But no one could have guessed how downright hilarious she is on Short n’ Sweet, delivering sugary quips like “The Lord forgot my gay awakenin’” (“Slim Pickins”) and “How’s the weather in your mother’s basement?” (“Needless to Say”). She’s also adorably nerdy, fretting about grammar (“This boy doesn’t even know/The difference between ‘there,’ ‘their’ and ‘they are!’”) and getting Shakespearian (“Where art thou? Why not uponeth me?”). On “Juno,” she even takes a subject as serious as pregnancy and twists it into a charming pop culture reference for the ages: “If you love me right, then who knows?/I might let you make me Juno.” It’s official: Do not underestimate Ms. Carpenter’s pen. — A.M.
On her sixth album, Carpenter somehow finds herself in the middle of yet another love triangle. She’s no stranger to this, having penned “Skin” and “Obsessed” in response to the teen saga that Olivia Rodrigo sang about on Sour. But on Short ‘n Sweet, the songs are more explicit, the stars are bigger, and the stakes are even higher. The flighty dude who “found God at [his] ex’s house” on “Sharpest Tool” is presumably Shawn Mendes, and the ex to who Carpenter directs the tongue-in-cheek “Taste” at appears to be Camila Cabello. She may be writing about A-List singers, but Carpenter remains fearless.“I write songs about exactly how I feel, so I guess I can’t be so surprised that people are interested in who and what those songs are about,” she told Rolling Stone in May. “That’s something that comes with the territory.” — M.G.
Carpenter has always been a Tay-daughter (a musical daughter of Taylor Swift), but she seems to be taking notes from other country pop stars and legends like Kacey Musgraves and Dolly Parton. The silly “Slim Pickins” veers into country territory the most; her vocal trills channel both Musgraves and Parton with incredible precision. “The little vocal runs she does are so bizarre and unique — they’re doing this really odd, classic, almost yodel-y country thing,” producer Jack Antonoff told Rolling Stone earlier this year. Sonically, Short ‘n Sweet finds Carpenter leaning into plucky acoustic guitars throughout the record. In two years time, she just might pivot into full twang.— M.G.
It wasn’t too long ago that boygenius put out a song about Leonard Cohen, who was casually “at a Buddhist monastery writing horny poetry.” Carpenter takes a note from the boys on “Dumb & Poetic,” a two-minute acoustic ballad where she bids farewell to a man of wellness, the awful kind who steals quotes from self-help books. She delivers some great burns here — “Save all your breath for your floor meditation,” “I promise the mushrooms aren’t changing your life” — but nothing is more biting than a reference to the late songwriter who had a way with the ladies. “Try to come off like you’re soft and well-spoken/Jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen,” she sings — and that’s just the first verse. Cohen died eight years ago, and one can only imagine his reaction to being pop’s hottest muse. — A.M.
For more basic pop artists, “Eighties retro” often means throwing some New Wave synths on your song and calling it a day. But when it comes to retro-pop recombinations, Sabrina Carpenter has a unique light touch and a scholar’s attention to detail. Short ‘n Sweet kicks off with the excellent single “Taste,” a mega-catchy kiss-off to an ex’s new partner with a melody that lovingly and movingly calls back to Kim Carnes’ classic “Bette Davis Eyes,” which spent nine weeks at the top of the charts in 1981 and won a Grammy for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. Carpenter totally makes that vintage reference her own, just as she did on her previous summer smashes “Please Please Please” and “Espresso.” — J.D.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his 2024 presidential campaign, and according to a court filing in Pennsylvania on Friday will throw his weight behind former President Donald Trump.
Multiple news outlets reported on Wednesday that independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was planning to drop out of the race and endorse Trump. He clarified at an event in Arizona on Friday that he is not terminating his campaign, only suspending it, and that his name will remain on the ballot in non-battleground states. He said that if enough people still vote for him and Trump and Kamala Harris tie in the Electoral College, he could still wind up in the White House.
“In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election,” Kennedy claimed, citing a vast Democratic conspiracy with the media to stifle his ability to communicate his vision for America to the public. While RFK Jr. blames the “system” from keeping him out of the White House, it could also be due to atrulybizarre, scandal-laden campaign in which he push a host of conspiracy theories, brushed off allegations of sexual assault, and admitted to dumping a dead bear in Central Park.
Kennedy’s siblings bashed his decision to endorse Trump in a statement on Friday. “We believe in Harris and Walz,” they wrote. “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
Trump will speak in Arizona later on Friday, and has teased a special guest.
Trump said Tuesday that he would “certainly” consider Kennedy for a role in his administration. “He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a very long time,” Trump told CNN.
Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., told conservative radio host Glenn Beck that it would be a good idea to have Kennedy on board. “I loved the idea, love the idea of giving him some sort of role in some sort of major three-letter entity or whatever it may be and let him blow it up,” he said.
Kennedy had a colorful run, from admitting to leaving a dead bear cub in Central Park to saying doctors found a dead, parasitic worm in his brain. On a more serious note, he was accused of sexual assault, to which he responded: “I’m not a church boy… I had a very, very rambunctious youth.”
The Washington Post previously reported that Kennedy had spoken to Trump about taking a job in his administration working on health and medical issues. Kennedy is known for being a vaccine conspiracy theoirst.
“All I will say to you is I am willing to talk to anybody from either political party who wants to talk about children’s health and how to end the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy told the Post.
Kennedy apparently begged both of his opponents for a job. According to the Post, he tried to schedule a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris to talk about working for her as well.
Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, denied this. She said they were “definitely not in talks with Harris.” She also said they “have never brought up a cabinet position with Harris.” Then, she said: “we have offered to talk to everybody.”
The Kennedy campaign had been weighing their options; Shanahan said recently that the campaign was considering whether they should drop out or “join forces” with former President Donald Trump.
She said on the Impact Theory podcast that they could “walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and you know, we walk away from that and explain to our base why we’re making this decision,” adding: “Not an easy decision.”
In July, the campaign spent more than it raised, and nearly half of the money that it raised came from Shanahan. Kennedy’s campaign disclosed refunding $925,000 to Shanahan.
One little funny/bizarre/horrifying thing about the internet is the way it offers up everything and, in doing so, makes it possible to strip anything of its history. But to paraphrase Kamala Harris, you didn’t just fall out of the coconut tree. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you” — wise words worth heeding, especially for all the Trump voters and conservatives making TikToks with the Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice.”
Over the past month or so, “Not Ready to Make Nice” has become an unexpected MAGA anthem of sorts, meant to express a certain rage at liberals supposedly telling conservatives what to do all the time (the past few Supreme Court terms notwithstanding, apparently). Young women especially have taken the song as a way to push back against the possibility of Harris becoming the first female president.
“Using this song because this is exactly how the liberal party is treating conservatives,” one poster wrote. Another caption read, “Female rage is seeing women say they’re voting for Kamala because ‘she’s a woman and for my daughter’s future.’ But what about the women who’s [sic] lives and future were taken by illegal immigrants because of Kamala’s failure to be the Border Czar?” (This is a frequent talking point in many of the “Not Ready to Make Nice” TikToks.)
It is true that “Not Ready to Make Nice” is one of popular music’s great distillations of female rage. Though, as many, many, many have pointed out, the Chicks famously wrote “Not Ready to Make Nice” after speaking out against George W. Bush and the Iraq War. It was a valiant gesture for which they were systematically blackballed (dare we say canceled) by the country music world while receiving an onslaught of vitriol from the far-right.
The Chicks —who just performed at the Democratic National Convention this week — may have responded to the trend, sharing a clip of the “Not Ready to Make Nice” video on TikTok with the not-so-subtle caption, “Bless her heart.” A rep for the band did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Now, the thing about art is that no matter an artist’s intentions, once their work is out in the world, it’s no longer fully theirs. People can do what they want with it. One MAGA-loving country artist on TikTok, Austin Forman, has spent the past couple of days doing just that, slurping liberal tears as he explains why, actually, it’s totally fine for conservatives to relate to the song’s lyrics despite the reason they were written. (He even did his own acoustic cover of the tune, ostensibly as an effort to offer conservative posters a version they can use without putting money in the Chicks’ pocket, though that’s not exactly how publishing royalties work.)
And, you know what? Sure. Conservatives can use the song however they want — but that doesn’t stop it from being funny as hell. The dissonance is as glaringly goofy as Paul Ryan loving Rage Against the Machine, Ronald Reagan trying to co-opt “Born in the U.S.A,” or even the decisively non-political trend of TikTokers using a freaking Charlie Manson demo to capture a cozy autumn vibe. If the righteous words and voice of Natalie Maines speak to conservatives, it’s a testament to her artistry — and maybe cause for them to consider why their own grievances haven’t produced much art anywhere near as good.
