Afrobeats singer Adekunle Gold revealed in a recent interview that he wrote a track for Beyoncé’s The Lion King album while hoping she would reject it so he could keep it for his own discography. The revelation offers a rare glimpse into how Nigerian artists navigate opportunities that can both elevate and consume their creative output.
The track in question was part of the Lion King: The Gift album, the companion project Beyoncé curated for the 2019 live-action film. Gold was among several Nigerian and African artists invited to contribute. He submitted the song knowing that if Beyoncé selected it, the track would become hers, not his. He hoped it would be passed over. It was not.
This echoes the broader pattern of Nigerian artists contributing to global projects while managing the tension between exposure and ownership. The mechanism then was different, but the result was the same: a Nigerian artist weighing the value of a global co-sign against the loss of a personal record.
The winners: Beyoncé, who secured another track, and Adekunle Gold, who gained international visibility from the credit. The losers: Gold’s own catalogue, which lost a song, and his fans, who never heard his version.
Bottom Line: Gold wrote a song for Beyoncé and hoped she would say no. She said yes. The question is whether exposure is always worth the cost.