Popcorn + Pyres– Wizkid: LONG LIVE LAGOS

 Popcorn: The Surface Pleasures

There’s something undeniably aspirational about spending 83 minutes in the presence of Nigerian superstar Wizkid. For fans, LONG LIVE LAGOS offers rare access to the artist’s behind-the-scenes journey—from Surulere to the global stage, culminating in a high-stakes concert at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

Director Karam Gill opens with a frank Femi Anikulapo-Kuti interview. That combined with the high-gloss treatment of HBO’s Bill Simmons Music Box series, this installment promises a bridge between stardom and soul, glamour and grassroots, external design and self-actualization.

And yet, that bridge proves to be more suggested than crossed.

 Pyres: What It Does Well

There are moments of magic. Wizkid’s quiet charisma and the symbolic gravity of his UK stadium debut carry emotional as well as sociopolitical weight—especially when framed as a full-circle journey from Lagos to the world. To garner the attention of the masses is a Pheme-esque feat for any boy, but particularly one from “the hood,” often positioned as a place, and sense of being, to escape.

The visual composition is sleek. The pacing is tight. There’s even an emotionally anchoring arc about a featured fan—another “Starboy” who works with his hands and follows, by the grace of that powerful concoction of hope and persistence, the music to Tottenham. His inclusion suggests that artistry can propel ordinary lives into impassioned acts.

The presence of insightful women like manager and mother of his children, Jada Pollock, who gives both professional and personal context to the kind of man and musician Wizkid strives to be is a real thunderclap for the film. With expert cultural threading by radio host, Julie Adenuga, its lightning strike.

And in certain frames—like the flash of a tattoo honoring Fela Kuti across Wizkid’s hand—we’re invited to consider a legacy bigger than music. A gesture toward revolution. A whisper of music as entertainment— or as weapon.

🧱 What It Could Have Been

With Femi Kuti’s opening invocation of the decolonized Afrikan imaginary, we brace ourselves for a plan, a pavement by which to travel out of western rule and into our ancestors’ wildest dreams: liberation.

But that concrete is never poured.

Then with Wizkid proclaiming his sons as kings, the setup suggests this will be more than a concert doc. That it will probe the role of the artist in shaping consciousness, identity, hope. That it will place the displaced—the people, the tradition, the healing potential of mighty music. That it will ask:

• What does it mean for a boy from Lagos to ascend the London stage? Is this just a stopover or truly some holy grail?

• What is his responsibility to the craft and to the people both at home and throughout the diaspora?

• And who or what, as if Atlas, does he carry with him?

But that depth is never quite mined. It’s pointed at, like by a taunting child, but never excavated. Never demonstrated. As if revolution is but rumor. That taunting child needs a reminder: it is show and tell.

We’re told the moment Wizkid learns of his mother’s emergency surgery just before the biggest performance of his life. We’re told about the pressure to show up for fans. We’re given flashes of Fela on stage and asked to imagine a tether between that historic work and this of Starboy.

But the complexities of the choice between family and stage are left unexplored. The blunt-smoke-fogged contemplations about what an artist-father-boyfriend-celebrity in ascent is meant to do deserve more room to breathe.

In the spirit of Fela, this could have been an interrogation—of Black royalty equaling no more than celebrity, of how Fela’s work might be continued rather than recycled, of whether home is traded for recognition, and Lagos escaped for London.

Creative director Karen Binns is the death nail in LONG LIVE LAGOS’ potential as a revolutionary opus. The West clearly sets the standard for her vision. Instead of shedding western authoring—as Femi Kuti encourages when he laments dreaming in European languages, when he defines colonization as the Afrikan way of being replaced by the colonizer’s way of being—she leans into it. As if her ideas are so cool. Western white men are her North Star as she costumes Starboy as “the Black Brando” or “the Black James Dean.”

📼 The Bigger Picture

Compared to other Music Box entries—like Jagged, which explores Alanis Morissette’s heights with nostalgic detail, firsthand insight, and a “where-are-they-now” vibe—LONG LIVE LAGOS feels more like a prostration to the moment than an evolving artist’s early memoir.

And truthfully, there was a more compelling and sensible angle here:

Wizkid as conjurer. The wizard of music. Who began with an audience of one—his mother—and grew that audience, alongside his creative powers, to millions worldwide.

A doc about Lagos’ first global megastar could have been hearty breadcrumbs, but Gill opts for empty promises.

 Popcorn + Pyres: The Judgment

Wizkid: LONG LIVE LAGOS has the bones of something profound. But the body—flesh and blood—chooses celebration over contemplation. It’s a worthy tribute to a beloved star. But as a revolutionary tale, it is little more than hope colonized.