The 14th Headies awards show which took place on the 21st of February, 2021 is one of the most sought after and most prestigious awards in the Nigerian music industry and the 14th rendition of the event was very well planned and organized with COVID-19 guidelines in place with just the nominees being attendees to the event. featuring nominees held at Eko Hotels and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, the red carpet began at 5pm while the main event belatedly commenced around 9:50 pm.
The year-in-review for nominations and awards is between July 2019 and September 2020. It will be the 14th edition of an award heralded by Ayo Animashaun and his company, “HipHop World”. Fireboy led the way to being the major highlight of the night with five wins including Album of The Year for his sophomore album “Apollo” while Wizkid won two awards including Artist of The Year.
Fireboy came out top in the Best RnB album, Best Pop album, Best RnB single, Headies Revelation and of course Album of the year. Looking back now on the journey of Fireboy in the music industry we can really appreciate and commend how far and how much the young star has achieved in the space of just 2 years. We can all agree that his nominations and plaque wins are well deserved and reflect how ridiculously talented he is, just yesterday Olamide was unveiling a new artiste featuring him on his YBNL Mafia album and then came his mega hit single “Jealous”, from that moment up until this point he’s been constantly hitting new peaks and getting milestone achievements- LTG and Apollo are top 5 on Audiomack’s most listened albums in the Afrobeats category apart from tens of millions of streams on other platforms, 5 wins on the night and I can say that was a night to remember for him although we could argue in favour of him being the most supposed winner of the Artiste of the year category but the show organizers had a different perspective, but this is the first of many for him.
One of the awards category tied with the most controversy over the years “Next Rated” was bagged by no other person but Omah Lay and I can say there’s no argument there as Omah is worth his weight in melodies and hit songs, the category was quite tight with Bella Shmurda, Tems and Oxlade being very strong contenders also but Omah Lay came out on top, we have to really commend him for his effort, hardwork and undeniable talent, back in January of 2020 Omah Lay was just an upcoming artiste with a hit single “You”, one year later he has released 2 EPs that have topped the charts for a very long span of time with “Godly” still being the number 1 song in the country, having artistes like Burna Boy, Olamide, Wizkid & Davido all dropping projects in a single year and a new breakout artiste still manages to stay top on the charts and upsetting the pecking order- Omah Lay really deserved that one and we hope to see more of him in the coming future and hope he gives us that full studio album very soon.
Another highlight and major thing we noticed from the awards was that Burna Boy didn’t top a single category despite being nominated in 7 categories and also still in line for a Grammy award in the coming weeks for his “Twice as Tall” album. Considering how much milestones he has achieved from his last 2 albums not getting a single award might be more than meets the eye but that’s a question to be answered by the organizers.
Wizkid did bag home two awards for Artiste of the year and Headies Viewer’s chouce awards, two more awards to add to the bulk of his plaques cabinet and good thing he was physically available to receive the award and thanked his fans for unending support and also his plans to make afrobeats go even bigger on the international scene.
These are some of the major highlights from the 14th Headies awards and we look forward to the next year for the next edition of the event and anticipate many many more wins for the Afrobeats Music industry in the forseeable future.