4. Expansion and Vision of Amapiano District

From Lagos to the World: The Future of Amapiano District

After building something that has become a staple in Lagos nightlife, the next question is, what’s next for Amapiano District?

In this part of our conversation, AY talks about growth, collaborations, and how the team is thinking beyond the parties. From taking the District to other cities to shaping a culture around the sound, this is where vision meets the music.

How has Amapiano District evolved since the first event?

AY: A lot, a lot has changed. The nature of the experience, a lot. The nature of the experience now, so we learned something really fast, or I learned something really fast, that if you’re going to create an event that people will love, you have to do it with love. You can’t create an event with love when you’re overwhelmed. You need people who think about how others will feel when they walk in, what they’ll think when they see themselves in the videos. How should the lights look? So a lot has changed.

Of course, we’ve gotten bigger. The team has gotten bigger too. So now we have specialists in every department from the sound, to production, to the marketing, to the newsletters we write. Everything that we curate is done with love. Even down to table packages.

What else has changed?

We’ve now become very strict on the sound. Initially, when we started, we could not give Nigerians a full two hours of Amapiano without bringing in Afrobeats.People would leave. so we started micro dosing Nigerians from three hours, then we tried four hours. Then in August this year, we did our very first six hours set of just Amapiano.

Also, Initially, when we started, we started as a free event, now its paid.

The most recent change that we’re about to encounter right now is we’ve used a lot of, this is about the sound. Because we wanted to watch our sound in Nigeria, we were very particular about using local talents. We use a lot of local people names and talent , names we can relate to.

We can now start bringing the best Amapiano acts into the country.

what else is expected to change?

We announced that we’ll explore international waters from next year. so an Amapaino district expansion, From next year, get ready, Ghana, Toronto, London are all part of our plans. It’s just kind of hard to fit in. But international waters very soon. So we’re exporting our own genre of our party.

And you’re asking me what has changed, but one thing that stuck, we started the Whistle craze in Lagos. That’s blowing a whistle in a party, It’s Amapiano district, though.

Nobody will tell you. So the idea was that we knew the sound was so very new. And we also knew that some people could dance, right? So if you could not dance, all we just wanted you to do was play a Whistle.

We told the hype man, “Blow that whistle.” He did- foo-foo, foo-foo, foo-foo– and soon everyone was doing it in the clubs. We started that. That’s not going to change, the only thing that’s changed about that is that we’ve started buying more whistles. We’re buying about 1,000 whistle s every other edition. So that’s credit to Amapiano district.

We’ve got that. So if you can’t dance, you can play a whistle . You’ll catch the groove. Amapiano district is the best for you.

What were the biggest challenges in growing the brand from its early days?

AY: I think in the early stages, you see, the biggest big challenge that we faced as Amapiano district, and we’re still facing right now, is that scale is the enemy. And I’ll explain what I mean. We keep getting bigger.

More is expected of us. I don’t think anywhere else has more venues in this ecosystem than Amapiano district. Why? We’re having to explore more. Every time is a bigger audience. And because we create our parties we love, we don’t want the situation of, oh, it’s too hot. Or, oh, I couldn’t move around. Or, oh, I couldn’t get good service because it was too packed. So, yeah.

We sell our drinks. It’s very impressive what we do. We sell our drinks tickets and food ourseleves. Like from start to finish, our event is properly curated.

So yeah, scale has been the biggest challenge.

Then the last other challenge is talent. There are not enough Amapiano core talent in Nigeria. And I think we’ve gone through a lot. So now we are having to start exploring other grounds like UK and like South Africa so that we can also make interesting and as fun as we can.

This is part 2 of the series of the Amapiano district history, click here for part 1, here for part 3

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