Davido tells Erigga family-money musicians can still grind, says he will leave music
Afrobeats star Davido has said he will soon leave music to concentrate on making billions, in a sharp reply to Nigerian rapper Erigga.
Erigga had posted on X a shout-out to musicians who did not come from family money and had to work for every dollar. Davido rejected the framing. He said artists who grew up with family wealth can still grind their way to the top. “No be we say make your pops no guard o. Shoutout to the ones that came from family money and still grind to the top,” he wrote.
He called Erigga’s message “useless motivation” and used a harsh personal insult, then added that he would leave “their music” to go and make his billions—and that the result would be boring. He closed by asking who, deep down, actually likes poverty.
The exchange is less about a single post than about two stories of success that Nigerians often set against each other. One story treats lack of inheritance as the only authentic grind. The other insists that a privileged starting point does not cancel effort, and that wealth remains the point of the work.
Davido’s threat to walk away from music turns the argument into a status claim: the catalogue is disposable if the next fortune is larger. Whether he means it is a separate question. What the thread records is a public refusal to accept poverty-to-fame as the only legitimate plot—and a reminder that in this industry, money talk travels as far as the songs.
