Asake placed four works across eight separate category placements. That spread covers Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Global Music Album, Best African Music Performance, and Best Dance Pop Recording, making him one of the most widely submitted Nigerian artists in this cycle.
His album M$NEY is listed for two categories: Album of the Year and Best Global Music Album. No Nigerian artist has won Album of the Year at the Grammys, which makes that particular placement the most watched of Asake’s six bids this season. The album was released in 2024 under YBNL Nation and Giran Republik and debuted to significant commercial attention across streaming platforms in both Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
Gratitude, a solo record, is entered for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best African Music Performance. Three placements from a single song is an uncommon move and signals a calculated effort by his label, Giran Republik, to maximize exposure across the Recording Academy’s voting membership. The strategy reflects an approach similar to the one used by labels managing crossover artists who straddle both genre-specific and general-field categories simultaneously.
Jogodo, his collaboration with Wizkid, is submitted for Best African Music Performance. Worship, the record he made with French producer DJ Snake, goes into Best Dance Pop Recording, a category that sits well outside Asake’s usual genre territory.
Seun Kuti, the son of Afrobeat originator Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, submitted two songs: Na Dem and Problems, both for Best African Music Performance. A win in that category would be his first Grammy, after his 2019 nomination for the album Black Times with his band Egypt 80, which competed in the Best World Music Album category and did not win.
Neither set of submissions guarantees a nomination. The Recording Academy’s first-round voting opens October 12 and closes October 22. That ten-day window is when voting members decide which entries make the final nominees list, announced November 16, 2026.
The ceremony itself is scheduled for February 7, 2027, at a Los Angeles venue. Final voting runs from December 10 to January 7, 2027, after the nominees are confirmed.
For Asake, this is the third consecutive Grammy cycle in which his work has been submitted. He received his first nomination in 2024 for Amapiano, the collaboration with Olamide, in Best African Music Performance. A second nomination came in 2025 for MMS, featuring Wizkid, in the same category. He has not won either time.
The pattern across both nominations is notable. Asake has twice reached the shortlist through collaborations rather than solo work. Gratitude, a solo submission, now sits in three categories, including the general-field Record of the Year, which no African artist has won.
Seun’s submission of two tracks in the same category is a different kind of bet. Entering Na Dem and Problems in Best African Music Performance doubles his chances of landing on the nominees list, though both entries would ultimately compete against each other if both received enough first-round votes to qualify. Egypt 80, the band Seun has led since his father’s death in 1997, has maintained an active recording and touring schedule, giving his submissions a profile that extends beyond Nigeria into jazz and world music audiences in Europe and North America.
The Best African Music Performance category was introduced at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Since then, it has become the primary entry point for Nigerian artists into Grammy competition, drawing submissions from across the Afrobeats and Afrobeat spectrum each cycle.
Eight category placements for Asake across four works means voting members will encounter his name repeatedly during first-round balloting. Whether that breadth of placement converts to actual nominations will be known when the Recording Academy publishes its list on November 16.
Both artists enter this cycle without a Grammy win between them. Asake has two nominations. Seun has one. The 2027 ceremony offers each of them another chance to change that record.
