Reporting on youth culture, identity and digital life from Nigeria. Bylines in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Recording Academy, New Lines, Dazed, Index on Censorship, openDemocracy, Internazionale, The Native and Service95.
Inside the satirical "Made in Lagos" GTA roleplay community, where young Nigerians re-enact, process and laugh at the police harassment that haunts daily life five years after #EndSARS.
Clayrocksu and the small but defiant community of Nigerian rock musicians making space for themselves in a country whose mainstream has little patience for distortion.
On the gospel-leaning Afrobeats sub-genre soundtracking a country in economic freefall, where prayer and pop have become indistinguishable.
How a generation of Nigerians is using short-form video to organise, bear witness and push back against a state that keeps trying to mute them.
Criticism, artist interviews and industry coverage. Tyla, Ayra Starr, Bloody Civilian, BNXN, Blaqbonez, Simi.
Long-form reporting on the rituals, subcultures and daily strategies of young Nigerians, from underground rock to GTA roleplay.
Reporting on bodies, gender, sexual politics and the people the Nigerian state would rather keep quiet.
Tiléwa Kazeem is a journalist based in Lagos. He writes about youth culture, identity and digital life in Nigeria, with a particular interest in how the country's young people invent, adapt and survive online.
His work has appeared in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Recording Academy (GRAMMY.com), Dazed, New Lines Magazine, Index on Censorship, openDemocracy, Internazionale, The Native, Service95, Adventure, The Body, LOVE and Republic. He has profiled Asake, Ayra Starr, Bloody Civilian, BNXN, Simi, Blaqbonez and Kizz Daniel, and reported features on Nigeria's underground rock scene, the GTA-roleplay communities processing police abuse, the country's Twitch streamers and TikTok dissidents, the queer men entrapped through online kito schemes, and the Gen Z rappers reshaping Afrobeats from the inside.
He is open to commissions, particularly long-form features that take Nigerian and West African subjects seriously without flattening them.
For pitches, a short note with a sentence or two on the angle works better than a full draft. I respond to everything within a week.