The recent bitter spat between hip-hop artists Iggy Azalea and Azealia Banks over alleged identity theft reveals the commodification, capitalization and appropriation of Black identity, within a Western culture of violent and obfuscated race relations.

Countering Wole Soyinka’s fierce criticism of BBC documentary ‘Welcome to Lagos’, Imruh Bakari, offers a different reading of the three-part series about the lives of marginalised slum-dwellers: Where Soyinka sees people depicted as ‘noble savages’, Bakari is impressed by portraits of ‘self-assured and articulate’ individuals with a sense of social agency that prevents them from being cast as victims.