"Where are the music investors?" 😂 "Afrobeats have dwindled internationally." 😂 "We need Yahoo boys back in music.." 😂 Our cultural recession is finally undeniable, and you all have started crying. But it's too late, my dear. The world moved on from your small-minded narcissism 2 years ago. In 2023, after clocking our bleak tea leaves, I began to scream about Afrobeats cultural regression daily, using publicly available data and inferences. And what did the industry do? They tried to have my head, and branded me "enemy of the culture." But our devolution was so clear, even while we were celebrating what would become our demise. After "Calm Down" there was a hard cut-off of meaningful Nigerian motion, and our records stopped showing up in places that matter. We dropped huge-budget projects, that didn't make a dent, and at home, we stopped minting new talents, while industry-wide inflation meant the death of organic discovery. It was easy to forecast, judging by those conditions. People who have never recognized a pattern in their lives, or experienced the horrible pre-Afrobeats to the world music industry, shouted me (the voice of reason) down, and dumb mobs of secondary school kids said I hated Afrobeats. It became cool to hate on Joey. Today, the future I was fighting against is here. Cut off from the highest levels, diluted and replaced across the globe, the majors are gradually pulling out, or running skeletal operations. Investor morale has dipped. Afrobeats has a new broad-spectrum meaning. Our local scene failed to achieve sustainability and we're hurtling back to the past. Yes, the new generation will suffer because their predecessors misvalued an opportunity. New kids won't find funding because we can't account for nearly a decade of investment. Underground now has to experience a lack of institutional support because we dialed back on sustainability. Instead of cheques, they are given advice and told to 'build community.' Welcome to our checkered music past. It's a cold, familiar and broken place.