On the same day in December 2016 that Seni Saraki, Teezee, Sholz Fagbemi, Addy Edgal, and Suleiman Shittu launched their magazine in Lagos, they also threw the first Nativeland concert at Muri Okunola Park on Victoria Island. That dual birth — a publication and a party, ink and bass, simultaneously — tells you everything about how Native operates. It is not a magazine that reports on culture from a distance. It is part of the culture it documents.
Burna Boy was the first artist to grace a Native cover, in the 2017 Birth Issue, well before he became a global phenomenon. Wizkid, Naira Marley, Tems, Cruel Santino, designer Mowalola Ogunlesi — Native has an uncanny instinct for spotting talent at precisely the moment it is about to detonate. In 2018, the magazine held a London launch party for its second issue with Boiler Room, where Wizkid showed up to perform alongside Lady Donli and Pretty Boy D-O. That same year, Saraki designed a limited-edition Nike football jersey collaboration inspired by Lagos street culture, blending Adire textile patterns with tire-track motifs.
Each quarterly issue is built around a single theme — Time, Rebels, Reset — and the production values are fierce: glossy pages, full-bleed photography, textured elements like rescanned fabrics woven into the imagery. Distribution runs from Jazzhole and ALARA in Lagos to targeted launches in London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo.
Native calls itself the reliable pulse of the young African, and the description is precise. It does not explain Africa to the West. It talks to its own audience first, and lets the rest of the world lean in.
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