Jad Abumrad

Yeah, it is upsetting.

But, you know, if there's a silver lining in that particular anecdote, I mean, you have to dig a little bit to get to it.

When he died, Yeni and Femi initially were very reluctant to declare to the public that he died of AIDS, but they were eventually convinced to sort of come out and say this was AIDS.

It becomes the first public discussion of AIDS in Nigeria and in much of Africa and leads to a lot of positive change.

So even while he denied it himself, that information about him was used, I think, for mostly positive impact.

Yeah.

I mean reports are anywhere from 200,000 to 2 million.

Wow.

That much?

Yeah.

It completely shut down the city for days.

And a massive crowd marches from Tafalbolewa Square, where there was a wake, to the shrine where the family was paying their last respects, and then to where he's now buried.

And there's footage of this on YouTube.

It's really kind of an amazing thing to behold, even from afar, the idea that this is a people's burial.

This is an entire country coming together to mourn the loss of this one man.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you and I are having this conversation the day after the Super Bowl and Bad Bunny, you know, gets out there and he ends his performance marching with people holding a series of flags from South America.

And I and everybody that was watching teared up because it was such a simple but powerful statement given what's happening in Minnesota.

And there is some way in which these horrible times, just to state it plainly,

do reinvest music with the power it should have had and should have all along.

And so I take that with me, that the art that we create, the culture that we create, it matters.