By ITTY OKIM

Over the years, the Nigerian contemporary gospel music genre has been stereotyped to just rock, soul and country music.

Of course, there were the likes of Elder Ebenezer Obey, Evangelist Sonny Okosuns who did traditional highlife and other core afrobeat songs. But the truth remained that the entire gospel music scene in Nigeria had a stereotype that only permitted certain kinds of songs.

This story began to take another turn in the early 2000s when artistes like Flo and Mike Abdul started adding touches of urban fuji and trap to their music.

Tim Godfrey had also towed that path at a point in his career. As at that time, Nigerians who you could describe as ‘self righteous’ tagged such music as compromised.

They taught their kids that it was for Christians trying to live by the standards of the world.

Right now, the coin has flipped.

Christian afrobeats and pop music is gaining wide acceptance all over the country with Lagos leading the pack. Some popular acts are Limoblaze, Gaise Baba, Jo Deep, Angeloh, Dj Horphuray, Kelar Thrillz, Obareengy to mention a few.

The evidence of this acceptance is the humongous number of streams Limoblaze has gotten on his latest album titled “Afrobeats, Rap and Jesus”.

This industry is gaining more grounds and Tim Godfrey is leading this counter culture movement.