Afrobeats singer Fave says female artists get judged by their looks before their music. Here’s what she shared on the Afropolitan Podcast and why it matters.
Imagine putting out a song you poured your heart into, and the first thing people discuss is your stomach. Not your voice. Not your lyrics.
That’s the frustration Nigerian singer Fave shared on the Afropolitan Podcast, and it’s striking a chord. Fave, whose real name is GodsFavour Chidozie, says female artists get judged on how they look long before anyone actually listens to them.
“It’s harder for female artists to blow,” she said. In her view, outfits and body shapes get the spotlight while the music waits in the corner.
She used her own life as proof. Lately, people online have been guessing that she bleached her skin. To Fave, that’s exactly the point. The talk around women in music is hardly ever about the music.
She went a step further. A lot of the chatter, she said, comes from people’s fantasies about a woman, not from what they hear in her songs. So an artist gets sized up on how she’s dressed before a single track plays.
Here’s the part that really stings. Fave believes female artists have to do far more just to stay in the conversation. They give everything on stage and leave it there.
Men? The imbalance gives them room “to just be okay, as opposed to being exceptional.”
It starts early, too. She says that when she was coming up, some label executives were reluctant to sign women at all. The reason? They said female artists are harder to manage.
You probably know Fave from “Baby Riddim” and “Kante,” her collaboration with Davido. She was once signed to Atlantic Records but chose to go independent. She wanted real marketing muscle behind her music, not just financial backing.
Even now, she admits she’s still building her audience. But she tries to use her platform to help other women who are trying to break through.
“I’m still trying to get people to focus on the music that I have to give you, as opposed to everything else,” she said.
Honestly, it’s not a big ask. Let the song play first. Everything else can wait.
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