CNN
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Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game in Salt Lake City, Utah, brought together stars from basketball legends LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo to Nigerian music titans Burn Boy, Thames and Rema.
The trio played a halftime show filled with Afrobeats, a sign that the genre’s global rise will continue into 2023.
Grammy winner Burna Boy performed first, tell the crowd“I’m going to take you on a trip to Africa without even getting on a plane.”
Read more: Burna Boy has a difficult relationship with Africa
For Thames, this ends a tumultuous month as she recently went down in history becoming the first Nigerian artist to receive an Oscar nomination for her work on Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She too won her first Grammy February 5 for her collaboration with Drake and Future on “Wait for You”.
Meanwhile, musician, rapper and singer Rema enjoys first place on the charts success with his hit “Calm Down” featuring Selena Gomez.
“Nigeria is a country dominated by football,” Burna Boy said. said in the video posted on Monday by the NBA All-Star Twitter account. “But at the same time, we still have some of the best basketball players here.”
“This is a dream,” he added in another clip. “It’s amazing. As a child, I dreamed of playing in the NBA, but you know, I had to play in the NBA. [All-Star game]so I think I did it anyway.”
Browse the gallery at the top of the page for images from performances.