King Sunny Ade

King Sunny Ade took juju music — rooted in Yoruba tradition — and put it on Island Records in 1982 with 'Juju Music,' the album that made it an international sound rather than a regional one. He picked up two Grammy nominations along the way, among the first Nigerian artists to get that recognition at all, and did it partly by working a pedal steel guitar into African pop in a way nobody else had tried. More than 50 albums and tours across six continents later, he's still the reference point for what cross-cultural reach out of West Africa can actually look like — Ade set the benchmark before anyone else on this list had the chance to.