Backyarddog
25th Anniversary · 2001—2026
Manchester 2001 → Kaolack → Manchester 2026

Backyard
Dog

© 2026 Backyarddog

Twenty-five years on, the 2001 UK anthem you know from the Coca-Cola World Cup ad sent Backyarddog searching — for the music, the beat, the truth of rhythm. He found it in the drum call of Karim Mbaye, a master who has spoken this language since birth.

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25th Anniversary ● Afro Sabar Beat ● Big Beat ● Backyarddog ● Manchester ● Kaolack ● Griot Bloodline ●  25th Anniversary ● Afro Sabar Beat ● Big Beat ● Backyarddog ● Manchester ● Kaolack ● Griot Bloodline ● 
01 — The Story So Far

One riff.
Twenty-five years.
One answered call.

In 2001, Backyarddog dropped "Baddest Ruffest" — a snarling big-beat single out of Manchester that charted, soundtracked a Coca-Cola World Cup campaign, and burrowed into films and adverts for two decades. Then it did what most one-off anthems do: it waited. Twenty-five years to the year, it sent Backyarddog looking for something real — not remixed on a laptop, but answered on the sabar by a griot who speaks that language from birth.

25th Anniversary
2001 — 2026 · The Call Answered
No.15
UK Singles Chart, 2001
2002
Coca-Cola World Cup Ad
1
Griot Master Drummer
▸ The original video, 2001 — dir. Dawn Shadforth
On Top Of The Pops

It wasn't just a hit on paper. Backyarddog took it to Top of the Pops — the show that decided what Britain was actually listening to. Twenty-five years later, the same stage energy meets a rhythm tradition older than the format itself.

▸ Top of the Pops, 2001 — archive performance
The Instrument
The sabar drum

Same call, older instrument. Follow the beat off the neon stage and down onto sabar skin — to where it was first spoken.

02 — The Griot

Karim Mbaye

Born in Kaolack into the Mbaye gewel bloodline — son of master drummer Massaer Mbaye and singer Agida Seck — Karim didn't choose the drum; by birthright, it chose him. Forty years on the sabar, founder of RIMKA, and a main-stage veteran of Africa Oyé.

Now based in Manchester, he heard a 25-year-old local anthem and did the thing only a griot can do: he answered it. AFRO SABAR BEAT is that answer — hand-drummed, call-and-response, no shortcuts.

Karim Mbaye performing, alone, on the sabar
"The sabar speaks. My grandfathers spoke through it. In Manchester it just has a new accent."
— Karim Mbaye
03 — The Record

Afro Sabar
Beat

Backyarddog, in search of the drum call of Karim Mbaye
Backyarddog — The Drum Call

One search. One anthem. What happens when Backyarddog's search for the truth of rhythm meets forty years of Sabar lineage hasn't been written yet — some things aren't ready to be described before they exist. What's certain: it won't sound like anything he's made before.

Working TitleBackyarddog (Afro Sabar Beat)
ArtistBackyarddog
The Drum CallKarim Mbaye
Recorded———
StatusUnwritten
04 — The Ambition

Every city
a backyard.
One true address.

Backyarddog's ambition for this record has never been small: take it on the road, city after city, country after country — every stage its own imagined backyard, every crowd part of the same itinerary. Nothing below is booked. It's the vision he's building toward.

STOP · MCR
Manchester
Where it started, twice.
STOP · LOS
Lagos
The beat, recognised at home.
STOP · RIO
Rio de Janeiro
Drum answers drum.
STOP · NYC
New York
Big beat, bigger room.
STOP · TYO
Tokyo
A quarter-century, translated.
STOP · PAR
Paris
Every backyard, connected.
Origin · Not A Stop, The Source
Kaolack, Senegal
However far the itinerary runs, the sound and the beat only ever come from one place. Every stop is a backyard. Africa is home.
The imagined Backyarddog set: sabar drums between two mic stands, string lights on the fence, sound waves moving out into the night
The Virtual Set

Be there when it drops

One email when the record lands. Nothing else.

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