It’s impressive how Adekunle Gold keeps evolving and switching sounds to fit the zeitgeist. His debut, Gold, blends urban Highlife and Juju, with batiks and earthy tones matching its cultural outlook. His sophomore, About 30, is a soulful, introspective record that deepens his storytelling and vocal range. His third (Afro Pop Vol. 1), fourth (Catch Me If You Can), and fifth (Tequila Ever After) lean heavily into pop and Afrobeats, cementing his reinvention as AG Baby, the suave, cosmopolitan lover. After years of redefining his sound, Adekunle Gold now turns his gaze to one of Nigeria’s oldest and most spiritually charged genres: Fuji.
The result, however, is mixed, an attempt to reinterpret tradition through a modern, trend-conscious lens that doesn’t uplift tradition.
Like many artists, Adekunle Gold entered the music industry as a small fry but grew into a big fish after nearly a decade of swimming against the currents and surviving the tides of changing trends. His survival, financial breakthrough, and renewed confidence form the premise of Many People. Borrowing from Yinka Ayefele’s song of the same title and its happy-go-lucky mood, Adekunle Gold celebrates a life that has come full circle. He sings that his dark days are over, he’s proud of the man he’s become, and his evolution into a survivor basking in the spotlight he once chased. After a display of self-congratulation that borders on pomp, he proclaims at the end of the song that “ẹja nla no be small fish” (a big fish isn’t a small fry).
Many People is obviously his victory lap, but the album’s opener, Big Fish, is his declaration of self-worth. He delivers his lines with the calm nonchalance of someone who’s earned his space. Though he calls himself gentle and “not a gangster” in the second verse, Adekunle Gold flips the script on the next track, Don Corleone. Here, he likens himself to the titular character in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation, indicating a symbol of power, control, and legacy.
“Olowo laye mọ, ko fẹ olosi (the world remembers the rich, not the poor),” Adekunle Gold declares on the talking-drum-heavy Bobo, featuring Lojay and Shoday. It’s a streetwise truth wrapped in swagger. Adekunle Gold brags about his high value and appeal to women, styling himself as a heavy spender whose wealth now speaks louder than humility. Lojay follows with a verse that dreams of more: he wants to be rich like Jim Ovia, one of Nigeria’s most prominent businessmen, and cruising in luxury. But Shoday counters the song’s excess with a knowing jab, reminding Adekunle Gold that he once claimed money doesn’t bring happiness. Then he adds, almost philosophically, that a poverty mindset makes people see enjoyment as wasteful. “When you get the bag, jeun tó ń dá sárà, no look Uche face (eat well when you’re wealthy, don’t care what anyone thinks).”
Adekunle Gold’s mind remains fixated on wealth and its pleasures in Coco Money. Juxtapose it with Money off his sophomore album About 30, and you’ll notice a quiet transformation, how the hunger for survival has turned into a desire for preservation. Money was a young man’s plea for a breakthrough; Coco Money is a grown man’s reflection on abundance. While the song carries the pride of wealth, it lacks the spiritual unease that once made Adekunle’s older songs compelling. But now he is rich, why does he need to be uneasy?
If the earlier tracks show Adekunle Gold’s boastful side, Simile reveals his truer essence. Written in 2019 after his father’s death, the song returns to the tenderness of Ire, both in melody and message. It’s a prayer in disguise, a son speaking to his father’s spirit, asking him to light his path. There’s something deeply moving about how Adekunle Gold strips the gloss away and returns to simplicity. The song doesn’t pretend to be Fuji, yet it expresses Adekunle Gold at his most genuine alternative soul.
With My Love Is the Same, he redirects his affection from his late father to his daughter, Dejare. The track opens with a touching call-and-response between father and child. He tells his daughter that he isn’t always home because he’s trying to be a better man, and hopes she understands. This tenderness is where Adekunle Gold thrives: when he isn’t forcing a Fuji aesthetic but letting his natural Yoruba cadences and moral reflections lead the way.
Romance has always pulsed at the heart of Adekunle Gold’s music. Believe, his collaboration with Bill Withers, is about unconditional love, the kind that transcends reason. Withers’s poetic opening paints a vivid image: She sees the crystal raindrops fall, and the beauty of it all is when the sun comes shining through… The chorus deepens this fantasy, crooning about doing the inexplicable in the name of love. “Just the two of us, building castles in the sky,” Withers sings, reinforcing a sense of timeless devotion.
Where Believe glows with romantic idealism, Love Is An Action, featuring 6LACK, offers a cheekier counterpoint — a reminder that love often disarms reason. On the bouncy track, both artists expatiate on how love can make fools of even the wisest. And on Lailo, Adekunle Gold serenades his lover with tenderness, pleading for harmony over pride.
Even with a handful of standout tracks, this album struggles to sustain the grand vision it sets for itself. Its Fuji elements are ornamental, inserted through percussion, vocal imitation, chants, and harmonies, but don’t strike as Fuji.
Fuji music, essentially, is more than vocal inflection and rhythm. It carries spiritual depth, griot-like storytelling rooted in Islamic (and later Christian) scripture, and sharp social commentary, all of which give it its enduring identity. This oversight quietly undermines the genre the album seeks to honour, short-changing the spiritual and communal essence of Fuji.
A Fuji-themed album would have benefitted immensely from collaborations with Fuji legends like Wasiu Ayinde, Alabi Pasuma, Saheed Osupa, and Sule Adio Malaika. These artists, who have proven their versatility in hip-hop, Reggae, Afrobeats, and pop, could have enriched the album’s sonic and cultural palette, giving Adekunle Gold’s experiment its authenticity.
Originally, the album was to be titled Finding Uncharted Journeys Inside before Adekunle Gold shortened it to Fuji, instead of the acronym, F.U.J.I..
As if to redeem himself, he later invited Fuji artists to the album’s promotional party in Broad Street, a neighbourhood where the genre still reigns supreme. The gesture, however, is more like an afterthought than a reconciliation.
Of course, no music genre is static; it evolves, adapts, and cross-pollinates. This is Neo-Fuji, part of the new wave of Afrobeats’ flirtation with Fuji. However, a genuine collaboration between the two traditions would have enriched the album’s dimension and texture. Fuji, by nature, is more than percussion, braggadocio, and crowd energy. It’s a living archive of spirit, memory, and struggle.
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