Examining Olamide’s Evolution: From Artistry To Label Executive 

Olamide has done it all. The once trouser-sagging, unorthodox rapper with chest-beating lines and a combative attitude; the first true street pop star, distilling street slang into infectious, danceable material; the Afropop star, striving to gain some share of Nigeria’s mainstream market; and finally the RnB artist melding love-tinged choruses into low-tempo songs. As his artistry evolved, his growth shifted from successful performing artist to label boss and talent executive, so that although a shared focus among a number of frontiers may hamper productivity in all of them, Olamide can say that his decade-and-half in the music industry has proven him a master of all the trades.

Olamide’s next and purportedly last album, Unruly, has been stuck at 95% readiness since February of 2022, but it appears an end is now within sight. As Olamide prepares for the release of the album, it presents yet another opportunity to review his position in Nigerian music history as both the successful artist and the impactful executive. 

The 2010s unfolded one of the most critical decades in our music history. Of course that has only been determined in retrospect, but even at the start of the decade the signs were apparent. Wizkid’s Superstar released in mid-2011, setting up a career that has lived up to that name, Davido’s Dami Duro arrived later that year, urging detractors off his road to the top. It was the first fruit of what would become known as Afrobeats, the merging of banging pop and Caribbean sounds with the tropical flavour of African music. 

Olamide’s direction was different. A harsh upbringing in Bariga had conveyed on him a more streetwise mindset, and much like Davido and his Omo Baba Olowo mantra, his breakout single was a reflection of his unique realities, however starkly different they were. Taking inspiration from the Dagrin, Ruggedman and Lord of Ajasa style of hard-hitting punchlines delivered in Yoruba, he released Eni Duro in 2010, it featured declarative statements like Olamide is here just like the first day of the year, a thug attitude, and a video depicting life in a Lagos ghetto.

Subsequently, he would soften his material as a means of enabling accessibility, fashioning what was abrasive street swagger into slang-driven sounds that anyone could connect to. The products of this democratization were songs like Bobo, Wo, Who You Epp, Science Student, and many others which quickly spread across the country, with easy-to-learn slang and dance moves allowing him to break barriers of language. 

For him to propagate a style of music that was considered unorthodox, at the time, he needed a label with a platform to introduce himself. At first he came under the wing of ID Cabasa in his Coded Tunes label, where he released his debut album, Rapsodi in 2011. A year later, he branched out to form his label, Yahoo Boy No Laptop, releasing an album of the same name; he would release six more in six years under this imprint. And thus began his tentative steps into label management. Initially, his sole client was himself, but in 2014 he began to open up YBNL to younger artists. The duo of Lil Kesh and Viktoh joined in April, before Xino and Chinko Ekun joined later, to be rounded out by the signing of Adekunle Gold.

Only a rough glance at these names tells you it was a mixed bag. While some names faded without impact, Adekunle Gold followed up his breakout single, Sade with other hits like Orente and Pick Up, while Lil Kesh went on a dream run that spurned tracks like Lyrically, Shoki, Gbese, Efejoku and more in under a year. Both acts went on to release albums under Olamide’s supervision in 2016, though Lil Kesh’s Young And Getting It was released under his own imprint, YAGI, which was then a subsidiary of YBNL. 

Two years later, in 2016, contracts began to expire, and with them, the entire artist personnel of YBNL bar Olamide himself. It was his first major defeat—not being able to retain the artists who had impressive stints at the label. Of course, Olamide’s big-hearted nature precluded him from drawing up the “slave” contracts that left artists tied to their labels for years; he saw this development of artists as charity rather than business. However, for him to grow as a record executive, he would need a harder edge. 

He also needed some time to strategize, so he spent the next two years alone in his label, with the singular addition of the underwhelming Davolee. By 2018, Olamide was ready to try again. He signed Lyta and Limerick, and a little later, Picazzo, Yomi Blaze and Fireboy DML. To convey his seriousness with the new bunch, Olamide worked towards a label album, the likes of what Mo’Hits, Mavins, and Chocolate City had previously produced. YBNL Mafia Family was released in December 2018, but it was not the showcase of talent he hoped it would be, sharing the same low points as Mavins’ much-maligned Solar Plexus: not enough time to work with and a lack of chemistry between the acts.

There were a few standout tracks, however, and a diamond in the rough. While the rest of the artists quickly faded, Fireboy’s Jealous became the album’s standout, eventually earning more streams than the pool of all the other songs. Olamide prepped Fireboy for a re-release of the song as a single in February 2019, and thus, the legend of Fireboy DML began. Even though one artist out of five is no pass mark by any metric, Olamide held on to his one star and guided Fireboy to two successful album releases in 2019 and 2020, Laughter, Tears, and Goosebumps and Apollo.

This shift into a mentorship role did not mean Olamide had to close up shop on his own career. He ramped up activities in 2020, debuting first a rap-centric EP, 999, which was not well received, before his eighth studio album, Carpe Diem. This was a much better project, and with it, Olamide leaned closer to mainstream Afropop than he had ever done before, leveraging on rising stars like Peruzzi, Bella Shmurda, Omah Lay, and Fireboy for more commercial strength while he wound down his Street Pop identity. His rebrand was in full swing, but it was in more than just the music. If he wanted to embody the record boss, the Sensei who could guide younger acts towards the heights he had already reached, he himself would first have to transition into a more mature figure.

UY Scuti was the final destination of a journey he had been plotting for years. It was the proper exploration of a side he had only briefly flickered in his decade-long career, most notably on 2015’s Melo Melo. Here, he was the laid-back loverboy, trading biting punchlines for seductive hooks, while he seized the chance to grant opportunities to upcoming Afro-RnB stars like Fave, Jaywillz, and Layydoe, as part of his artist-grooming persona. As for a proper label signee, though, he remained incredibly picky but continued to provide emerging stars with potentially career-changing verses, which a few of them have used as career launching pads. Like Naira Marley’s Issa Goal, Bella Shmurda’s Vision 2020, T. I. Blaze’s Something remix, Portable’s Zazoo Zeh, and Asake’s Omo Ope.

But Asake was special. So while he gave these artists a verse and a handshake to make the best they could with it, he recruited Asake as his first signee in four years and the first standalone signing of his career—this time he prioritized quality over quantity. So as he shepherds Asake, Fireboy, and his latest signing, Senth, under the umbrella of his new EMPIRE deal, there is an opportunity to take his proteges one step further than he could go. 

Olamide, Asake and
Fireboy

You would imagine this to be even more personal with Asake, who operates in a similar field as Olamide did when he was mocked for being too local to have transatlantic dreams. Asake can bank on Olamide’s experience and connections backing him, something Olamide sorely missed when he was going at it alone under his own small imprint, Olamide also gets a second opportunity to strike at the foreign markets he couldn’t quite crack in his prime.

Unruly is scheduled for release this week, and if it really is the final album of his storied singing career, we can expect Olamide’s switch to the executive side of things to be similarly successful. He’s had his share of bad experiences to learn from, and the successes of the stars on his current roster reflect he has overcome the learning phase. With him in the chair as the man behind YBNL, we are curious to see the next steps he takes as he strives to spot and develop the next big stars in Nigerian music.