The Stakes Ramp Up as Shallipopi’s Third Studio Album Draws Closer

Auracle, the title of Shallipopi’s imminent third studio album, due for release on the 5th of December, 2025, is the latest in an increasing line of titles that foreground Shallipopi’s tendency for whimsy. Consider 2024’s Shakespopi, a portmanteau of Shakespeare and Shallipopi. In the lead-up to the album, he was the subject of heated debate among his fans and critics. Critics had labeled his freewheeling, laissez-faire style—which weaves together patchy storytelling and slangs into an intoxicating blend—as lazy. His fans, seething from the indignity of this characterization, began comparing him to Shakespeare, citing the many slang-addled proverbs Shallipopi deploys to make their case. Shakespoppi is, in some sense, an attempt to rescue some humor from a fraught situation while scoring some hits along the way. In ASAP, which opens the album, Shallipopi sings “Na Shalli dey write but na Shakespeare dey shake,” evincing his characteristic insouciance. 

With 22 tracks—including the prereleased singles Laho, Laho II featuring BurnaBoy, Laho III featuring Rauw Alejandro (three versions of a song might seem excessive, but I’m almost certain he would have released more if not for the backlash after the third one), Na So, and the Gunna-assisted HIM—Auracle presents a sharp contrast to his usual tendency for brusque projects. His debut album President La Pluto features 13 tracks and runs for 37 minutes. With 9 tracks and a runtime of 26 minutes, 2024’s Shakespopi manages more brevity. Next to these projects, Auracle seems mammoth-sized. What then can we say has informed Shallipopi’s shift from conciseness? My best guess is that it’s a play at maximizing his chances of scoring a hit song as he knows that the stakes with this album are rocket high.

As I note in an article published in this magazine earlier this year, before Laho’s success, Shallipopi had been experiencing a creative drought. “After releasing the baffling ‘disasterclass ‘that was Shakespopi, he seemed adrift, and his eagerness to move on from this phase suggests he was aware of the project’s shoddiness.” His intention to brusquely move on from the indignities of Shakespopi notwithstanding, his follow-up singles were all marred by poor quality and met with lukewarm reception. The situation in the lead-up to the release of Laho was both tense and fraught with anticipation. Shallipopi had started to look like an artist on his way out of the industry. As the sun around which much of contemporary Benin Street Pop orbits, his exit from the industry would perhaps have spelled the beginning of the end of the growing genre, as well as the decline of an era of Street Pop in Nigeria. Against this backdrop, Shallipopi released a snippet of Laho. Not long after,  it became a leading anthem on TikTok. By the time he released the song officially, it had completely taken over the airwaves. 

Several remixes after the original version of Laho, the question became: “Does Laho’s success represent the end of his dry spell or is it simply a temporary pause?” So far, the past few months have nudged the answer towards the latter. His singles since Laho have neither showcased growth nor strong commercial performance. Even a Gunna feature hasn’t been able to rescue the situation. And so, Shallipopi finds himself once again in the uncanny valley between relevance and obsolescence. On the 20th of December, 15 days after Auracle drops, Shallipopi will perform at the Landmark Event Centre supported by his brothers Zerry DL and Famous Pluto. The commercial performance of Auracle will largely decide whether the show will go down as a victory lap or an internment rite. 

Shallipopi occupies a singular position in the Afrobeats scene. In 2023, his blistering momentum put Benin City on the national map and helped center Street Pop on the Afrobeats landscape. His brothers, Zerry DL and Famous Pluto, are among the ranks of the exciting Street Pop emergents from the South-South region in Nigeria. We hear his influence in the intrepid swagger of Big Smur Lee’s music and in the defiant ethos of debutants like Zaylevelten and Mavo, whose slang-laden styles feel a radical instantiation of Shallipopi’s. 

For all his influence, he still doesn’t have a solid project in his discography. President La Pluto, spawned hits and shaped the zeitgeist but was still undermined by its lack of cohesion and narrative thrust. At best, it amounts to a fun collection of songs. President La Pluto was actually dismal, not just in terms of quality but also commercial performance. All of these, taken together with the lukewarm performance of his last two singles, make it clear that Auracle could form a make-or-break-moment for the 25-year-old singer-rapper. With 22 tracks, he’ll be looking to maximize his chances of at least scoring a few hits, which can help save face even if the album turns out to be lackluster. But even this course of action is fraught with uncertainty. His worst-case scenario is serving up a bloated album that offers no new thrills.