YBNL Records latest signee, Asake, has proven to be a sure bet and Afrobeats fastest rising superstar. In less than two years, he has released two outstanding albums, sold out London’s O2 Arena and earned a Grammy Award nomination. Yet he shows no signs of slowing down.
Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, The Age of Afrobeats. Buy the issue here.
A 20,000-man-strong live audience at the O2 Arena London watched a 28-year-old musician descend from a YBNL-branded helicopter relic on 20 August 2023. This spectacular entrance was 90 minutes late, but it has taken the man on the helicopter a lifetime to get here.
He struggles to lower himself to the stage. He cuts a lonely figure up in that ceiling, a rare moment of life imitating art. There is a set list of songs from his vibrant discography to be performed but, first, this urgent lesson in patience.
In addition to a captive live audience, over 50,000 viewers were glued to a YouTube channel—cheerleaders of Afrobeats, that youngish, West African dance music genre enjoying a global moment while simultaneously auditioning its fastest-rising star till date, our man dangling from the helicopter, Mr Ahmed Ololade, better known by a rather unusual stage name, Asake...
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