More than ever, Fireboy doesn’t hold back in adedamola. The captivating subtlety lies in its intricately coordinated melodies, showcasing the absolute pinnacle of art in its fullness and rigor, coupled with an obvious rhetoric that is achingly sincere and significant. When Fireboy sings in ‘hell and back’, ‘It is obvious you have not found a replacement/ I know you inside and out/ So I cannot be mistaken,’ it is clear he is not fabricating a story; he is recounting a true one. This raw sincerity pierces the heart when he laments, ‘Oh, now you want me back? After putting me through hell and back, I thought I told you I was done with that. So, tell me why you want me back?’ The answer does not come because it is embedded within the lines themselves: the singer still aches for his lover. This is why, in the second verse, his longing slips from his grasps as he sings: ‘I have been waiting for the time that I will get you off my mind.’ His inability to let go surfaces again in ‘letting go’, where he admits, ‘Sometimes love is letting go, but you know, say I go always dey for you.’ The problem, as Lojay’s lines reveal, is not his willingness to walk away but that love is inconsistent: ‘Sometimes you are rude/ sometimes you hold it back/ this kind of inconsistent love no fit last too long.’ 

This is where Fireboy’s debut album, Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps and adedamola meet at contrasting ends. Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps ran on witty anecdotes and smooth lines for a love(r) he is yet to have in his embrace. It mirrors the pretty juvenile and exuberant ache he was able to express through flattering serenades. In adedamola, Fireboy naturally outgrows this youthful longing. Now, he is 28; six years older than he was when he made Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps. His perspective of love is muddled with heartbreaks, infidelity, and toxicity. He has found love, experienced it, failed at it, cursed it, and craved it—even when it seemed stupid. His storytelling resonates with listeners, many of whom can intimately relate to his experiences. The sincerity here surpasses the performed resonance in Playboy.  

With adedamola, Fireboy connects deeply with his audience—heart to heart, trauma to trauma. On ‘back and forth’ with Afrobeats legend, Lagbaja, a personal favourite, he affirms the initial accusation that he is unwilling to let go. He sings, ‘Baby mo gbe o sori/ you toxic, I like it like that/ even when I feel in denial/ Only you lit up my fire.’ Fireboy sums this feeling up with the soulful ballad, ‘ready’. The gentle rise of his voice and the tear-jerking melodies of the piano plucked by Jon Batiste, whom Fireboy regards as the most talented pianist he has ever worked with, craft the album’s perfect interlude. If you manage to survive the first half of the album without the urge to call your ex or hit the phone of your lover, then your heart must be really impassive. With ‘wande’s bop’, adedamola takes a more energetic twist. Like ‘Jazzy’s song’ by Ayra Starr, this track serves as a tribute to the legend Wande Coal, whom Fireboy credits—alongside Passenger and Jon Bellion—as one of the three artists who greatly influenced his sound. He does not entirely let go of love in ‘change your life’. Instead, there is a sense of urgency, and as his collaborator and brother Nxrth, who co-produced most of the album, revealed on X, Fireboy’s racing breath sound at the start of the song encapsulates this perfectly. 

The seamless run from ‘wande’s bop’ to ‘obaa sima’ leaves listeners breathless, gliding through fast-paced melodies and energetic rhythms with stylized dance beats. The song, ‘need me’, is the album’s crème de la crème. The mid-tempo ditty syncs perfectly on repeated log drums. An absolute love tune that will remain enduring for these memorable lines, ‘Kerosene no dey sleep/ that is how I dey feel/ when you no dey beside me’. ‘When they listen to the album, I want the listeners to know that Fireboy never left,’ he said. With adedamola, Fireboy ascends as one of the few new-generation artists with at least three accomplished projects, joining Seyi Vibez in this distinction. Blending the poetics of his first two albums with the serendipity of growth and the harmonious pulse of Africa’s sonic landscape, adedamola arrives as the perfect Afrobeats album⎈