The Biography

Olamidé Gbenga Adedeji, a Tai Solarin University dropout from Bariga on the Lagos mainland, signed to producer ID Cabasa's Coded Tunes in 2010 and released his debut single, "Eni Duro" — a hit large enough to land him a performance slot at that year's Hip Hop World Awards, the ceremony that would later become The Headies.

The gamble underneath it all: rap entirely in Yoruba, in an industry still convinced only English travelled. His debut album, Rapsodi, followed on 21 March 2011, produced by ID Cabasa and featuring a young Wizkid, 9ice and Pheelz. Two years in, the industry was already copying the blueprint.

In 2012, Olamide left the label that discovered him to found YBNL Nation — a real risk this early in a career, betting his own name where borrowed infrastructure used to be. He named the launch album after the label itself, and singles "First of All," "Ilefo Illuminati," "Stupid Love" and "Voice of the Street" turned it into a Headies and Nigeria Entertainment Awards winner.

By 2013, he was denying rumors of a rival label deal on NdaniTV's The Juice — in his words, too late for anyone else to sign him. That November, Baddest Guy Ever Liveth confirmed YBNL wasn't a fluke; "Durosoke" took Best Afro Hip-Hop Video at the Nigeria Music Video Awards.

Between 2014 and 2017, YBNL didn't slow down to enjoy the win — it doubled the pace. An album a year — Street OT, 2 Kings (with Phyno), Eyan Mayweather, The Glory, Lagos Nawa — each stacked with features that read like a map of where Nigerian music was heading: Phyno, Wande Coal, Burna Boy, Don Jazzy, Reminisce. OLIC, his own concert franchise, sold out rooms and proved street-hop could headline.

Then in 2017, "Wo!" turned a dance challenge into a cultural moment. Shot in Bariga and built around the #WoChallenge, the video helped push the shaku shaku dance into the national mainstream — Wizkid himself called it the biggest Nigerian song of the year.

After four straight years of album-a-year output, the pace changed on purpose. Through 2018 and 2019, Olamide released loose singles and freestyles instead of chasing another streak — then, on 10 February 2020, dropped the EP 999 with almost no notice.

Eight days later, YBNL Nation signed a joint-venture distribution deal with Empire, opening the label — and its roster, including a young Fireboy DML — to international reach for the first time. That October, Carpe Diem arrived as the deal's first fruit: his first widely internationally distributed album, pairing new names with the old guard.

UY Scuti landed in June 2021, named for his son — and the label-boss era began in earnest as Fireboy DML and Asake broke wide open. Retirement talk kept surfacing and kept losing to relevance: in May 2023, his guest verse on Asake's "Amapiano" helped carry the sound to a global audience.

By August 2023, Unruly arrived stacked with the artists he'd raised — Asake, Fireboy DML, Bnxn — and peers beyond the roster, including CKay and Rema. This is the chapter where the founder becomes the elder: less the loudest voice on the record, more the reason the record exists at all.

In June 2024, the quieter, seven-track Ikigai arrived — a step back from the label-boss spectacle. In 2025 came the album that gives this era its name: the self-titled Olamidé, fourteen years after a debut that needed a young Wizkid's hook to cross over. This time, "Kai!" reunites the two of them as peers, not as an upstart borrowing a rising star's shine.

Olamidé opened with 19.1 million streams in its first week on Nigerian Spotify, then swept the Spotify and Apple Music Top 10 in the country. By year's end it was TurnTable Charts' eighth-biggest Nigerian album of 2025. Billboard named him a Global Power Player, crediting his leadership at YBNL Nation. There is no arc to close here — the archive just keeps adding pages.