Mmegi

FORBES SUMMIT THRILL!

Nigerian Afrobeat star to inspire local arts industry

BY SUN REPORTER

Forbes Under 30 Summit that is scheduled for April 23 to 26, will have Nigerian Afrobeats star Adedamola Adefolahan aka Fireboy DML, as one of the speakers.

The award-winning artist is a renowned Afrobeats artist, songwriter and vocalist.

Fireboy, who is signed to YBNL Nation, a Nigerian-based label owned by legendary Nigerian rapper Olamide and

Empire Records, grew up singing in his local church choir and went on to burnish his interest in music, while studying at the Obafemi Awolowo University - an institution that has birthed some of Nigeria’s contemporary Afrobeats talents.

Fireboy first emerged on the Nigerian music scene in 2019 with the re-release of his breakout single ‘Jealous’ which was originally a part of YBNL’s 2018 collaborative album, YBNL Mafia Family. Since then, he has managed to take the industry by storm, introducing new, softer, yet groovy iterations to the typically high energy Afrobeats soundscape. On June 14, 2019, he followed up ‘Jealous’ with the explosive romantic number ‘What If I Say’ and later that year, on the 29th of November released his debut album, Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps.

Wildly experimental, undeniably heartfelt and sufficiently grounded in a refreshing kind of profoundness, LTG established Fireboy as a true, narrative driven talent with a distinctive, irreplaceable voice. For a debut album, LTG had no features - a bold and unprecedented move that paid off - with the album amassing over a 100 million streams by January 2020. Building on the success of LTG, Fireboy followed up his debut with an inventive sophomore project, Apollo. Apollo, a pared down, emotionally driven body of work that saw Fireboy at his most introspective, received rave reviews. In 2021, Fireboy released his biggest single yet, ‘Peru.’

His newest album, Playboy, sees the sensual, sweet-natured artist shift gears into a confident, self-possessed bad boy persona that manifests in 14 songs that puts this dynamic side of him on full display. He has been nominated for a number of awards including the Best International Act award at the 2022 BET Awards, NAACP Image Awards in 2021 amongst others. Fireboy remained one of the leading Afrobeats talents reinventing a wholly global future of the fast rising genre.

HEALTH

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2023-03-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://enews.mmegi.bw/article/282097755948404

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