“I just blow but, omo, I know my set,” Asake sings on his midsummer hit single, “Peace Be Unto You (PBUY)”. It’s arguably the most self-aware lyric in his fast-growing catalogue, a congratulatory moment that’s deeply reflective in its terse glory. To fully grasp its significance, you have to know that Asake and his music – to which the Nigerian Pop mainstream has currently devoted its undivided attention – didn’t just emanate out of the ether. Like several jokes you’d find on the internet, he wasn’t genetically engineered in a lab by Nigerian Rap legend and record label boss, Olamide.

As far back as the mid-2010s, Asake was an aspiring artist with parochial hype. At that time, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Ile-Ife, Osun State, where he studied Theatre Arts, was the stomping ground for his local celebrity. Circa 2015, his campus-hit song “Joha” was a fixture for students and locals that made up the OAU community. Aligning his first creative inclination as a dancer, the song came packaged with its own set of dance moves, enhancing the record’s success and immediately placing Asake in the echelon of student celebrities that headlined all the local shows and occasionally shared the stage with whichever mainstream superstar happened to roll into town.

“Those were fun times,” he recalls of his OAU days with a wide smile. “We dey go all those N30k and N20k shows, but e no mean say everything just dey easy like that.” He’s referring to his initial attempts to get his career going while being a student. At his first stage performance in OAU, Asake decided to borrow tricks from the iconic Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. He came in bare-chested with a handful of barely clad ladies, hoping to successfully cover a couple of the Afrobeat maestro’s classics. With the appearance down pat, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, everything.

Nigerian audiences are somewhat renowned for being difficult to impress, especially for new artists – The Home of the Screwface, one could say. And Nigerian university audiences can be decidedly more brutal, especially when it’s clear that the green, barely experienced artist is trying to win them over. At their worst, it’s like a pack of sharks converging on hapless bait. In the case of his first OAU performance, Asake was the hapless bait. He’d barely had time to get comfortable on stage when well over 5,000 students started raining down boos. “I was wearing white pant o!” he exclaims. “I gats go hide for back of speaker, but thank God for Blaqbonez that day sha.”

Asake doesn't go into more detail of his gratitude for Blaqbonez, who was also a student-artist at the time, but it hints at the peers he rubbed shoulders with at OAU. If you were heavy on SoundCloud in the mid-2010s, there’s a chance you came across a cover of Tekno’s landscape-altering “Pana”, spearheaded by Blaqbonez. A freewheeling posse cut, “No Pana” featured a cast of student-artists at the time, including Jaido P and Asake Medoo, as he was known then. These days, Blaqbonez continues to prove himself as a commercially successful and dynamic Rap artist, Jaido P is one of the most compelling voices in Nigerian Street Rap, and Asake is the poster boy of Nigerian Street Pop right now. Patrolling the OAU campus at the same time, Fireboy DML, Cheque, and Chinko Ekun were also beginning to fan the flame of ambitious superstardom; they too have since imprinted their own stamps on the sands of Nigerian music.

In an early 2019 interview with NATIVE, Blaqbonez explained how he came to understand OAU as a sort of testing ground for chops and tenacity. Like Asake, he also got booed off stage by thousands of students at his first performance, after freezing mid-way into his set. “I see first-hand how these people feel about the music, and those are people that don’t even like you,” he said at the time. “You see a ready crowd that is accessible and you can just keep testing.” Asake seemingly applied the same ethos; that debut experience on stage at OAU shook him, but as he says matter-of-factly, “I no sabi give up.”

Asake makes his way into the shoot location south of the 3pm mark, sauntering in with the knowing aura that everything and everyone is in place for him. In the few seconds between his stroll from the entrance to the changing room, his head is on a swivel, seemingly taking in this environment created for him. His diminutive frame is draped in all black, his eyes hidden behind a pair of Bottega Veneta sunglasses, and his feet adorned with the latest collaboration between Supreme and Nike.

Then the gears begin to turn. Almost immediately, there's movement - a lot of it. The music that filled the cold air unencumbered now has to travel through bodies to reach the back of the room. At a point, Seni takes over AUX duties to do some mood-setting; he taps on the upper volume key a few times, as the loudness of the music competes with the commotion of pre-production activity. Manny is finally taking prep photos and readjusting light placement. Shoot producer Leke Alabi-Isama of JM Films marches about to make sure everything is in place and ready to go. The clock says whatever it says, but Asake clearly dictates the time around here.

In the changing room, the singer quickly makes himself comfortable. There's a stack of three red cups in his hand, the top one filled with Hennessy and Red Bull as requested by his manager, Steve. The all-black ensemble is off, and he's changing into a pair of ankara-print trousers from Lagos-based skate brand waf., with a brand new white vest. “I like to wear old singlets,” he tells Momo, his stylist for the day. “Old singlets are always mad, e dey look dope when you snap with it. All this one now go just dey give me shape, but it's calm. We'll use it.” Within a few minutes, it's obvious Asake has adjusted to the superstar part. He knows what it means to be the centre of attraction.

“I won't lie it's been very stressful,” he says of the last few months since making his awe-inspiring entry into the Nigerian mainstream with the Olamide-assisted “Omo Ope”. “But it's nice now, and it's what I've been praying for. I'm just finding my way around it and I dey try live my life. I think it has to be stressful, that's the fun of it, so you know you're working. Sometimes sha, you gats do like say you tire, make them no talk say you be machine.”

In the early days of 2022, Asake came out swinging with “Omo Ope”, a delightfully hedonistic slapper that quickly set the course for a marquee year. Within weeks, the song climbed to the top of the TurnTable Top 50 chart, and Asake was officially signed to Olamide's star-making record label, YBNL (Yahoo Boy No Laptop). Ololade Asake, his debut EP, landed in mid-February, a 4-song highlight reel of his convincing powers as an evocative writer and market-ready hit-maker. The EP spawned another near-instant smash hit with “Sungba”, which was helped along to a further crowning moment at the top of the TurnTable Singles Chart by a riveting remix, featuring a contender for verse of the year from Burna Boy.

The type of fanfare that accompanies two inescapable hit songs and a well-received EP comes with responsibility. Asake has had to quickly adjust to this level of fame, travelling across Nigeria for live performances, regularly playing multiple shows a night. “Na now I know say I be real Nigerian,” he says as he walks out of the changing room to get on set. “I just dey travel around and, you know, it's the music.”

In the first summer in which the world was learning how to live post the initial breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asake wasted no time in putting his best foot forward, at a time where people were beginning to see each other socially again, and for some, returning to the dancefloor – underground or otherwise. Recorded and released on a whim, “Mr Money'' arrived in the final throes of a stop-start summer, in the weirdest of years of many of our lives. It almost immediately became a street-level hit. A high octane banger that has many of the hallmarks we now associate with the man himself, the song reached ubiquity on the back of its superb songwriting and Asake's urgent delivery. “Me I no dey cap, me I no dey form/my energy is high, what the fuck,” goes the intro before a thunderous bassline and log drum combination come in, serenaded by one of the two Asake trademark ad-libs you hear on many of his records, “Tune in to the King of Sounds & Blues.”

Amidst the limiting effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the singer had his biggest song yet. “That song gave me another confidence, say I fit blow inside this Lagos, so I just need to push more,” he says.

In conversation, Asake is as forthcoming as he is playfully slippery. One moment, he's recounting being the “stubborn Ahmed” of the neighbourhood when he was growing up, the next he's evading questions about the struggles he faced as an upcoming artist in Lagos; “no be money all of us dey find?” he quips, turning around to laugh with his styling and grooming team. He seems acutely aware of the other individuals in the room, as he fields my questions. More than once, he says, “I know what you want me to say,” with a knowing smirk.

“He can be a very private person,” his manager Steve says. “That's one thing about him. We haven't done any interviews since the media rounds we did after “Omo Ope”. Even this one, it was Olamide that insisted and I had to make sure he's here.”

Just as we're about to get into his relationship with Olamide, an intern from the production crew slides the door open and asks for a selfie, to which Asake politely declines. His reason is not anything confounding, he's just not entirely convinced by the Ahluwalia knitted vest he had just put on, which he states probably wouldn't be a part of his everyday wear before today. “I'm going to trust you o, Momo,” he says as he gazes into the mirror and tries to adjust the vest to his comfort.

Not too long after, he walks out onto the next set. As soon as Manny tells Asake that he can shoot this set without the vest, he yanks it off. By this time, many in the location are already feeling the frost of the air conditioners hanging from the top of the warehouse, but Asake couldn't be more comfortable. As he gets into the bathtub filled with wads of cash, he looks relaxed, at peace, in his element. When the shutters start to click, he bares his grills and flashes the widest smile. Even with a crane invasively hovering above his head and occasionally lowered towards his face, it feels like he's having the time of his life.

“I just blow but, omo, I know my set,” is undoubtedly the most poignant line Asake has sung, yet. It’s a proclamation of hard-earned triumph through many travails. It’s also a note to self, of caution against being satisfied with just blowing. Sure, he’s won the battle against obscurity but Asake knows he still has so much more to gain. It’s a thoughtful exhale from an artist who’s graduated from campus legend to mainstream familiarity, who’s beat the all too familiar charge of being a one-hit wonder, and is now curating a career as the latest bright light in Street Pop’s unyielding domination at the centre of urban Nigerian music and youth culture.

“There are some things you have to learn when you dey come up,” Asake says, referring to the period between “Mr Money” and “Omo Ope”. “I thank God say I learn those things before I blow,” he adds without expatiating. It’s likely he’s referring to the uncertainty that follows the euphoria of an artist scoring their first hit single. That moment, and the feeling that comes with it, only lasts so long. Not too long after, the artist has to follow-up with another single that has the potential to repeat or surpass the success of its predecessor. The stakes are higher, and with every subsequent release, the pressure piles on.

A year after his first street hit, Asake dropped “Yan Yan”, a frisky single produced by Phantom – notable for producing Burna Boy’s global smash, “Ye”. In hindsight, the spare and groovy track is a precursor to the sound of Asake’s recent monster hits, but at the time of its release, it didn’t match the instant relevance of “Mr Money”. In fact, “Yan Yan” followed the Zlatan and Peruzzi-assisted remix of “Mr Money”, which also did little to help his notoriety. The singer had scored a hit, but did he feel like he had truly “blown?” The haunting phrase hangs over the head of every Nigerian artist trying to make a name for themselves.

“Just write Baddo,” he instructs me, when I ask at what point he knew he had made it. “See, just write Baddo everywhere!” Baddo aka Olamide is the legendary rapper and founder of YBNL, Asake’s label home. A top 5 artist of his generation in his own right, with a slew of hits and albums to rival the much touted Big 3 (Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy), Olamide is a bonafide industry cheat code as an executive. Rivalled perhaps only by the inescapable Don Jazzy, Olamide’s co-sign is the most powerful endorsement in Nigerian music today. We’ve all seen and heard about “The Drake Effect '' in the early 2020s, with artists like Migos, Lil Baby and Future being launched into different stratospheres following a verse from the Canadian. Olamide’s influence is no different.

Somewhere on the internet, you’ll find a video of Asake reacting to hearing Olamide’s verse on “Omo Ope” for the first time. Recorded without his knowledge, long-time friend and popular comic Yhemolee had told Asake that Baddo was going to jump on the song, which the singer thought as a pipe dream. After all, he’d been texting Olamide to “help” him for a while.

“There’s up in your life and there’s down, and I was in that part of my life where I didn’t really know what next. So I wasn’t even taking Yemi seriously until I heard it,” he says. In that video, the moment Olamide’s verse concludes, Asake runs out of the car and down the street, stops for a bit to tear up, then vibrantly gallops back to the compound and begins to yell, “Koni da fun iyalaya yin!” That popular Yoruba idiom translating as “It won’t be well with your mother’s mother,” wasn’t directed to anyone. “It’s just an expression for me as a Yoruba man,” he explains, recalling the fond memory. “It’s like, ‘my time don finally reach,’ and I was just so excited.”

Amapiano was much the same. The thing is though, street-bred artists in Nigeria have shown their genius at innovatively adapting these influences into music that captures the ears of those in their immediate environment. In the late 2010s, Gqom and Tech House were foundational elements in the Shaku Shaku and Zanku periods that catalysed the current wave of Street Pop, led by figures such as Olamide and Zlatan Ibile. Amapiano has been going through the same adoption and mutation, and Asake is not the first or the only artist using this sonic gambi, but, like his peers, his singles have come with accusations suggesting he's a one-trick-pony of sorts. Following the resounding success of “Sungba”, one tweeter sent out an image of Superman with Asake's face superimposed on him, thus dubbing the new character, Sungbaman.

Now, potentially more than ever in the history of music, the lines between the fans and the industry are blurred beyond recognition. Due to a combination of the ease of accessibility to millions of songs, and the performance data behind said songs, coupled with the ubiquity of social media, the proverbial fourth wall is becoming less and less apparent. This is not to say that fans have not always debated whether their once favourite artists are becoming boring or what it means for a single to flop, but it's hard to imagine it could have been more prevalent than it is now.

“I feel like you doing what works for you is not a sin,” Asake says of the 'Sungbaman' jokes. Whilst he has remained relatively guarded throughout our conversation about his personal life before he first picked up the microphone, Asake does open up to answer his – admittedly few – detractors, on a topic of conversation he seemingly has been itching to weigh in on.

“If something works for you, it means you're the originator of it. So why will you leave it? It's just like, [if] I come out with a special rice and the whole world is fucking with [it], you want me to leave it and look for another special rice? Is that not what every artist is looking for? I come with a sound and the people love it, so I might do it 70,000 more times, your own is to keep enjoying it. I just have to be doing it well, that's all that matters to me.”

The key to the very best analogies is how simple and relatable one can make it, to encourage deeper thought. Asake comparing the gift of being able to have a unique, distinguishable sound to the idea of concocting a new variation to the nation's favourite dish is as straightforward as it is genius. When you think about it, Popular music is a bit like rice, isn't it? Everyone works with the same basic ingredients, but what you add to it is what really sets you apart from the pack.

The supreme self-confidence Asake has in his own ability shines through as he bats off the implications of monotony, and one can't help but harken back to his own recollections of the mindset and struggles during his OAU days, and subsequently during his first foray into music with TFT Records. They shaped him for these moments. He is not going to be swayed away from doing exactly what he wants to do, because when it boils down to it, it has proved to be successful, and that is what is most important to Ololade Asake. He remembers when he didn't even have a unique sound, when he was getting heckled off stage for doing a Fela tribute act. He remembers when he was dropping singles that weren't quite making a mark, trying to find his voice in the open.

Towards the end of the shoot, Asake is recording an episode of The NATIVE's Afropop Dictionary, where personalities break down popular Afropop slang and lyrics. When asked to explain the meaning behind the line “I just blow but omo, I know my set,” he simply states: “I know where I belong, I know where I'm from. I know what I know.”

“See, there's no magic in this thing. It's just endurance and perfect time,” he says as he heads out.

So, what's next on the Asake timeline? There's no time to ask the man himself. He spent just over fifteen cumulative minutes answering questions at the shoot, and he's adamant about not doing a follow-up interview – partly because he's busy rounding up work on his debut album, before a trip to the USA. One week after the cover shoot, Asake announced his next single, “Terminator”, with a clip that quickly became a viral sensation on TikTok, garnering 1.4 billion cumulative views in the 3 weeks before official release. While social media was awash with videos of eager fans reciting each lyric from the snippet – word-for-word – in anticipation of the release, Asake was busy plotting with renowned music video director and his close collaborator, TG Omori, on how to bring the unreleased song to life. “TG is my eyes, me, I'm the ears,” he says with pride.

In all of this, the question of what next remains. Even though we never got it from him, the signs are overwhelmingly positive. He's now signed with EMPIRE, the U.S.-based distribution and label services company, through their already wildly-successful joint venture deal with YBNL. His latest collaborative effort, “Bandana” with Fireboy, flew to number 1 on the TurnTable Top 100 Charts remaining there for five weeks until “Terminator” debuted at the top spot, culminating in a total of 28 weeks at number 1 for Asake this year – so far.

“Making music is the most interesting part of my life,” Asake says, after Steve makes a remark on his work ethic in the studio. “Sometimes I'm just tired and I want to go and sleep, but he just keeps going,” Steve says, to which Asake laughs. “I fit no chop and I fit no even sleep, because na wetin dey make everything move be that,” the singer adds.

Clearly, Asake isn't taking anything for granted.

He's fixated on the one thing he can control: His Music. It's the only way he can assure that his flame burns much brighter than the hot streak fuelling one of the most dominant breakout runs in Afropop history.

It took Asake nearly a decade to get to the fifteen minutes he's currently cannibalising, but he so desperately wants to belong to the set of artists considered perennial stars. That takes the type of prolific consistency his mentor has embodied throughout his career – thankfully for Asake, he's getting first-hand knowledge. With undeniable talent and the perfect guidance system, everything seems set for longevity. Asake's time is now.