Adekunle Gold pulling the strings on The Life I Chose

This, though, is no biggie for Nigeria’s Adekunle Gold, whose flair and reliability for conjuring up artful and friendly hits over the years has translated into major pop clout. The singer, loaded with good looks and a voice baptised in vintage vitality, has expanded his sphere of influence by emulating, and then emanating daring diligence, precision power, and growing street cred like no other.

It is often said that creative success is the consequence of, well, constantly creating. Adekunle’s own versatile heavy lifting, coupled with shimmering partnerships with his colleagues – most notably, writing ‘1 Milli’ for Davido – means that he is now well-informed, well-fed and well-respected. He is thriving and thankful on the past few albums, more so on last year’s Tequila Ever After.

On his new single, an elegant, Kel-P-conducted, motivation-fuelled dance anthem titled ‘The Life I Chose’, which could slot into a Vol 2 of his most recent LP, he doesn’t flinch from peddling music built around celebrating a life that turned out great – a “change of status,” as he puts it in the pre-hook. He pats his own back for working his way up to a point where he can now pull strings within Afrobeats. “Shout out to me, me, me, I stay believing,” he sings.

But also present on the tune, which clocks in at about two and half minutes, are dark reflections on the sudden shift in people’s attitudes – “all of a sudden, everybody act like they love me.” Adekunle, once wearing an exclusively unthreatening persona, is now also very much a master of even the most alarming street speak, integrated with Yoruba jargon and sneaked in as caution to whom it may concern – if the gunshot sample and gloomy chords at the beginning somehow went over their head, that is – “men dey active/ if you f@#k with my team, it’s risky.”

The instrumentation, whose ancestral sheen – thanks to vocal harmonies, thumping drums and distinctly indigenous clapperless cowbells that often serve as the spine of traditional rhythms – is robust enough for battle as it is for a graduation party, enabling Adekunle to swagger between a melodious mix of danger and euphoria, in pidgin English and native vocabulary.

Much has been made of how many ways Afrobeats must improve to be seen as something other than transient, starting with how to make it more interesting and experimental. Guys like Adekunle Gold, whose offerings consistently portray elevated progress through a distinctive lyrical touch and rich connection to cultural roots, shake off a necessary percentage of that distrust.

Artist: Adekunle Gold
Single: The Life I Chose
Label: Def Jam Recordings
Year: 2024