Nigeria’s DJ Lambo to release her first EP

To make the EP, titled A Tale of Two Cities, she worked with local producers Winn Yam Ayessaki, Bennie Macaulay, Ckay and Tempo, to fuse Afrobeats and Afro-house. She has featured Nigeria's Reminisce, Lady Donli, Ice Prince, Iyanya, Nosa and Buju as well as South Africans Toya Delazy, Zanda Zakuza, Winn and Nizreen.

DJ Lambo says the EP is inspired by her experiences in Lagos and Johannesburg, where she studied music production between January 2019 and January 2020. She told Music In Africa that the most challenging phase of the EP's production was to approach music without clinging on to "expectations and influences by outside forces."

"The EP is a testament to patience, and above all, to the cultivation of personal style and trusting in your taste and all the different paths it can lead you down if you let it," she said. "The most challenging song to produce was 'Phoenix' because we lost all the recorded data at some point. So we had to work with the available material, which was very little. It almost didn't make it on the EP, but we made it work."

DJ Lambo also urged music stakeholders to create inclusivity in order to enable female DJs to get more radio airplay and bookings at venues.

"Music is continuously evolving, especially on the continent. The world is now listening. Music is now a very serious business, and it would be fantastic if more women were to be a part of this growth," she said.

Born Olawunmi Okerayi, the disk jockey launched her career in 2008 as a radio personality before becoming the official DJ of M.I Abaga. In 2013, she signed to Loopy Music before its merger with Chocolate City in 2015. Two years later, she was appointed the head of Choc Boi Nation, a record imprint of Chocolate City Music, making her one of the most influential female record label executives in the Nigerian music industry.

Pre-save A Tale of Two Cities on Apple Music.