5 Times Olamide Blew An Artist With A Feature

Olamide Gbenga Adedeji popularly known as Olamide, is no doubt one of the leading artists in Nigeria. In the early stage of his career, he released some of the most viral songs in Afrobeats history that at some point, it felt like he was the only one in the space. Some of his viral songs include Bobo, Who You Epp, Story For the Gods, Awon Goons Mi, Wo, Science Student, Pawon, amongst others.

Olamide’s trait as a true leader became evident when he started his record label at 23. He has since transformed the lives of several artists who have either gone ahead to create their own labels, or generally done well for themselves musically and in other aspects of life.

Olamide has a total of 9 studio albums, which is one of the highest number of albums owned by an Afropop artist. This article takes us down memory lane to discover some of the Nigerian artists Olamide brought into limelight, as a featured artist on their song, or them on his.

Zlatan

Zlatan started his musical career in 2012 but struggled to get the requisite attention to propel him into greatness. In 2017, he featured Olamide in his single titled “My Body“, and that was the beginning of his journey towards stardom. Thereafter, he released hit singles like “Jogor” ft. Naira Marley & Lil Kesh, “Zanku (Legwork)“, “Osanle“ ft. Davido and more. Fast forward to 2023 and Zlatan is still very relevant in the Afrobeats ministry, where he continues to preach with rap lines indexed with fire ad-libs.

Bella Shmurda

While an undergraduate at the Lagos State University, Bella Shmurda released his first single “Vision 2020“. This track was an amazing one but didn’t get the recognition it deserved. He went on to release a subsequent song “Upgrade”, which was also interesting but once again lacked the needed platform to help showcase his talent to the world.

Through the support of his friend and a renowned hypeman/influencer and in recent times A&R expert – Poco Lee, he featured Olamide on the remix of his “Vision 2020” and that marked the beginning of his success in the Nigerian music industry. He has since then released viral hits like Cash App, Rush, Philo ft. Omah Lay and more.

Portable

Even with some of his comical statements like “Nobody blow me, I blow myself, na me sing Zazoo”, Portable continues to reference the song that brought him to limelight. Prior to the release of this song, he had an EP titled “Wanted” and although he must have had a certain level of listenership, the P.Priime-produced song with Olamide titled “Zazoo Zeh“, put him in the eyes and minds of the public.

He has thrived on that support and released more songs that have created a large fanbase for him and helped him grow musically. Some of these songs include “Money Before You Love“, “Azaman“, “Apostle“, amongst others. Portable now thrives in giving us hit songs whenever anyone upsets him, including government officials.

Asake

This particular feature is probably the best that has happened between Olamide and any artist. This feature led to the total transformation of Asake’s musical career. Prior to this, Asake had a few known songs like “Mr Money” and a remix of the same song that featured Zlatan and Peruzzi, but “Omo Ope“ with Olamide was the song that stamped the beginning of his dominance in Afrobeats.

The icing on the cake was his sign-in to Olamide’s YBNL record label in 2022, which led to his breaking of multiple records in the Nigerian music industry. Some of his popular songs after this feature include “Sungba“, “Trabaye“, “Peace Be Unto You“, “Terminator“ and more.

Till date, Asake is the only Nigerian artist to have his song or a song with him as a featured artist, in the top three of every Nigerian music Chart across DSPs throughout a calendar year.

Fave

Fave, an amazing singer, got an opportunity to work with Olamidé for the first time on his “UY SCUTI” album. Having featured on two tracks off the album and showed dexterity as a talented artist, everyone began to wonder who had this unique voice, and that created the right amount of exposure she needed.

Subsequently, Fave released her viral song “Baby Riddim”, which made her known to the world. She has since then, worked with several other artists like Ajebo hustlers, T.I.Blaze, and in recent times, Davido.

Other mentions would be Kemuel, T.I Blaze, Badboy Timz, Jamopyper and a couple of others.

Olamide’s influence in the Nigerian music industry is vivid and he continues to sustain this influence through mentoring young artists, signing them to his label and a plethora of other things. He is a model artist in every way, and it would be interesting to see more of our top artists toe this line.