Get Guardian on GoogleFola has built his following on melody and feeling, and the question hanging over his second album is whether that voice can stand without borrowed star power. 9, a 14-track project released on October 9, is crowded with big names: Davido, Ayra Starr, BNXN, Darkoo, Bella Shmurda, and Zlatan all appear. For the Dangbana Republik act, whose real name is Afolarin Odunlami, the guests list shows how far he has come. It is also a test.
The first numbers were strong. 9 reached the top of Apple Music Nigeria’s albums chart soon after release, and in an early snapshot reported on October 9, all 14 tracks sat in the platform’s Nigerian Top 100. By the next morning, HypeTribe’s chart report had 13 of them in the top 20. Four songs released ahead of the album, Attention!, Treat U Right, Miss U II (Nriri) and Fine Ting, held some of the best positions. Many listeners already knew some of these songs, so, the album landed on an audience that had been warmed up. That is not the same as a crowd discovering a whole body of work at once. Expectations were high before the release, too. His 2025 debut, Catharsis, showed he could carry his melodic style across a full album and not just a hit single.
At the 2026 Headies, he led the nominations with 10, including Album of the Year and Best R&B Album for Catharsis, plus Best Recording of the Year and Next Rated. Those nods cover earlier work, not 9, but they set the bar. Fola is no longer judged as a newcomer. He is judged against himself.
The Striker’s Number
The title is a football joke with a serious edge. The number nine is the striker’s shirt, the player expected to finish chances. Fola says that is how people see him. “Every single song I put out, it just hits. It’s no misses. So they always call me striker because a striker never misses,” he said on Apple Music’s Africa Now Radio.
It is a confident claim, and the album’s themes of ambition, growth and reward match it. But a striker is judged by what he does with the chances, not by how many arrive. For Fola, those chances are the bigger audience and the better-known collaborators. They will count most if he uses them to deepen his own sound.
He told The Native that originality is his rule. “I have always told myself that I’ll always make sure originality is my thing. I won’t ever try to sound like someone else,” he said. “I always try to do my thing the way I wanna do it the way I see things, the way I perceive things, the way I see everything I put my hands on, and be myself as much as possible.”
Saying it is easy. The music has to prove it, and on 9 he tries to, mixing his usual melodic instincts and romantic storytelling with spiritual reflection and nods to older Nigerian music.
The album opens with Awade, which draws on Fuji and pays tribute to Wasiu Ayinde’s song of the same name. Talking drums give it a traditional texture, while Fola reflects on life’s struggles and the need for divine guidance. It is one of the clearest attempts to link today’s Afrobeats to older Nigerian sounds.
The second track, How Many?, folds in spoken words from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2018 Harvard Class Day address, which touches on fear, procrastination, self-doubt and the demands of creativity. It gives the album a reflective side that goes beyond romance and celebration.
Crime samples 2Baba’s If Love Is a Crime, placing Fola in conversation with an earlier generation of Nigerian pop. He does not present himself as cut off from the country’s musical past. He credits the people who shaped the sound younger artistes now work with.
He thanked both Adichie and 2Baba publicly. “Today, I’m beyond grateful to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the legendary 2Baba for their contribution to the arts, their blessings on my sophomore, and for leaving my generation multiple standards to aspire to,” he wrote on X.
Collaboration Without Losing The Lead
The guests list is central to the album’s appeal, but it carries a risk. With established names in prominent slots, 9 could come across as a collection of opportunities won through association. Fola has to keep the project his own.
His account to The Native suggests he was hands-on. 2am in Toronto, featuring Davido, was not meant for the album at first. He had finished the project and returned to the recording while in Toronto.
“I had the song already, and it was not even one of my favourite songs. It was not in contention for the songs I was going to pick for the album,” he said.
After listening again, he felt it needed something extra and approached Davido. In his telling, the feature was a fix for a song he had reconsidered, not a famous name added to a finished record.
Treat U Right, with Ayra Starr, grew out of a different moment. Fola says he had finished his verse when he heard one of her songs and decided to reach out to her. The collaboration, he explained, came from his response to her music.
BNXN features on My Type; he described him as one of the early industry figures who spotted his potential and backed him, and the two have continued to appear on each other’s projects.
On It’s Over, the closing track, he brings together Bella Shmurda and Zlatan. Fola said he had already picked it as the album’s closer and wanted Zlatan on it to give it a fitting finish. He described Bella Shmurda as a long-time collaborator and said his place was deliberate too.
These accounts show that Fola helped choose and shape the features. They do not show how much control he had over the songwriting, production, sequencing, recording decisions or the business behind the album.
Only Fola and his management can answer that. Still, in an industry where a feature can open a new audience, being able to make deliberate choices is part of building a lasting identity.
The Numbers, The Verdict
The chart story is a good start, but it has limits. Phenomenal reported that the album topped Apple Music Nigeria’s albums chart by October 12. Streaming charts, though, are snapshots of particular platforms on particular days. They do not tell you total sales, whether listeners stick around, profits or the size of an artiste’s audience across all services.
They also show how much earlier singles can lift an album. In Hype Tribe’s October 10 snapshot, Attention!, Treat U Right, Miss U II (Nriri) and 2am in Toronto sat in prominent positions, and the report noted that the previously released tracks were performing strongly alongside the new material. That is no knock on the achievement. It does mean the real test comes later, when the launch excitement fades and the unfamiliar songs have to find listeners of their own.
In an October 28 review for The Nollywood Reporter, Abioye Damilare Samson praised Fola’s vocal delivery as one of his strongest assets. He also credited the production for letting him move between Afrobeats, R&B, highlife influences and percussion-led arrangements without losing the softness of his voice.
The review found stretches where the album loses momentum. It argued that familiar phrasing and delivery come round too often, particularly on Waf. The reviewer found him most convincing when melody met direct emotion, as on Miss U II (Nriri) and Stubborn. Awade and How Many? brought in spiritual and motivational themes, and Treat U Right, with Ayra Starr, was singled out as one of the more compelling moments.
The review is a useful counterweight to the chart figures. Streams measure how people respond to music, while criticism looks at how well it is built and developed. Neither replaces the other. The two also need not conflict. An album can sell well and still leave room to grow, and the complaint about repetition reads less like a verdict on what he can do than a nudge to push his writing and vocal arrangements further.
What Comes Next
Fola’s rise has been helped by the visibility that comes from working with bigger names. But his own account suggests he does not want to stay a guest in other people’s worlds. He wants to lead projects, make the calls on his records and develop a sound listeners can pick out without a featured name.
He made that clear when The Native asked where he hopes to stand in five years. “I still want to be the striker. I just want to be known for doing great things, shutting down the arenas, getting the Grammys, and doing everything I can for Afrobeats,” he said.
That is a big ambition, and a good album launch will not be enough. He will need to keep growing as a songwriter, try new production directions and show that his music holds attention once the excitement of a release has passed. He also needs a live identity and a connection with fans who come for his own records, not just his collaborations.
SBthaproducer, Magicsticks and Dave Nunes are among the producers on 9, and they give it a varied foundation with movement between moods and influences. The next question is how far can he stretch that range while keeping the vocal character at the centre of his appeal.
There is also the matter of travel. A growing profile in Nigeria is a solid base, but the international goals he has spoken about will need steady releases, strong live shows and a catalogue people recognise. His wish to help Afrobeats grow will be judged by the music he keeps making.
For now, 9 has done what it needed to first: it has kept him in the conversation. The chart run shows his audience was ready, and the review points to both the strengths of his sound and the places it needs work.
The task now is to make those experiments more consistent, so that each new project shows listeners something they did not already know.
The number nine carries the expectation of a decisive finish. In music, however, a successful career is not built on one scoring run. It depends on the ability to adapt, create and remain relevant after the applause surrounding a new release has subsided.
He has made a persuasive case for his growing commercial relevance with 9. Whether the album marks the arrival of a fully formed Afrobeats force will depend on what comes next: not simply more collaborations or higher chart positions, but a body of work that listeners can recognise as unmistakably his.
As it moves beyond its release-week momentum, the bigger test is whether the singer can turn commercial attention into a distinctive and enduring musical identity.
