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12 years ago, the stars seemed to be aligning for Sasha Keable. She inked a record deal with Polydor and aced her guest appearance on Disclosure’s breakthrough Settle album (“Voices”), but industry pressures and creative differences led to a years-long break that ended with 2018’s “That’s the S—t” — a swaggering, soulful number that set the tone for her 2020s releases.
Now, armed with a Flight Club partnership that began two years ago, Keable isn’t just back in the saddle; she’s one of the most arresting voices in a powerful wave of new R&B acts helping give the genre a rejuvenated mainstream look. This summer (Aug. 8), she followed her well-received NPR Tiny Desk set with her Act Right EP, which included collaborations with Grammy winners Leon Thomas (“He’s really quick and his brain is incredible”) and BEAM. On the evening of her conversation with Billboard (Nov. 6), she’ll play New York City’s iconic Madison Square Garden venue as an opener for Giveon’s latest tour.
With an earthy vibrato and dark timbre reminiscent of Amy Winehouse, Keable primarily blends two formative musical eras in her work: the storytelling of ‘70s R&B and the melodic vocal stacks and rhythmic cadences of ‘00s R&B. Her meticulous amalgamation of her influences is as homegrown as it is nurtured by her alma mater, the BRIT School, which has churned out fellow 2020s breakthrough stars like Raye, Olivia Dean, Lola Young, Cat Burns and Rachel Chinouriri.
Keable draws equally from her South London stomping grounds and Colombian heritage, blending the intimacy of Brixton open mic nights with the punchiness of her beloved horn sections in her explorations of love, relationships and maturation. Like many U.K. R&B artists, Keable’s commitment to honoring her artistic inclinations and embrace of the term “R&B” have helped her overcome the barriers in her home country’s music industry, and capture the ears of global R&B icons like Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland and Rihanna.
“I was doing R&B [in the U.K.] when people were saying, ‘No, you can’t say you do R&B, you have to say that you do neo-soul,’” Keable tells Billboard. “We don’t have to do that anymore. R&B and soul will always be my bread and butter. That will always be what I go back to, but I also love pushing the limits of what it means to make music in general.”
Below, Billboard’s final R&B Rookie of the Month for 2025 reveals who she’s been in the studio with, rails against AI artists like Xania Monet, and explains how D’Angelon influenced her songwriting.
What are some of your earliest musical memories?
I really remember listening to Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” and being like, “Wow, this is amazing,” even though I had no idea what the lyrics meant. I still don’t think anyone knows what the lyrics mean. Both my parents are really into music and love going to gigs. My mom was really into Queen, and my dad goes to four gigs a week. I started writing music when I was eight or nine.
But my sister was really the one who introduced me to R&B music. She was listening to Pretty Ricky. Early Beyoncé, obviously Destiny’s Child. Once I found that, I ran with it and fell in love. And then my uncle showed me Donny Hathaway when I was 12, and that was the first time a voice moved me so much. I became obsessed with Donny Hathaway, and then I got really into Stevie Wonder. I went backwards and did a deep dive into the origins of R&B. I got super into Motown and Tammi Terrell — that was really my bread and butter. And still is, to be honest.
What kind of music did you consume growing up in London?
Grime was huge. Everyone was into raves and dubstep. When I was a teenager, it was a lot of drum and bass, jungle, dub, and reggae. We used to go to different [themed] nights all the time in Brixton, which fueled my weekends. There’s a place called Brixton Jamm, where we would literally be on Friday and Saturday, and then up the road at some other place on a Thursday. I think the most formative song from my youth was probably “Twice” by Little Dragon. That [song] followed me throughout any traumatic time in my life; I always turned to that song.
What do you remember from the beginning of your music industry journey when you were collaborating with Disclosure and signing to Polydor?
I’m not going to lie, I don’t really want to talk about that period of my life anymore. I can’t speak about it positively, and I don’t really want to dwell too much on the negative aspects. It’s just traumatic as f—k.
When did you start to feel a project coming together? When did you know Act Right was complete?
When I wrote “Act Right,” –– the title track – I knew what the direction of the project was going to be. I knew what I wanted to get off my chest. I had maybe two different versions of the project, but none of it felt right. Those songs are still going to come out; they just didn’t fit [Act Right]. Everything came really quickly after “Act Right”; I wrote [the whole project] in two months.
What’s changed about your approach to the creative process?
I don’t overthink things as much, and I’m a lot kinder to myself in the studio. For a moment, I had this perspective that if I didn’t make a song that day, then I was a failure. Now, I’m like, “If I’m not feeling it, I’m leaving.” I’ve found the joy in creating a lot more. Before, I felt like I needed to please everyone else. I think that’s why I always ended up with music that was middle of the road, not fulfilling, and felt like I was trying to please the label, management, or whoever the f—k. And it didn’t please anyone. I also used to write on paper since the beginning of f—king time, and now I only write on my phone. It’s so much f—king quicker because I can just fling my ideas down and not get distracted doodling.
What’s your favorite part of the music-making process, and what part frustrates you the most?
I hate that I can’t play an instrument. I’m such a stupid little rat for not listening to my mum and taking up guitar! But I was adamant that I wanted to play piano, so I started teaching myself — because they didn’t do piano lessons in my school. So, I learned the flute, which is stupid. My mum was like, “What the f—k are you going to do with that?” And I was like, “It worked for Lizzo!” But, I’m not going to lie, who the f—k wants to listen to me play flute? No one.
I obviously gave it up, because I don’t want to f—king play a stupid instrument. But I should have just kept playing, because at least I could sight-read, and then it would have translated into a different instrument. But no, I wanted to get drunk as a teenager. I could be writing songs on my own! I hate having to wait for the studio to have my ideas come to life.
Has it sunk in that Beyoncé just be vibing to your music?
Not at all. I was writing for Kelly Rowland the other day — obviously, that was insane — and she was like, “I love your music, I’ve been listening to you all summer!” And I was like, “Bro, what is life?” Like… you’re Kelly Rowland! And you’re listening to me! That’s insane. She was like, “I need to know who you grew up listening to,” and I’m like, “…You!” It was so mad. I’ve literally got videos of me dancing around my room to Destiny’s Child when I was 9. It’s so weird, but I don’t really think about it too much.
What excites you most about R&B right now?
I’m just happy people are singing — like really singing. It’s nice to hear real musicality again. It really stems from a lot of church singers, and that’s always going to be something I gravitate towards. I love singers. I love people who show off what the f—k they can do with their voice because it really is an art. It’s nice to hear the music I enjoy so much being recognized and loved.
How do you compare navigating the R&B space in the U.K. versus the U.S.?
There’s a lot more respect for R&B in America than there is in the U.K. Within the industry, there’s a certain ceiling you hit in the U.K., and you’re probably not going to go any further. Especially when you’re from the UK, which is weird. It’s an ears and marketing thing. Not as many people [in the U.K.] grew up listening to R&B. It’s all the same s—t, we’re just from the U.K — just might be doing it a little better.
Which songwriters inspire you?
D’Angelo has always been a huge inspiration for my background vocals. I love the extremely pushed BVs in his arrangements. When I stack my vocals, I think a lot about horn sections. Gospel also influences my stacks a lot. Brandy, in terms of harmonies, that goes without saying. Donny Hathaway — the songwriting, the tone, and how wide his voice feels in the mix. Stevie Wonder is storytelling and the feel-good aspect. I really do love a good horn; I think that has a lot to do with my Colombian heritage. Latin music typically has a lot of horns, and that’s my favorite thing to arrange in the studio.
What are your thoughts on this current wave of AI-generated “artists?”
I’m not against people using things like Suno as a reference, but I think to use it correctly, you have to be a true artist. I don’t think AI artists [are] ethical, and I don’t think it’s safe. It’s really a slap in the face. You’re not a music lover if you’re getting involved with that. I don’t f—k with Timbaland at all on what he’s doing; I think it’s a disservice to all the work he’s done. He knows how much resilience it takes, how hard it is, and how often you don’t make any f—king money. It’s disrespectful to artists who have been grinding and really disrespectful to people who have made lifelong careers from art.
I don’t think AI will ever take away from the human aspect of making art. I think there’s going to be a complete opposite thing and we’re going to start hearing a lot more songs that aren’t mixed, that are really raw, that feel bedroom-y and not so clean.
What else have you been working on, and when can we expect new music from you?
I’ve been writing a lot for other people, been doing some stuff with Blxst. There’s new music coming really soon. Act Right is so boring to me now. I’m like, “Let’s get the next s—t out.”
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Inci Gürün was supposed to be a banker.
Born and raised in Turkey, Gürün came to the U.S. in 2018 to study finance at UPenn. “My whole personality was that I wore blazers,” she says. “I went to business classes, and I became president of the clubs.”
But just as it had for most of her life, music was bubbling in the background. In Turkey, Gürün had completed a 10-year program that she’d started at age 7 to become a concert pianist, then moved to London at age 17 to pursue classical singing.
Her parents encouraged her to pursue a more secure career. Still, while she was steeped in finance-related academia by day at UPenn, at night she was singing with a jazz band that performed at frat parties around campus. It never occurred to her to pursue any other type of singing style until her junior year, when the jazz band’s backup drummer casually mentioned that he made beats. Intrigued, Gürün met up with him to work on music, laying her vocals over his house production.
This session would help open a new musical world, viral fame, a fresh genre and ultimately a career well outside of finance for the artist who’d come to be known as Inji. Three years after graduating from UPenn, she is today (Oct. 24) releasing her most expansive project to date, Superlame, a 12-track mixtape that drips with attitude and self-aware fun while pulsing with club-ready productions.
This path began unfolding back at UPenn, when Inji brought the house production she’d worked on to another UPenn student who was also a rapper, asking him to help her write a song. In 2022, they made a catchy, cheeky house-infused dance pop track called “Gaslight,” put a 15-second snippet of it TikTok, then watched it go viral. (As of publication date, there are 4.7 million videos on the platform using the song.) Suddenly, an influx of labels and managers were reaching out and asking about who Inji was.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, could I be an artist? Is this forbidden dream now becoming a reality?” Inji says with a laugh while talking to Billboard over Zoom from her place in New York.
This viral moment happened during the summer before her senior year, when she was interning at global consulting firm Bain & Company in New York City. “I’d literally be there in a suit going to take secret phone calls from my lawyer, like,’ Arista is saying they’ll give me this much for the single! They want to do a five song deal!’ before sitting back down at her desk to pore over spreadsheets.
But the virality of “Gaslight,” which she ultimately decided to release independently, was hard to keep secret — and soon she was called in for a meeting with human resources.
“I was really scared that they were gonna be like, ‘You can’t be posting TikToks while you’re working here,” Inji says. Instead, they asked her how to grow the company’s following on the platform.
Her senior year was spent navigating classes while plotting her next career move, determined to become more than just another flash in the pan viral star. Inji didn’t sign with any of the labels that had reached out but was taking career advice with the lawyers these labels had connected her with. Her team expanded again after a 2022 singing gig at New York’s Webster Hall was attended by someone from Range Media Partners, who connected her with the person who’d become her manager.
These connections were especially urgent given that Inji’s student visa was set to expire after graduation. Along with acing tests, her mission was to secure the visa that would allow her to stay in the U.S. as an artist. “All of my senior year was like, ‘Let’s build something big enough so that we can get a visa rolling,’” she says.
As such, she hustled, occasionally “ditching like, five days of school to fly to L.A., do five sessions and then release all of those songs.” Collaborators encouraged her to also ditch the jazz singing and try rapping and pop vocals. She’d never seriously considered seriously making electronic music, but she loved the genre and loved to party, so “it felt very natural” when her work veered into the electronic lane.
By the time she graduated, she’d released her second song through Polydor, which then released her debut EP LFG in July of 2023. Instead of filling out finance job applications, she went on tour in New York, Los Angeles and London. “It was one of the most euphoric times of my life,” she says, even if she didn’t yet have a ton of original music to perform.
“At my first shows, I had maybe 25 minutes of original music, so I would play the chorus seven times. I would just loop it and loop it… I remember playing a three-minute song for seven-and-a-half minutes, with breakdowns and drum solos and another chorus just to make the show long enough.”
But while she didn’t yet have a ton of material, she had talent, style and an infectious charisma and confidence, coming off like the down-for-anything best friend you’re guaranteed to have a good time with when you go out clubbing. This vibe helped draw what she calls “a really cute, really fun fan base. They loved it. Nobody cared [that the shows were long].”
And yet for all the dance music she loved (“Mau P and Fisher and Dom Dolla, I’m like a huge fan of all these DJs,” she says, “I go see them all the time”), she was still convinced that she was trying to become a pop star, not seeing a bridge between the two worlds. Then, Charli xcx‘s Brat came out.
“Before Brat, I didn’t see a pop star making dance music like Charli, so I had this misconception of, like, ‘No, I shouldn’t be at a dance label. I should go make pop music because nobody listens to dance.’ I was wrong.”
None of the pop music she’d been making ever came out (“it ended up being extremely boring,” she says) and she found that audiences on her first tour had better reaction to her electronic work anyways. “People came in sunglasses, they came to rave, they came drunk. They wanted to jump and oomph and do the dance thing,” she says. She went back to L.A. and told her collaborators they were definitely making a dance album, with this declaration happening in the same moment Brat was seemingly taking over the world — helping Inji see, she says, “that you can be a pop star through any genre. You just have to do it well.”
It helped that she had a dream team of collaborators, working with producers and songwriters like Zone, Vatican and Alex Chapman, who’d just worked on Troye Sivan‘s Grammy-nominated 2023 smash “Rush.” These sessions all built to Inji’s Superlame, a 12-track mixtape out today (Oct. 24) via AWAL Recordings. Featuring three previously released singles that together have more than three millions streams on Spotify alone, the project delivers sharp, inventive dance productions and lyrics both rapped and sung that traverse such relatable topics as hookups, hangovers (“to the couch!” she shouts on the party anthem “Bodega”), going out, having fun and then doing it all over again.
As straightforward as she is charming, Inji says she already knows she can make something that tops it. “One of my reasons for calling it a ‘mixtape’ is because I want my debut album to be even better,” she says. “I love the mixtape, and think it brings so much to my project.”
But she also sees a long runway to keep growing. While she’s previously gotten frustrated when her songs didn’t blow up more than they did, today she admits that “I’m so glad they didn’t. Now I see how artistry takes a long time, and it would have been bad if something got bigger than what I was ready for.”
This wisdom also applies to her live performances, which this year have included the Berlin and Paris editions of Lollapalooza, Osheaga and San Francisco’s Outside Lands. Going back to analyze footage of these performances like a professional athlete, Inji sees how she could, and will, be better, and how that will serve her as she works towards her goals. “If last year I was sad that didn’t get Coachella, now I’m glad we didn’t,” she says, “because I want to be a better singer, dancer and a performer with better songs at Coachella.”
Beyond just putting in the hours, she knows how she’s going to achieve it. While dance music vocalists often live in the shadows of the scene, her goal is to put herself, her voice, her personality and her stories at the fore. “A few years ago, I think there was such little dance music that had the pop storytelling and lyricism and artistry around it,” she says. “The lyrics, for me to like it, have to be a little crazy and funny. When I’m writing, I want to either make people gasp or giggle. I always want them to say, ‘Who is the girl that just said that in my ears? I must know who she is.’”
While her vision is clear, her parents back in Turkey are still giving her deadlines to “make it” before she falls back on her finance degree, along with feedback that highlights her raw ambition.
“At Lollapalooza Paris my mom watched me on the mainstage and was like, ‘Good.’ Then she watched Olivia Rodrigo and she was, ‘Well, Olivia was a lot better than you.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, duh!’ I’ll get there. Give me six months.”
MOLIY was working at a Victoria’s Secret in Orlando, Fla. after dropping out of college at 19 when her back started hurting from all the restocking. One day, “they were calling me in for work. I just muted my phone and never went back,” she tells Billboard with a chuckle.
She moved back home to Accra, Ghana soon after and decided to pursue music full time after her friends connected her to local creatives, and she constantly found herself in the studio. MOLIY grew up around all kinds of music: Her mother owned a restaurant/bar called The Gomeries right next to their house that played Céline Dion, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston all night long. Meanwhile at the crib, MOLIY listened to Rihanna, Beyoncé, Missy Elliott and Keri Hilson as well as Ghanaian acts like Eazzy, Itz Tiffany, Sister Deborah and MzBel. Her eclectic music taste, paired with the rise of Nigeria’s subcultural alté scene that has also influenced some Ghanaian artists, “opened my mind to thinking even though I may not sound like the ideal Ghanaian artist, I could create a space for myself,” she says. “That just kept me going.”
Months after dropping her introspective, Afro-fusion debut EP Wondergirl, MOLIY garnered buzz in 2020 when she appeared on fellow Ghanaian artist Amaarae’s Afropop bop “Sad Girlz Luv Money.” The remix, featuring Kali Uchis, reached No. 80 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following year, and it hit No. 28 on Rhythmic Airplay.
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Then at the end of last year – after months of teasing it with a now-viral dance of her whining her waist while covering her face with her hands – MOLIY released “Shake It To The Max (FLY),” an Afro-dancehall club banger that’s bound to make any listener “bend your back,” “bend your knees” and buss it down once the bass-bumping production and scratching hits. Jamaican stars Shenseea and Skillibeng – the latter of whom assisted another African darling, Tyla, on last year’s “Jump” – enhanced the dancehall vibes when they hopped on the remix. And Davido, Victoria Monét, Ciara, J-Hope, Spice and many more have been shaking it to the max all over the internet.
With the help of the remix, “Shake It To The Max” has spent six weeks (and counting) at No. 1 on U.S. Afrobeats Songs and is in the top 10 of the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. US. Four years after her feature on “Sad Girlz Luv Money,” MOLIY has returned to the Hot 100, as “Shake It to the Max” has reached No. 55 (chart dated June 21), and she’s back at radio with the song reaching No. 18 on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay. “Shake It to the Max” has registered 47 million official on-demand U.S. streams and 289.3 million official on-demand global streams (through June 12), according to Luminate.
Billboard spoke with June’s African Rookie of the Month about reflecting on the success of “Sad Girlz Luv Money,” creating a more “upbeat and energetic” vibe with “Shake It to the Max,” officially meeting Vybz Kartel after performing with him at his first U.S. show in 20 years, and anticipating the remix with him and Stefflon Don.
How did your upbringing impact the music you listen to and the music you make?
Although we have our own local music heavy on rotation, we’re also very in touch with worldwide music. There’s a lot of music that tends to cross over especially from major acts, like Céline Dion, MJ, Whitney Houston, Chris Brown. I went to an international high school, so [I was] around students from different cultures who would play stuff. I was lucky enough to have heard lots of different styles that I was drawn to, like hip-hop, R&B, dancehall, Afrobeats, highlife, hiplife.
And what kind of music do you listen to now?
I’m listening to Brazilian funk, Caribbean music, soca, EDM-infused Caribbean music as well like Major Lazer. I’m trying to create a sound that’s in that realm, so that’s all I listen to right now.
While you were in Florida, you started studying business administration in college but eventually dropped out. What made you decide to move back to Ghana?
My brother and sister were able to figure out [work and school] a lot better. I don’t know why I didn’t feel like it was working. I don’t think I was making friends that much, and the whole job thing was not what I expected when I was moving to the U.S. There’s a certain fantasy of how people assume leaving Ghana and going to live outside is. For more fortunate people with heavy bank accounts, it’s probably easier to adjust. But when you’re trying to hustle and figure it out by yourself, and you’re young, it’s difficult. I gave up. I wasn’t down for that, so I went back to my mom. I’m like, “Mom, I’m home!” [Laughs.]
How did you transition into making music full time in Ghana?
It started with me listening to YouTube beats and trying to write music. I would pour myself a glass of wine in the middle of the night and just be vibing, freestyling melodies and writing. I was also observing the music industry in Ghana and Africa, especially in Nigeria, because Nigeria has this whole scene of alternative music, and people were coming out with some crazy sounds — sounds you wouldn’t expect to hear from an African. It opened my mind to thinking even though I may not sound like the ideal Ghanaian artist, I could create a space for myself. That just kept me going.
What kind of sounds and styles does your music encompass? How would you describe your music in your own words?
It’s very worldwide. I sing in English even though I could try to tap into some of the Ghanaian dialects like Twi. Sometimes people ask me, “Why don’t you make music in this language?” That’s because I feel English is the most universal language. My sound is worldwide, but it’s Afro-fusion because you can hear it in my accent, in my wordplay and even in some of things I speak about. It’s very influenced by hip-hop, dancehall and a lot of the music I grew up listening to.
I remember early stages of being obsessed with music. The first stage was pop, which is Michael. And then the second stage was hip-hop. Oh my God, did I love Eminem! I would just listen to an entire song, especially “Mockingbird,” and write down all the lyrics and try to sing it in the same way. Then after hip-hop, I graduated to dancehall. From dancehall is when I started listening to Afrobeats because at that stage, the sound was growing globally. I was being introduced to Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy. I went through all these stages of loving these genres so much that now [my music] is a combination.
Prior to the success of “Shake It to the Max (FLY),” you debuted on the Hot 100 in 2021 with the Kali Uchis remix of Amaarae’s “Sad Girlz Luv Money.” Four years later, what does the success of that song mean to you and your career?
When that happened, it made me a big believer in what I was doing. You can have success at home, but once it’s crossing over to the U.S. and the rest of the world, it grew my faith a lot more. It’s a reassuring feeling because I’m living in my purpose when I’m making my music. When something like that happens, it’s a big pat on the shoulder like, “OK, babes, you’re on the right track. Keep going.”
Outside of “Sad Girlz Luv Money,” you appear on another song on Amaarae’s THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW album: “Feel a Way,” alongside your sister Mellissa. You and Mellissa are also both featured on Boj’s “In a Loop” in 2022. Were those merely coincidences, or did you two purposefully hop on those songs together?
Most of the time, we’re together. When I’m going into a session, I need her moral support. At the time, I felt like I would be more comfortable if she was there. She’s also super creative and talented, so if I needed help, she could tap in. Boj requested the both of us to pull up. But with Amaarae, she came with me to support me, but while she was there, she’s like, “Wait, I have this idea.” And then Amaarae is like, “Well, do it.” [Laughs.] That’s how that happened.
At the 2025 Telecel Ghana Music Awards, Stonebwoy shouted you out during his acceptance speech when he won best reggae/dancehall song of the year, saying that he “respected” how you’ve been “taking [dancehall] where nobody expected it to go within a very short while.” Why have you gravitated toward dancehall so much?
I wouldn’t say my initial decision was to just make dancehall music. I knew I wanted to make something that was upbeat and energetic, something people could dance to. Most of my previous music people would say is chill, sexy and vibey. I would hear comments like, “I love to hear your music when I’m taking a drive” or “I love to hear your music when I’m in my room chilling with my girl.” But I want to be heard in different places. I want to be heard in the club. I want to be heard at the festivals. When I met [producers Silent Addy and Disco Neil], it was a combination of me knowing I wanted to create a certain vibe and knowing that these guys make dancehall, we merged these two ideas and went from there.
Prior to “Shake It to the Max,” “Shake It” was featured on your 2022 EP Mahogany St. Is there any relationship between the two songs?
No, not at all. [Laughs.] It’s so funny because when I was teasing “Shake It to the Max” and it wasn’t out yet, I could see the streaming numbers for that song going up because people thought they were searching for it and they were gonna find it there.
Take me back through the making of “Shake It to the Max.”
I was in Orlando and I was speaking to this producer Tejiri, he worked with Tems on “Wait For U.” I found him on Instagram and I’m like, “Hey, let’s work.” We were trying to find ways to make it happen. I went to LA specifically to work with him, and then the second time, he was like, “I’m coming to Miami and I’m going to be working with a whole bunch of different people. You should pull up.” So we linked up. I met a couple different producers: Mr. NaisGai (he works with Rauw Alejandro), Silent Addy and Disco Neil. Tejiri was trying to work on something with them for their artists’ projects. At the time, we were thinking, “OK, MOLIY is here, maybe we can create something for her to collab on the projects, or we could just make some records.” Some of the work we did was a collaboration between Tejiri and Silent Addy and Disco Neil.
A year later, we had had three separate sessions together. The last session was in August, and we created three or four songs. The last one was “Shake It to the Max.” Earlier in 2024, I hadn’t dropped any music by myself. [My manager Therese Jones and I] were trying to figure out how we can take things to the next level for me. She was like, “You know what, MOLIY? Why don’t you tease some music?” I teased about three or four songs in one Instagram post. When I added “Shake It to the Max,” I was like, “Hmm, this song is actually a vibe.” After that post, I wouldn’t say anyone particularly screamed out, “Oh my God, we love that one!” I just kept doing videos to this one song on TikTok and that’s when I started trying to be creative with what I do and how I’m posting it.
Why were Shenseea and Skillibeng the right artists for the remix?
In my opinion, they’re the top of the top of the top, top, top of the top in Jamaica. I genuinely love each of their music, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I would not change anything with how that remix happened. They loved the song. The original song was No. 1 in Jamaica, and it was great leverage to make them feel like it was a good idea. I didn’t make it happen, however. It was Silent Addy and Disco Neil. The producers made the conversations happen.
Since that remix has blown up, you’ve released more with other artists like Major Lazer, Gladdest and Kalash and Maureen. What inspired that strategy?
With the Kalash and Maureen one, that was also the producers. They’re very hands-on with how these remixes came about. Even with Major Lazer, it was them as well. They have relationships with these people already [because of] the dancehall industry. The first time I came across Gladdest was [when] she was doing the dance challenge in the middle of NYC. The next time I came across her, she did a freestyle to it on her TikTok. It was [getting] a lot of positive reactions. The same way I was posting practically every day to promote the “Shake It to the Max” remix, she was posting every day to promote her freestyle. She was super passionate about it, and there was no way we were not going to put out the record with her as well. What I love most about all of this is the people that we’ve worked with genuinely wanted to be part of the moment. They’re supported it, they’ve promoted it, and it feels so organic and amazing.
When can fans expect the Stefflon Don and Vybz Kartel remix?
I honestly don’t know. I want it to come out. She wants it to come out. Vybz is also excited for it to come out. We’re working on it with our teams. There were some [Vybz] verses going around TikTok. I remember people asking me, “Why are you not putting out the Vybz version?” I’m like, “Guys, it’s not official.” Some DJ probably put one of his old verses on the song and it was making rounds on TikTok. And then Steff comes along and was like, “Babe, I got Vybz.” [Laughs.] It’s really dope, and I’m excited for it to come out.
Vybz brought you out as one of his special guests during his one of his two historic sold-out shows at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in April. How did the opportunity come about? Considering dancehall is a crucial element in your music’s DNA, what was it like to share the stage with the King of Dancehall himself?
It’s insane. Everything happens so fast, you don’t get a moment to soak it all in. But every moment of that was super exciting. Prior to being on stage, I actually hadn’t met him yet. So afterwards, I got to meet him, and he was just so nice and so cool. The aura was there. Gamma made that happen. They spoke to him about it, and they also got Skilli and Shen to pull up.
Would you say that’s the biggest “pinch me” moment of your career so far, or does another moment come to mind?
It’s definitely one of the first “pinch me” moments during this entire process. No, the first one would be hearing Shen and Skilli on the song officially. People were dropping freestyles, and they posted their verses as freestyles. But me knowing that the song is actually coming out with them was the first “pinch me” moment because I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else for the first remix.
The second would be this Billboard Hot 100 second moment. When you’re an artist and people see you doing something great, it’s like, “Wow, amazing! But can you do it again?” Throughout this process, there are so many highs and lows and so many moments I’ve had to remind myself to be positive and be hopeful. It’s crazy to see when something amazing does happen. It’s not all for nothing.
Who would you love to collaborate with this year?
Me and Drake would be fire. Me and Wizkid would be fire. Doja Cat would be amazing. I also really like Ice Spice. That would be so, so, so cute. Cash Cobain would be dope.
What’s next for MOLIY in 2025?
There should be a project, I wouldn’t say an album, but there should be a project coming out. I would hope it would be more like I’m dropping singles and then at the end of it, there ends up being a project. I’m also on the road right now. We’re doing MOLIY on the road and I have so many shows lined up, just trying to spread the gospel of “Shake It to the Max.”
Bianca Oblivion had earned a degree in public health from Yale, a masters degree in epidemiology from UCLA and another masters in medical anthropology from Boston University, but what she really wanted to do was DJ.
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Growing up in a music loving family, the Los Angeles native immersed herself in city’s the sprawling music scenes as an adolescent and teen, while also taking dance classes in myriad styles. The love of music was just in her, and it went with her to Yale, where she was the music director for the school’s radio station and also hosted her own show.
Back in LA after graduating from Yale, she got another radio show on KXLU, then one night a friend asked if she wanted to spin at a nightclub in the city’s Culver City neighborhood. While she’d never played for a live crowd, she gathered her records, put some songs on an iPod and played the gig.
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“That was it,” she says. “After that I was like, ‘I need to do this more.’”
Her academic pursuits also continued in tandem, and at school in Boston, she immersed herself in the city’s club scene to the extent that by 2014, she’d been nominated for a DJ of the year award by a local paper. “I very much had these parallel paths and sides of me that that I was somehow balancing,” she says.
But after ultimately earning a trifecta of prestigious degrees, “my job search was not really panning out,” she says. “I wasn’t finding anything I was interested in or seeing how I was going to make these degrees work.”
Again back in L.A., she took a job as a substitute teacher, finding the flexibility of the gig made it possible to play shows. Making it all work, however, required some juggling. When she DJ’d for Princess Nokia at Coachella 2018, she graded papers in her backstage trailer before the show.
The same hustle that’s required to achieve so much in academia has also defined Oblivion’s musical career, which is reaching new levels following the pandemic as she’s focused more and more on her own productions and booked gigs around the world. She signed with the European agency Three Feet High in 2018 and released her first single in February of 2020, with the intention of doing a substantial European club run that summer.
This was, of course, weeks before nightclubs around the world shut down during the pandemic.
But instead of quitting, Oblivion used the global downtime to hone in on making music, without having to care whether or not it was getting played out. “It’s daunting,” she says of learning to produce. “It was not easy, especially while seeing a lot of my friends around me and peers in the scene just flying with that. It was like ‘What am I going to do? How am I even gonna add to this?’”
But with time and tenacity, she carved out a sharp and clubby signature sound that melds techno, bass, drum & bass and a host of other genre. She also developed an email list, organizing her career-related data in precise spreadsheets. (“That is where the training in school and data management came in very handy,” she says.) When the world reopened, she was well positioned.
“Since the pandemic my career has really accelerated,” she says. “I’ve gotten to play in venues and festivals I hadn’t even thought I would.”
Bianca Oblivion
Courtesy of Bianca Oblivion
These gigs include the U.K.’s famous Glastonbury, where she’ll play for the third time next month, a pair of Boiler Room sets, one a b2b with her good friend and fellow DJ Jubilee, and many other events across the U.S., Europe, Brazil and beyond. When speaking to Billboard over Zoom, Oblivion is just about to play a set in London, where she spends a lot of her time and finds inspiration in the cultural and musical diversity.
The next day, she’s playing 6,000 miles away in San Diego, and the day after she’ll do a set at Lightning in a Bottle near Bakersfield, Calif. Her summer schedule includes Shambhala, Dirtybird Campout x Northern Nights, Toronto’s Sojourn Festival and Belgium’s Rampage Open Air.
Oblivion is very aware that her rookie status is one of gradually getting in front of more and more people over the years, rather than the rocket ship of virality. She’s cool with that.
“Sometimes people win the DJ lottery,” she says. “They get a viral moment, or they know the right somebody, or there’s something that pushes them a bit further and accelerates them. I’m not one of those people.”
But “I’m not complaining,” she continues. “I’m built for this in terms of where I came from and my work ethic, getting into more than one Ivy League school. I just set my mind to something and I’m relentless, not in a business shark way where I’m going to stomp on everyone in my path. More like, ‘What can I personally do to make sure I cover every single thing I can to get to that point?”
The grinding has obviously paid off. While it was only a few years ago that she was figuring out how to make music, Oblivion’s releases are ever tighter, fiercer and more stylish. Her latest release, February’s Net Work EP, features four inventive and frequently hard-hitting productions that feature collaborators including Lunice, Machinedrum and Sam Binga. Her forthcoming single is a baile funk track with British dancehall duo RDX, with it’s release date yet to be announced.
“In every industry, there’s going to be people who are going to jump the line or jump ahead, and that’s just what it is,” she says. “The only way to mentally deal, I think, is just to ask myself what I’m contributing. Why am I doing this? Is it because I want to get the best gigs or make the most money? No. I’m doing this because I live music This is my life. This is what I’ve been connected to since I was a child. So I’m going to make music and do stuff that’s going to fulfill me and add to the world that I love.”
The pursuit is also now paying off in ways that even this extremely educated artist didn’t imagine.
“People have come up to me at shows, especially young women, and they tell me they look up to me and like my music. I didn’t have that kind of role model as I was coming up as a DJ, at least not in the same way, so I’m just honored that people are even seeing me as a role model.
“Maybe I’m not that hot new DJ that’s touring everywhere,” she continues. “But obviously if my music is making a difference, and if just by existing in these spaces I can be someone that people look up to and see ‘okay, I can do this too,’ then that means something.”
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union stopped classifying Pluto as our solar system’s ninth planet and demoted its status to “dwarf planet.” But 17 years later, Nigerian singer Shallipopi tells Billboard he’s “claiming it now” as his own domain.
He’s intimately familiar with that level of sovereignty, as Shallipopi – born Crown Uzama in Benin City, Edo, Nigeria – descends from a line of kingmakers, the Uzamas, who are the highest-ranking chiefs in the Benin Kingdom who appoint the new Obas, or traditional Edo rulers. And even though the 1994 Taiwanese kung fu comedy film Shaolin Popey that he grew up watching at home inspired his stage name, his self-appointed nickname Pluto Presido speaks more to his prestige — and the rule he has over his fans, the Plutomanians.
He’s even labeled his musical style “Afro Pluto,” a rousing fusion of Nigerian street-pop, Afropop, hip-hop and amapiano that’s littered with local slang with an infinite number of meanings and guided by a cadence that’s closer to talking than singing. And in just a few short years, it’s helped Shallipopi grow into one of the most in-demand up-and-comers from the continent. He says South African DJ/producer Tyler ICU texted him to hop on the remix of “Mnike,” the biggest amapiano record of 2023 that Rihanna claimed was one of her favorite songs that year. A week before the “Mnike” remix’s release, Shallipopi tag-teamed with Rema on their hometown hit “Benin Boys,” the first single from the latter’s Grammy-nominated album Heis. He’s also linked up with a range of other emerging and established Afrobeats acts like ODUMODUBLVCK on the chant-worthy club banger “Cast” and YBNL boss Olamide on “Order.”
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And two years after his 2023 breakout hit “Elon Musk” in honor of “the richest man in the world,” he says, Shallipopi strives for that level of astronomical wealth on his biggest hit to date “Laho,” which means please in the Edo language of Bini. While he name checks Italian footballer Mario Balotelli to prove the kind of prosperous company he keeps, “Laho” has attracted plenty of ballers in real life.
A month after the song’s release, Indiana Pacers power forward Pascal Siakam explained how he adopted the viral “Laho” dance, featuring pointed fingers and shuffling feet, to celebrate the team’s three-point shots in an interview with ESPN. “I just be playing it, and the guys, I think JJ [James Johnson] is the first one that saw me do it. And he was like, ‘Nah, I like that for a three-point celebration,’” said the Cameroonian basketball player, who added that he and his teammates “gon’ pull it out for sure in the playoffs.”
And while celebrating his team becoming Premier League champions again, Liverpool midfielder Harvey Elliott wrote “Minister of Enjoyment,” a phrase from the hit’s second verse — meaning someone whose main purpose is to find pleasure in life and enjoy it to the fullest — in his Instagram caption. Manchester City defender Rúben Dias posted the song on his Instagram post when his team qualified for their third FA Cup final (even though they eventually lost against Crystal Palace).
“Laho” has peaked at No. 5 on U.S. Afrobeats Songs and has registered 11.5 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate. While major leaguers quickly gravitated to it, the African Giant Burna Boy added his international star power to the song’s second version that Shallipopi doesn’t refer to as the “Laho” remix – because that’s still on the way.
Billboard spoke with May’s African Rookie of the Month about “Laho” becoming an international sports anthem, performing it on massive world stages alongside Burna Boy and Central Cee, and setting his sights on even bigger collaborations.
When did you know music was your calling?
Pretty young, like my early teenage years. We always played music at home growing up, a lot of reggae and Afrobeats, old Afrobeats. My parents played a lot of Fela [Kuti], Lucky Dube, Bob Marley.
Your younger brothers Zerry DL and Famous Pluto also make music. How did you guys come to share that interest and pursue your own paths in this business?
We all grew up in the same house by the same parents who listen to the same music. I feel like they’re following in my footsteps because they feel like they can do it too. And they’re doing it already.
Who are your favorite artists whom you’re currently listening to?
I listen to a lot of Billie Eilish and Ken Carson.
How did you actually start making music?
I went to the studio [when I was 15] and said, “Let me try something. Let me sing on this beat. Let me test this thing finally and see if it goes.” But before that, I had voice memos on my phone, playing free beats off websites and vibing off it. I was just freestyling, not really recording original, mastered songs.
What kind of sounds and styles does your music encompass? How would you describe your music in your own words?
I would say groovy, energetic, fun. Club bangers. It’s for having a good time and raising your mood from being unhappy to being happy.
You earned a computer science degree from Auchi Polytechnic in 2023. How did you balance your schoolwork and your passion for music?
That was not really difficult. I just take music as a hobby and I focused on my education until I was done. When I decided to study computer science, I didn’t think music was really a way to sustain an income. You have to go study a real course to survive. You can’t be studying music, we’re in Africa. I decided to go with science because you have to chase the bag. [Laughs]
It’s dope to see you turn music from a hobby into a career. Is that something you expected?
Honestly, I didn’t expect it. I didn’t expect it to come this soon. But it’s God’s blessing. I was thinking, “Oh, it’s going to take time.” Or the way everybody prays, “Let my time come.” It’s like, “Oh, my time is here.”
A common thread in your music is the local slang you use, from “Evian” in “Elon Musk” to “Oscroh” in “Oscroh (Pepperline).” Which are your favorite terms that you’ve used in your music?
“Evian,” just because it got so popular. It’s my family name.
Travis Scott is a huge fan of “Cast.” What was it like to link up with him, especially when he started singing the song to you?
He was feeling the energy of the song, I think he likes Pluto’s songs. [The video was taken] backstage at his concert in London.
“Cast” recently won best rap single at The Headies this year, while Zerry DL took home the rookie of the year award. That must’ve been a proud family moment!
It was lit. We celebrated together, I’m happy for him. We partied all night and chilled together as family.
You announced in a letter last December that you ended your agreement with Dapper Music and Dvpper Digital because they mishandled your finances. Three months later, you released your biggest record to date with “Laho.” What was going through your head during that in-between period? How were you feeling about the trajectory of your career?
The career of a man is not really in the hands of anybody except him. Your career is in your hands at the end of the day. Your fans are waiting for you to do something, so it’s really the only thing at the end of the day that matters. Nobody’s going to really stop you.
“Laho” has been heavily embraced by the sports world. Did you expect it to become an anthem for athletes all around the world? Why do you think this demographic has gravitated to “Laho” so much?
No, I didn’t expect that one. I’m still in shock. I watch and enjoy, it because they’re not from the same sports. Some play football, some play basketball. I just really f—k with that s–t.
When did Burna Boy get involved with the “Laho” record? He wrote on his Instagram Story that he was on the original version but he couldn’t clear it at the time because it “clashed with other releases that had to do with me.” So should “Laho II” not be considered the remix?
“Laho II” is “Laho II.” We were just in the studio [in Lagos], I was playing the album and he was like, “Yeah, I f—k with that. Let’s do this.” And he dropped a verse on it. Wait for the remix.
Can we expect other big guests on the remix?
Just wait and see. But expect fire.
You two performed the song together at Manchester’s Co-op Live and at Paris’ State de France. What was it like to bring your song to life in front of tens of thousands of people?
It was lit. I was feeling the energy of everyone singing it back to me. It was amazing.
Central Cee also brought you out during his show at London’s O2 Arena to perform “Laho.” How did the opportunity come about?
He just told me to pull up and come perform “Laho.” I told him, “Cool, bro — I gotchu.”
You started your own record label, Plutomania Records, in 2023. Why were Zerry DL and Tega Boi the best fit as the label’s first signees?
They’re my family, I had to support them first before I bring in all the others.
What is your hope for the future of Plutomania Records in the next five to 10 years?
I want us to expand, to grow more business-wise.
What’s been the biggest “pinch me” moment of your career so far?
Performing at the stadiums. I was like, “Oh my God! Ah!”
Were you extra nervous?
I’m never nervous, I’m just happy to be there.
Who would you love to collaborate with this year?
Maybe from the Latin side, like Bad Bunny. It has to be a very big artist or have a big fan base, like Drake.
What’s next for Shallipopi in 2025? What can fans expect?
Concerts, so they can come see live, and more good music.
Electronic music and psychology may technically be two different career paths, but Jessica Audiffred understands as well as anyone that they’re essentially the same job.
The Mexican producer has both a psychology degree and a long list of accomplishments as a bass DJ and producer. She earned the degree years ago after her dad, incredulous that playing clubs and festivals could ever be a lucrative career, insisted she go to college. But music remained her passion, with the work — and her progressively higher-profile gigs, which include her Ultra Music Festival debut this weekend in Miami — providing ample opportunity to observe and affect human behavior.
‘Playing songs in front of thousands and thousands of people is like therapy in a way,” Audiffred tells Billboard over Zoom from her native Mexico City. “You’re dictating a crowd’s mood for the entire set. If they cry, if they scream of joy, if they sing out loud, it’s up to you.”
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This kind of behavioral control is especially potent given that Audiffred has long made bass music, one of the most visceral, physical realms of the electronic music spectrum. Her entry into this world was a straight line from her adolescent love of nu-metal to a passion for music by producers including Flux Pavilion, Excision, Doctor P and Caspa and labels like Circus Records, all arbiters of the some of the hardest, wildest sounds in dubstep and electronic music at large. Her explorations of the sound initially happened entirely online, as there was no bass music scene to speak of in Mexico when she started DJing and producing the music more than ten years ago.
“At that time there was no one doing dubstep or bass” she says. “When I started DJing, I think people were like, ‘What is this? Why is she not playing techno? Why is she not playing house?’” But being different also gave her a competitive edge: “It was like being in the spotlight in a way, because there wasn’t a lot of hard music, and especially not a lot of girls playing that type of hard music.”
As her sets expanded out of her living room and into actual clubs, she also created her own label, A Records, in 2015, using it as a platform for her own tough as nails productions and similar work by other artists. When her hero Flux Pavilion mentioned her in a 2016 list of global artists to watch, the nod led to Audiffred releasing music on Flux’s Circus Records, with momentum picking up even more when a friend encouraged her to audition for a gig that would push her further into the international spotlight.
“I was just graduating from my psychology [courses]. I had nothing to lose, so I did the casting and I got the job,” she recalls of becoming the official national DJ for HP Computers and Beats Audio, a gig that opened up her world. “They took me to Miami, they took me to Boston and to all of these gigs. I’d never even really left Mexico.”
The job also gained her the attention of Excision, who invited Audiffred to remix a track of his and play it alongside him at his annual Bass Canyon festival, with the 2019 show marking her third set in the U.S. “I’ll never forget that moment,” she says. “I played it, and he heard it for the very first time and hugged me as the fireworks were going off. It was like, “Oh my god, what the f–k?”
This literal firepower gave her the juice to further expand her footprint in Mexico, where she started her own festival, Mad House, three years ago, creating the local scene she once longed for. “When I was starting I had nothing, just YouTube and my friends in our living rooms,” she says. “I’m really happy to say that after Mad House started, a lot of promoters came to do more bass music in Mexico.”
Jessica Audiffred
Courtesy of The Shalizi Group
She says Insomniac Events and its Bassrush brand have been particularly supportive, putting her on their stages and helping her grow a career and business that now includes a pair of managers and representation at WME. Her U.S shows are continually getting bigger, and this Sunday (March 31) Audiffred will perform one of her biggest to date when she plays a b2b with Virginia-born bass producer Alleycvt at Ultra in Miami. In a fitting full circle moment, the pair come onstage after a b2b by Flux Pavilion and Doctor P.
She’s bumped into plenty sexism in her career, particularly in the extremely male-dominated world of bass, where she’s often been wrongly and ridiculously accused of using ghost producers. But as her music affects moods, so too has her success and general presence in the scene been effective in evolving minds. “When people see a girl producing these heavy-ass songs, it’s kind of stuck in their heads that she’s not making it,” she says. “In their brains, it can’t exist. It’s actually cringe that we’re in 2025 and people still think like that, but every year we have more successful females in the industry. I think we’re on a run.”
Audiffred is also evolving her sound. She’s been releasing her debut album, Rave New World, in pieces since last December, and when the full project is out, “I think that’s the last harsh dubstep you’re going to hear from me,” she says. “It’s not saying goodbye, because I’m not moving from bass, but I’m moving to a different type of like sound,” with her upcoming work focused on the adjacent genres of trap and future house. Indeed, most any psychologist would advise that healthy evolution happens with maturity, and so with Audiffred having achieved her initial dreams, she’s now aiming to make her sound a bit more mainstream, so she can start flexing on festival mainstages.
But the reason she “really loved making this album,” she continues, is “because it was an ode to the rave and it’s kind of speaking to the little Jessica sho was just dreaming about playing festivals and becoming a DJ. It’s an album for her — to let her know that we’re good, and that we did it with own vision and style.”
North Carolina native John Morgan currently has a Billboard Country Airplay top 10 hit with his Jason Aldean collaboration “Friends Like That,” and is gearing up for his debut album, Carolina Blue, out April 25.
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But in a true “only in Nashville” kind of moment, both of those milestones came courtesy of not only innate talent and ambition — but also one propitious Uber ride, when a conversation about songwriting led to Morgan sharing his contact information with the driver. At first, nothing came of the incident, but months later, the two had another chance meeting in Music City. The driver passed Morgan’s music onto his buddies, who happened to be longtime Jason Aldean collaborators/bandmates Tully Kennedy and Kurt Allison. Morgan began co-writing with them, and soon got a call from Aldean himself.
“He was just like, ‘I really dig what you’re writing. I like your style,’” Morgan recalls of the conversation. “It was the fact that he saw me not only as a writer, or just a track guy, but he saw me as an artist. He’d never seen my show or anything, just heard the demos and the songs.”
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Carolina Blue will release on Aldean’s Night Train Records, his imprint with BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville, while Aldean also signed Morgan to a publishing deal with Triple Play Music, the publishing company Aldean launched with Allison and Kennedy.
Beyond “Friends Like That,” other highlights on the album include the ode to his Carolina roots in the title track, as well as a mix vulnerable songs and up-tempo grooves including the rural anthem “Long Ride Home,” “One More Sunset,” and the breezy, romantic “I Know Better,” and the introspective “Kid Myself.” Strains of his myriad influences, from bluegrass to John Mayer’s guitar work, can be heard throughout.
Morgan’s musical roots began to take shape when he started taking piano lessons alongside his uncle and two cousins. “Two of us hated piano, so I switched to guitar and my cousin switched to banjo, and we just started jamming together,” Morgan recalls. Those jam sessions evolved — and by 10 years old, he was steadily playing local gigs and bluegrass festivals as part of the family bluegrass band.
“I did that circuit for about 10 years. It was a big part of my life and childhood, middle school through high school,” Morgan says. “It’s funny, I met [fellow country artist] Zach Top through that, at the Darrington Bluegrass Festival]. He was playing mandolin in his own family band.”
That time in the bluegrass music scene served as a catalyst for Morgan to craft his own songs.
“Having been doing traditional bluegrass for so long, you’re playing the same song as everybody else is playing, every version. I was like, ‘I got something to say. I want to write my own stuff.’ And that’s when I really chased that, for sure,” he says.
For a time, he gave up his musical ambitions and planned to work at his father’s property management business in North Carolina. He purchased property and was fixing up an old house on the land when a moment of realization shifted his perspective: “It just hit me out of nowhere, like, ‘Man, I’m not happy. I got everything going [on] outside and it looks great, but I knew music was missing in my life, so I moved to Nashville.”
He calls his Nashville arrival in 2020 “a daunting thing,” adding, “I lived in an apartment with one of my best friends and the rent was like almost two grand a month. Obviously, living in a city was a big change but it was just making friends, networking and figuring out how to get my foot in the door.”
He quickly became a versatile creator and asset in the writing rooms, learning how to track and mix songs, and fashion demos. “YouTube was my best friend, and I had a few guys that let me shadow them and watch their process,” he says. “I credit that a lot for two things: getting me into better writing rooms, and also finding my voice. If I was writing with two or three writers, they’d want me to sing the demo. With bluegrass, nobody cared how you sang — they cared how you play. I knew I could sing, but I didn’t know what my voice was, so doing those demos helped me figure out what felt good for me.”
Five years later, Morgan has forged a career as both an artist in his own right, as well as an in-demand songcrafter. He wrote on eight songs for Aldean’s Macon, Georgia double project, including the chart-topper “Trouble With a Heartbreak,” and the Aldean/Carrie Underwood 2022 ACM Award-winning single of the year, “If I Didn’t Love You.” Morgan has also written songs recorded by Jon Pardi (“Hung the Moon”) and Thomas Rhett (“Country For California”).
Carolina Blue follows Morgan’s 2023 EP Remember Us?, which featured a solo version of “Friends Like That.” Co-writing each of the dozen songs on Carolina Blue, Morgan has filled the project with songs he’s stacked up over the past few years, working with co-writers including Allison, Will Bundy, Ben Hayslip, Kennedy, Randy Montana, Jordan Schmidt and Lydia Vaughan.
Managed by Rich MGMT and booked by Wasserman, Morgan says his new album aims to connect listeners with his own story, while giving them universal songs to find their own point of relation. “I tried to capture that effect on this project of giving people different tastes of what I love and what I grew up listening to, but also keeping that identity as an artist,” Morgan says.
Below, Morgan — Billboard’s Country Rookie of the Month for March — opens up about his journey, his influences, working with Aldean and more.
Jason Aldean joins you on a new version of “Friends Like That.” How did that collab end up on the record?
I think we pitched it to [Jason] initially and it didn’t fit his record at the time. I released that song I guess two years ago and put it on the streaming world and shortly after that he reached out and said, “I’d love to look at doing a collab with you.” We got in the room and wrote some stuff together and got some cool stuff, but were never sold on it together. This song was doing its thing in the streaming world, so I said, “What if we reworked it? It fits both of our lanes. Sonically, it has that driving guitar and it’s a subject matter we can both sing about.” We went in and revamped it to make it its own thing.
Who else would you love to collaborate with?
I really love Cody Johnson. He’s just one of those guys that can absolutely rip. And he’s also just a great guy, has great messages in the song.
What is one album you never get tired of listening to?
Eric Church’s [2009 album] Carolina. I’ve been a fan of his and what he’s done over the past several years, just doing what he feels like is him in the moment. But that album specifically was inspiring to me. Casey Beathard is one of my favorite writers. It’s unbelievable what he can do with a hook. And truthfully, the [2009] Wide Open record from Aldean was a big influence, too.
You’ve written hits for other artists. When you moved to Nashville, did you at any point ever aim to be solely a songwriter?
It crossed my mind a lot, because I’ve got two kids now. The biggest thing you have to let go of [to be an artist] is your time. It crossed my mind, but I try to stay focused on the bigger picture. [Being an artist], it’s not only an outlet to provide for my family but also an outlet for people who have been in my corner from the beginning to take care of their families.
“Kid Myself” feels like a maturing, yet apologetic look at some past decisions. What inspired it?
That kind of pulls the curtain back a little bit on my personal life, a sense of a relationship that I was in back home in that whole time period where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and taking my dad’s business over and all that. I was dating a girl and it was getting to a serious point where it was like, we either do this or don’t. I feel like “Kid Myself” is in a way, an apology and a sense of, “I’m sorry that it was such bad timing. I’m sorry that I was just a kid myself, too.”
What are your must-haves on the road?
It’s changed a bit, but I love a good, bottled whiskey. Woodford [Reserve]’s always been my go-to, and there’s Buffalo Trace. I’m not too particular. The funny thing is we always had on our rider a veggie tray, a fruit tray and a bottle of whiskey to balance it out.
What is the best career advice Jason has given you?
He’s very unique, in the sense that he’s got a 20-year career as an artist himself, and now as a publishing head and a record label head. The biggest piece of advice he gave me was when we were putting the album together and he’s like, “Don’t cut album fillers. You don’t need fillers; you need hits.” That changed my perspective on what this album was going to be. I feel like some of ‘em aren’t teed up to be radio hits, but I just made sure every song we cut had a great hook, great melody and had the potential to be a single.
Would you ever want to put out a bluegrass album in the future?
That’s one of my bucket list things. I know the last time saw Zach [Top], I said, “Dude, whenever things get rolling for us, let’s get together and make a bluegrass album.” That would be awesome.
Billboard is expanding its Rookie of the Month interview series by highlighting rising stars from more genres like dance and rock. But the new crop of artists emerging out of the African continent have continued making it clearer that their music can exist beyond the borders of “Afrobeats” and should not be broadly and lackadaisically labeled as such. “It has African intonations in it,” Tems said of her genre-bending music during her Women in Music interview last year.
Like Tems, many African artists have discovered one-of-a-kind ways to express themselves that cannot fit into one box while staying true to their roots. And Billboard is dedicating a spotlight to them through our new African Rookie of the Month series, which Odeal and Qing Madi kicked off in January and February, respectively, and Taves is continuing in March.
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Taves’ drive to make music that transcends genre and geographical borders and touches people started out with a long one.
The 21-year-old Nigerian artist (real name Toluwanimi Aluko) discovered Aṣa during long road trips with his father from Ibadan, where Taves grew up starting at the age of eight, to his birthplace of Port Harcourt, where his father continued living and working. Inspired by her signature guitar, Taves took up the instrument. And listening to heartfelt lyricists like Ed Sheeran and Khalid “programmed my brain to look for deeper meaning when it comes to songwriting,” he tells Billboard.
While he was studying computer science at the Ibadan International School, he also studied a melting pot of genres while recording his own demos on his phone. “I don’t think I met any conventional Afrobeats artists. Everybody was on something different, whether it be R&B or pop or soul music,” says Taves. “They would still be speaking Yoruba or Pidgin in their songs, but that might have been the only thing that connected it back to Afrobeats. There was a lot of experimentation, and it was very beautiful to see.”
His brother got him into the studio for the first time in 2019, when he dropped his debut EP The Nest: First Day Out, followed by 2020’s 17 and 2021’s 18. Taves later began posting covers of popular Afrobeats tracks like Ayra Starr and CKay’s “Beggie Beggie” and Lojay’s “Moto” that felt more like open verse challenges rather than straight-forward covers. But his buzzworthy rendition of BNXN’s 2022 single “For Days” became a turning point in his career when it caught the attention of the original singer. They met less than a week later, which Taves describes as “one of the coolest moments of my whole life,” and eventually signed to BNXN’s label To Your Ears Entertainment. “He is the best thing that has happened to my ears for a while now. A BREATH OF FRESH AIR,” BNXN posted on X in 2023.
That same year, Taves scored a deal with Atlantic Records UK and a feature on BNXN’s debut studio album Sincerely, Benson. But he says that “a lot of people heard my music for the first time” last spring with “Folake,” an ‘80s synthpop-meets-R&B ballad, with undeniable influence from The Weeknd, that’s since become his biggest hit to date.
“What keeps me alive as a creative is always finding the next thing to try. Because I love trying new things, especially when it comes to genres,” says Taves. “I’m introducing people to a new sound I’m trying to craft. It’s not Afrobeats. It’s not whatever genre it is. It’s a new third thing.”
His EP Are You Listening?, which was released last July, finds Taves fine-tuning his mélange of Afropop, R&B, soul and folk and suave melodies paired with romantic songwriting, while paying homage to Aṣa on the album cover by featuring the vinyl edition of her 2007 self-titled LP. And Taves linked back up with his label boss on the swaggering standout track “CWT” (which stands for “Certified Walking Testimony”), which Wizkid was a fan of.
Billboard spoke with March’s African Rookie of the Month about signing to BNXN’s label following his viral “For Days” cover, the hardest part about making his latest EP Are You Listening? and being called “the Nigerian Weeknd.”
When did you know music was your calling?
Probably when I was eight or nine years old. There’s this artist that I’ve loved listening to since I was young, Aṣa. She plays the guitar. That’s pretty much her trademark. I taught myself how to play the guitar when I was nine. I didn’t even know I could sing at the time. I just wanted to do anything to be like her. That’s pretty much when I knew that this would be my thing.
How did you discover her music?
My dad and I used to go on really long road trips because he worked far away in another state. He played a lot of old music, and at the time, her music was hot, current. I don’t really remember a lot of the other songs, but the ones that he played from Aṣa are stuck in my brain.
Outside of Aṣa, who are some of your other favorite artists whom you grew up listening to?
Ed Sheeran, Khalid, Passenger. I never really listened to Afrobeats music when I was younger. I don’t have a lot of people I look up to in that space, from that time. I do now. I could say Wizkid, though, ‘cause my siblings used to listen to his music a lot — and it was nice, it was sweet.
What kind of music do you listen to now?
I like country music, because of Post Malone and Shaboozey, [that’s] what I’m on mostly now. Obviously, The Weeknd, pop music. I don’t really listen to conventional rap. I like trap music, though. And obviously Afrobeats.
How did you transition from covering other artists’ songs to singing your own?
There was a point where I was singing their songs in my own way, but then transitioned into writing a verse. It turned into what it would sound like if I was on this song. I used to write songs when I was young, so it was like practice. I just did it for fun. I wasn’t expecting anything to come out of it. It was very easy for me to transition from doing covers of people’s songs to writing and recording my own songs.
You signed to BNXN’s label To Your Ears Entertainment after you covered his song “For Days” in 2022. How did you two initially connect, and what is your working relationship like with him?
I posted the cover on a Sunday night, and then we met five days after. I was really excited to meet him because I was the biggest fan, and he wanted to meet me because he had plans for me after seeing that cover. That was one of the coolest moments of my whole life. He’s like my big brother, he’s still my OG.
What’s the best piece of advice he’s given you?
I wasn’t used to hate on the internet, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I saw a comment that came out of nowhere, somebody that wanted to ruin my day — or if they were having a bad day, they wanted everybody to have a bad day. I sent it to [BNXN] and was like, “I don’t understand what I did for this person to say this to me.”
He first asked me how it made me feel, and I told him I was confused and kind of upset. Then he told me, “These people that are talking about you online, they only work with what you’re giving them. I don’t think there’s any situation where any artist gives 100% of themselves for the whole world to see. They don’t know you. They’re just going off of what they’re seeing, and the additional hate that they have in their hearts.” That’s how he takes it, and why he never lets it bother him. That really helped me, because now anytime I see negative comments, it’s funny.
Your 2023 single “Eleyele” caught the attention of Atlantic Records UK, where you eventually signed. Why was that the right decision for you?
It was the right decision for me because as much as I love where I’m from, and I’m always going to rep where I’m from, at the time and even up until now, our interests aligned. Everybody was of the opinion that we needed to take what we were doing here, what I was making and what the whole team was doing, and take it out into the world. It couldn’t just be confined to where we are. Nigeria is a very beautiful place, and I love Nigeria, but I wanted more than that. And they wanted more for me as well after hearing my music. It just worked.
Take me back through the making of your latest EP Are You Listening?
I started working on it December of 2023. The name Are You Listening? came from my stylist Fadil, he’s part of my creative team. We were bouncing ideas back and forth and then he just said it. At the time, it didn’t really stick in my head, but I was writing down everything that was being said. When I got back home and was going over [my notes], it’s the one that jumped off the screen for me. It represented everything that I was trying to say with the project.
Song selection was the hardest part. I knew what I wanted the theme of the project to be, so making music in that direction was not really an issue. There was a lot of back-and-forth when it came to recording and the mixes. But [with] the song selection, there were many clashing views about what would work and what wouldn’t work. But we all were satisfied with the final product that came out. That was one of the most interesting processes of my life, because I’ve put projects together before, but I’ve never had any outside opinions because I was independent for the longest time. There are more people that have more experience than I have that are giving me input, so it helps me make an informed decision.
I read in your Deeds Magazine interview that the project was originally titled Homecoming and set to be released in February 2023. What happened? Did you scrap that project and make Are You Listening? from scratch? Or was it a redirection of the project you had already been working on?
I scrapped that project because none of the songs that were supposed to be on that Homecoming project ended up on Are You Listening? And Are You Listening? had more songs than I had originally planned for Homecoming. It just wasn’t the right time. In the moment, I had issues with patience. I just wanted [Homecoming] done and out. I felt like I had a lot of stuff to prove, so I just wanted to rush through it.
But it didn’t work out; there was always some obstacle. “Eleyele” was supposed to be on that project, but that was the only song that dropped off the project. All the other ones are still on my phone. They haven’t dropped. I had to hold off for more opportunities to find me before I finally took that step. I’ve grown a lot since then.
In the Apple Music description of the EP, you said you “listened to The Weeknd a lot” when you were making your 2024 hit “Folake.” What inspires you the most about his music? Is it true that people call you “the Nigerian Weeknd”?
They do. I don’t really get that, to be honest. I don’t hear it. It might be the instrumental of “Folake” that makes people say that, that might be the only similarity in my music and his that people hear. There are other things that I’ve taken from The Weeknd for inspiration, like songwriting. I love the way he writes his songs. There’s nobody that does it like that.
At the time, I was listening to a lot of his music, and the thing with me is if I’m listening to a certain genre of music, I love taking my time to digest it and texting my producer, “Yo, I heard this song and it’s so cool. You should listen to this album, that album, and then we should get in the studio and see if we can do something in that direction.” I was having fun, and that’s how that song came about.
You also wrote that “Apology” “is one of the only songs where I’ve been able to put what happened in a certain situation down exactly as it happened, and the way it made me feel.” How were you able to open up in “Apology” in a way you hadn’t really with most of your songs?
The session I did I originally did not want to do because I was in Ghana for a Warner Music writing camp. I had just come from doing sessions all day, so I was pretty exhausted. My manager invited this producer Saszy [Afroshii] [because] he wanted us to work together. I was like, “Man, I’m tired. I just want to fall asleep.” She still pulled up anyway, so I was like, “Alright, cool. Let’s do it. We can put some ideas down.” I wasn’t prepared and I was super exhausted, so all my barriers that I normally have up were down when it comes to saying things a certain way.
On “Apology,” I’m saying it exactly how it is. I wasn’t trying to be clever. I wasn’t trying to use any kind of word play or symbolism. I was just saying how it happened. And that’s very rare for me, personally, because it takes me a while to get over major situations in my life. It was still pretty fresh in my mind, so it was very easy for me to just lay it all out. We finished that song there and then. The only thing that we added on later was the choir, but we finished that song [in] an hour max, so two hours [total] to finish.
Not only are you Billboard’s African Rookie of the Month, but you’re also up for Rookie of the Year at the 2025 Headies. What does that title mean to you?
It means I’m doing something right and I’m one of the new kids on the block, which I am to some extent. I’ve been making music for almost six years now, but I just had my moment last year and [there are] still a lot of moments to come this year, hopefully. I was super excited when I saw I had been nominated, but it still hasn’t really hit me what it means. All I know is something has to be clicking for them to see me and think this guy is one of the people that potentially deserves this award. Even the people I’m nominated with are some of the craziest artists out in Nigeria right now. It’s an honor to even have my name in the conversation.
What’s been the biggest “pinch me” moment of your career so far?
I met Burna Boy and he invited me to his house. Burna Boy is him. He’s one of the biggest African artists, not just right now, in history. Every time something like that happens, it’s like, “I have to be doing something right.” There’s that, there’s being nominated for the award, there’s that cover I did to BNXN’s song and he loved it so much that we started working together and we’ve been working together ever since.
I think that Burna Boy moment was insane, because we used to listen to Burna Boy when I was still in university, and we were seeing all these things happen in real time – dropping his Outside album and then Twice as Tall, doing all these stadium shows. Somebody who is at that level in this music thing that we’re all trying to do, telling me, “Oh, I like what you are doing. You should come to the house sometime.” Man, it blew my mind.
How did you and Eric Bellinger collaborate on “Backtrack” from his 2024 album It’ll All Make Sense Later?
My manager [Kolawole Omoboriowo] was an A&R on Eric’s project. They were looking for certain features [because] he wanted to make an Afrobeats album. My manager sent me a couple of the songs that they were working on, but “Backtrack” is one that really stood out to me – the way he was singing, the melodies, what he was talking about. It was super easy for me to blend on that. I did that, he loved it, and I ended up going on the album. We didn’t meet up until last month in L.A., but we’ve been talking over the phone. Eric is really cool, he’s the nicest guy you will ever meet — because you can tell that he really, really loves the music that he makes. It’s nice to have his energy around.
You posted on Instagram last month that you and Bas linked in the studio. How did that happen?
That was really crazy because I’m a huge Bas fan since I heard the Dreamville project a couple years ago. And there’s this song that Bas has with Ayra Starr on the Creed III soundtrack. Apparently, he was a fan of me, too. So it was really easy for us to blend and work together. We made a couple cool records. He and my manager had been talking, and Bas was telling my manager that he was a fan of my music. And my manager didn’t know that I like Bas as much as I do, so when he told me, I was like, “That’s very sick.” It was a very organic link. He’s such a nice guy. I love that he brings a whole new angle to the song.
Who would you love to collaborate with this year?
Lojay. I personally think he’s one of the best artists that have come out of Nigeria in a while. PinkPantheress. I’m such a fan. We could make some really cool stuff. Victony. His album last year might have been the best album that dropped out of Nigeria. There were so many crazy ones, but his really stood out. And if things go my way, because I feel like everybody in the industry would say this, but Rema is also one of my favorites.
What’s next for Taves in 2025?
A new project with a special twist, but I can’t let that be known right now. [It’s] an EP. It’s not album time yet, but everybody will know when it’s album time.
On Valentine’s Day 2025 (Feb. 14), a music video clip featuring an impossibly long and undeniably sensual makeout session instantly dominated social media. The video featured two artists: five-time Grammy-nominee Kehlani and one of R&B’s most arresting new voices — kwn.
Hailing from Walthamstow, East London, kwn (pronounced kay-one) grew up in a musical household soundtracked by selections from her mother, two older sisters and former-DJ father. While her parents introduced her to “old-school garage and house,” her sisters’ love for early-‘00s R&B heartthrobs ended up having an outsized impact on her current sound. “When I shared a room with my middle sister, she would have Chris Brown posters all over the wall, and my eldest sister was in love with Justin Timberlake,” the artist born K. Wilson reflects with a slight chuckle. “We had loads of R&B going throughout the house. A lot of Pharrell and stuff like that. I think it’s definitely following me now.”
Around 13 years old, kwn made a decision between football and music that would completely change her life. Building on her background on drums and keys, she began learning her way around at-home studio setups with some help from her sisters and their friends. She calls “So High,” one of the first songs she ever wrote, “terrible and really bad,” but she’s open to the idea of potentially sampling it in a brand-new record. By 16, she enrolled in East London Arts & Music, where she enjoyed a thorough music education, covering everything from music theory to reading contracts. Her time at East London gave her space to find her sonic pocket – a moody amalgam of trap, soulful vocal stacks and splashes of dark electronic music that both captures and reimagines the post-Bryson Tiller R&B landscape – with early tracks like “Tell Me” (with Natrell).
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In 2019, she connected with manager Carlyn Calder, who founded artist management company Vibeout Limited that same year, joining a roster that included Jvck Jones and Grammy-nominated producer Scribz Riley. “Nothing goes without Carlyn’s permission. We’re on the phone probably 50 times a day,” remarks kwn. “She’s my best friend; it’s a really good relationship that allows us to level up together without any pressure or ego.”
After taking some time to regain her motivation following COVID-19 lockdown, kwn launched her debut single, “Wn Way or Another,” in 2022. The song introduced her debut EP, Episode Wn, which arrived later that year. Kwn’s momentum continued in 2023 with “No Cinderella” and “Eyes Wide Open,” but the following year proved to be the tipping point for her burgeoning career. In 2024, she guested on “Clothes Off,” a cut from Kehlani’s While We Wait 2 mixtape, and later opened the European leg of the “After Hours” singer’s Crash world tour at the top of 2025.
“Worst Behavior,” the song that soundtracks that heated music video, arrived last November, instantly becoming kwn’s most-streamed song on Spotify – only to be surpassed by the Kehlani-assisted remix that landed three months later. According to Luminate, kwn’s breakthrough hit has amassed over 16 million official on-demand U.S. streams through March 6.
Billboard spoke with March’s R&B Rookie of the Month about what she learned from touring with Kehlani, how the steamy “Worst Behaviour” music video came together, collaborating with ROTM alum Jordan Adetunji, and how she views the U.K. R&B scene.
When did you decide to use a stage name, and how did you land on kwn?
It kind of came out of a nickname; it used to be K with a #1. My manager tried to make me change my name completely, but I liked the way it sounded — it just didn’t look cool on paper. So, I mushed all my initials together, since my last name is Wilson. If people don’t know how to pronounce it [yet], it’s fine. They’ll catch on soon.
How would you describe the evolution of the “kwn” sound?
I don’t really think I could pinpoint a sound; I just do whatever feels good. I love creating, and I don’t think there’s a limit to what we can do. I love the thought of waking up in the morning knowing that what I’m gonna come out with at the end of the day doesn’t exist in the morning. Even if it’s not something that eventually gets released, it’s still a beautiful process.
Do you find yourself getting drawn to certain chords or textures?
Yes, definitely. R&B influences are a consistency throughout my music, but I try to push the boundaries to see what I can do differently with it.
What elements from traditional R&B do you try to keep in your style?
I love traditional R&B background vocals and vocal production. I study that quite a lot and have been for the past year or so. Every time I go into the studio, I’m like, “Let’s make something that doesn’t sound like anything anybody’s heard.” Even if that means sitting there for the next 12 hours and we bang out 15-20 ideas. And if we don’t make anything, we don’t make anything. That’s what it’s all about.
What’s your favorite part of the music-making process?
The thing I find tedious is also the thing I love the most, and that’s doing background vocals. It takes so long, but I love it. The end product is always so amazing when you hear it. I’m always recording myself; I just prefer it.
Who were some of the producers or engineers that you find yourself drawn to?
Joel Compass is amazing – we work really well together. Scribz Riley is amazing. I’ve been working a lot with FaxOnly, too.
How did “Worst Behaviour” come together?
I was at home in my bedroom, and my mom was out that night. She never usually goes out, so I was like, “Alright, I’m gonna bump the music as loud as I can.” I made the song on Instagram Live in maybe 10 minutes. It was quick. I can’t remember what the inspiration was. I had the space and time to create, so I did. After I made the beat, I started coming up with melody ideas, and then I had the first verse and the chorus done.
I’m still on Instagram Live at this point, like, “Where’s my mum?” Somebody in the comments was like, “Oh, your mum commented that she’s already home!” I was like, “Huh?” I went into her room, and she was fast asleep. I said, “Oh my goodness. I’ve been blasting the music this whole time, and she’s been sleeping!” [Laughs.]
I wrote the second verse with Sasha Keable and finished it. Obviously, I worked hard on it, but it doesn’t feel like it was one of those ones where I had to take my time with it and revisit it a few times. It was super organic.
When did you start to realize that this was growing into a hit?
When I made it, I was like, “Oh, I think I got something here.” I always kind of know when I’m working on a song, whether it’s gonna be something that I keep. If I wake up the next morning and wanna listen to it straight away, it’s probably a good one.
Has your mom finally heard the full version of the song?
Oh yeah, she loves my music! She’s my biggest fan. I love my mum.
Did you always envision a remix?
No, I didn’t. Me and Kehlani have been friends for a minute now, so once I put out “Worst Behaviour,” she told me I should do a remix because it was kinda going off. I was like, “Why don’t you jump on the remix?” — I had to! — and then she jumped on it. She sent me the verse back within a day, she’s super fast.
What were some of the biggest takeaways you got from opening for Kehlani’s tour?
The biggest takeaway was that I can actually do this. Obviously, I know how to make music in my bedroom and do take after take until it’s perfect. But standing up there onstage and doing it without stopping… it’s a bit daunting. After the Crash [World] Tour, I now know I am ready to do this as a full-time career. I’m doing that already, but it taught me what kind of levels I can reach.
To perform at the O2 in my hometown – just my second hometown show after popping out for Destin Conrad at Koko, which was amazing – at this stage in my career is cool. I’ve only been putting out music for the last two or three years.
“Clothes Off” or “Worst Behaviour” remix?
I love both, but “Clothes Off.” It’s something about the sonics of it.
You know we need to talk about the “Worst Behaviour” video.
I knew you was gonna ask me about that. [Laughs.] We shot the video the day after the London show, which was crazy. Both me and Kehlani were sick; it was a tough one to get through, but we did it. We already had the idea of me being in front of the car, and one-take videos are a running theme for me, so we went from there. My director, Chris Chance, wanted it to be sexy and feel like you’re stuck in this moment with the eye contact and the Shibari model. We wanted you to be distracted, but not too distracted.
And then the kiss, man. We decided to shake the Internet a bit and get this song really popping off – and that’s what we did.
Where did the one-take video aesthetic come from?
I watched a lot of cool videos that were going around on TikTok, and they were like 10-second, one-shot things that were super cinematic and in slow motion. I also watched [the 2021 British drama] Boiling Point, which is a whole one-shot film. I think it’s a cool way to tell a story, and it worked straight away. I’m super involved in the editing process; it’s more me and my manager sitting down and coming up with an idea, then taking it to Chris, and he’ll elevate it. It’s a proper collaboration.
We did it for “Lord, I’ve Tried,” and that worked amazingly, so we did it for “Eyes Wide Open” and now “Worst Behaviour.” The hardest part about the “Worst Behaviour” video was the Shibari model because you can’t control how she spun on the rope.
You linked with Jordan Adetunji for his song “Too Many Women.” How did you two cross paths?
He was teasing it on TikTok, and then he hit me like, “Yo, we gotta get one.” I told him the song he was teasing was fire, and a few months later, he sent over an open verse. I did it for him, and that was that. Another bedroom banger that I did in my room. I think he did his parts in L.A.
How would you characterize the U.K. R&B scene?
There’s a lot of good talent coming out of the U.K. If I’m being totally honest, we should do more things to uplift U.K. R&B as a whole, rather than individually. There’s a lot of talent that I think is overlooked, but we’ll soon get our time.
Do I see myself as a part of U.K. R&B? I rep London heavy, but I’m also just here. My name is Kay, and I’m just doing my thing, going around this world, trying to live my life.
Who’s on your Mount Rushmore of producers you’d like to lock in with for a whole project?
Pharrell, Timbaland, Finneas and Anderson .Paak.
How are you handling how quickly things are moving?
I’m so overwhelmed right now. Somebody asked me the other day, if there was a theme track to your life right now, what would it be? I said it would be like 50 songs all at once — that’s how my brain feels. There’s a lot going on, but I’m so grateful. It’s a good problem to have, but a lot to adapt to. I’m just trying to remain grounded and keep myself focused.
What else do you have planned for 2025?
My project is dropping this year. I’ve been working on it for the last nine months to a year. I’m super proud of it. I’ve produced quite a few on there too, which is super exciting for me as a personal goal. I hope to do more shows as well. I want to travel more and make more music in different countries.
What does rest look like for you in this kind of moment?
Yeah, I do be resting; don’t worry about it. [Laughs.] I always wanna keep the love and passion I had for music from the start. The studio is my safe space. I love spending time with my family; that’s probably the most important thing for me. I got a niece and nephew whom I love spending time with, and they’re a big part of my life.
Billboard is expanding its Rookie of the Month interview series by highlighting rising stars from more genres like dance and rock. But the new crop of artists emerging out of the African continent have continued making it clearer that their music can exist beyond the borders of “Afrobeats” and should not be broadly and lackadaisically labeled as such. “It has African intonations in it,” Tems said of her genre-bending music during her Women in Music interview last year.
Like Tems, many African artists have discovered one-of-a-kind ways to express themselves that cannot fit into one box while staying true to their roots. And Billboard is dedicating a spotlight to them through our new African Rookie of the Month series, which Odeal kicked off in January and Qing Madi is continuing in February.
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Qing Madi learned in high school that “the only reason a queen exists is because of the king.” But her majestic moniker – pronounced “King” and spelled with a “Q” to symbolize her femininity – honors her rapid ascent in the African music space, and foreshadows her lasting reign.
Upon graduation, the Benin City native (real name Chimamanda Pearl Chukwuma) moved to Lagos with her family and started writing songs for the country’s stars like Skales, Iyanya and Larry Gaaga. While she was grateful her pengame paid the bills, she also posted covers on TikTok and freestyles with guitarist and producer Wademix on Instagram. “He created this safe space where I could create my music even though I didn’t have a platform or anyone that was going to download it,” Madi, now 18, tells Billboard at Soho Warehouse in downtown Los Angeles, California.
One day, she went to the studio to record backup vocals for Blaqbonez, and his producer Ramoni played her the beat’s warped acoustic guitar loop and subtle trap hi-hats. Madi asked Ramoni if she could freestyle over it, and her poignant debut single “See Finish” was born in 2022. “I never put out anything original, because I wasn’t bold enough and didn’t think people would like it,” she told Billboard in an interview last year.
The viral TikTok success of “See Finish” eventually landed Madi a label deal with JTON Music and Columbia Records via BuVision. With only three singles to her name – “See Finish,” “Why” and the saucy standout “Ole” – Madi opened her “Ole” collaborator BNXN‘s six-date U.S. tour in October 2023, before dropping her eponymous debut EP the following month. The seven-track project melds her sweet R&B melodies and innocent, imaginative lyricism about embracing love and what the future holds while not letting her enemies get the best of her with irresistibly smooth Afropop production. “Vision” – a mesmerizing Afrobeats/R&B track Madi believes is “the most perfect thing I’ve ever written” – received an even dreamier remix treatment from her Columbia labelmate Chlöe for the deluxe edition of Qing Madi.
But for her debut studio album I Am the Blueprint, which dropped at the end of January, there’s only room for the Qing. She’s self-assured in the artist she’s always meant to become, and incredibly in tune with her emotions when it comes to love.
“You can tell that this is coming from a teenager, someone who’s lived a certain life and is trying to open her heart to the public,” she says. “My music is euphoric, it’s timeless. It’s going to live 100 years, even when I’m gone.”
Below, Billboard speaks with February’s African Rookie of the Month about the years-long journey of making I Am the Bluepint, the meaning behind her blue motif, how “The Rumble in the Jungle” inspired her single “Ali Bomaye,” and why “love songs are the easiest songs to write.”
My first question has to be about Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show performance since you’re a superfan of his. What did you think about it?
There were a lot of things were I was like, “Kendriiick.” I liked the Easter eggs, especially with the [Laughs] “A minor” necklace. I liked the coordination of Uncle Sam. There was a lot of stuff I pinpointed and was like, “Wow, this is so tough.” I like the fact he didn’t start with “Not Like Us,” because that was such an expected move. It was so sick.
When did you know music was your calling?
I genuinely believed songwriting was my calling because I loved it so much. I liked impressing other people because I would sing what I had written and everyone was like, “Oh, this is so sick!” I felt fulfilled. I never had stage fright, I was quite confident, but I didn’t think the world would put me in a position where I had to sing my own lyrics. But when I blew up on TikTok, and I got signed and started performing, I was like, “Ooh, this is definitely what I’m meant to do.”
I read in your OkayAfrica interview that you were “very jealous” of people who got to sing your lyrics, because “people appreciated it way more, because they had a familiar face in front of it.” How did you eventually transition from songwriter to the stars to a star in your own right?
It was really God — because originally, I hated the fact that I couldn’t really be a face to my music. I felt like I was selling a part of me, and I couldn’t argue with it because I was getting money off of it. But then I was always intimately hurt by the fact that I couldn’t really say, “Yo, these are my lyrics you’re singing!” I didn’t think it was possible, because at the time I was doing all of this, there wasn’t a lot of African female artists that were being appreciated. This space was very small for us. Once the new people started popping up, and I popped up, I was like, “Oh, OK, y’all letting us in? Thanks.” [Laughs.]
What kind of music did you grow up listening to, and how did that influence the music that you make?
I grew up listening to Kendrick Lamar, Brandy and a lot of other artists that I’m not even certain I know their names, because I lived next to a bar [that] used to play music all night. I would fall asleep to ‘90s R&B. And then I fell in love with rap music. Because of how much storytelling Kendrick has in his songs, I always want to think my songs should have a direction, a storyline, a target. I’m trying to hit a particular nerve or emotion. I’m like, “OK, if I’m writing a heartbreak song, there has to be a reason, a subject and a person.” I also listened to a lot of Wande Coal – he’s an African GOAT, melodic genius.
And what kind of music do you listen to now?
Kendrick Lamar. I was listening to GNX, DAMN., To Pimp A Butterfly. It’s a nostalgia thing, because I grew up on him. Listening to him puts me back in Benin [City], in that house.
You’ve also sung background vocals for other artists. How did you get on Wizkid’s 2023 “Diamonds” track?
My friend P. Prime called me and told me he needed assistance on a particular record. I pulled up to put my vocals on the song — but when I got there, I met Wizkid and Wande Coal. I was like [nervously chuckling], “Hi.” That is such a random thing to do on a Tuesday. Growing up, [I was] in school and trying to have discussions about these artists, and now I’m right in front of them [and] on their songs. It was an insane feeling.
They really did a good job of making me feel comfortable. [Wizkid] vocally led me on what he wanted, because he knows exactly what he wants on his record. He loved it, he was like, “Yeah, this is it. It’s perfect.”
How did you get Chloe on the “Vision” remix?
For my deluxe, I remember my team saying we have to get a feature on a record. And I’m like, “Oh, ‘American Love.’” And they were like, “No, no, no, no. We can’t hear nobody on it. We want to get a feature for ‘Vision.’” At the time, I was like, “I cannot hear anybody on ‘Vision.’ That is my baby, do not put nobody on that record.” I was so against it. Then they went ahead and reached out to Chloe’s team and sent her the record. She recorded her verse, and they sent it to me.
I loved it a lot, I can’t even lie. I was like, “Wow.” I never thought anyone would sound good on ‘Vision’ ‘cause it’s such an alternative track, and I’m like, “What are you going to add to it? It’s perfect.” But she really brought out a different perspective, and because she’s an R&B-based artist, it was such a perfect blend.
When you toured the U.S. for the first time with BNXN in 2023, how was seeing your fans live and the way they received your music?
It was great. I had never traveled to America before in my life, so [it’s] my first time in America and I’m going on tour. I got to meet fans, like, “How do people even know me?” I was shocked.
BNXN [is] the best big brother in the entire world. He would always hype me up on stage and say, “Everybody say, ‘Go Madi! Go Madi!’” It was less of a performance and more of a family reunion. It felt great being on stage and knowing that music is beyond my geographical area. The world is actually paying attention.
What’s your favorite place that you’ve performed at, and why?
Uganda. It was my concert, and as a new artist, that is an insane thing to do. Having a whole country that I’ve never been to – I don’t have any relatives from there, I don’t know anyone from there, it’s a place that is so alien to me – and receiving so much love, it’s definitely a significant place in my mind.
Take me back through the making of your debut album I Am the Blueprint.
There are songs from different versions of me as a person. There are songs I wrote when I was 14, when I was 16, when I was 18. I’m 18 now. It’s like a letter to myself. The first record is called “Bucket List.” It’s me prophesying a bunch of things I want to achieve, and saying, “I hope I become that artist.” And the last record is called “Right Here.” It’s me being more confident and being like, “I’m that artist.” It’s a confirmation.
I Am the Blueprint is a journey of me growing to discover that I am the blueprint. It doesn’t start with so much confidence. It starts with this 14-year-old girl confirming that, “This is who I am, this is who I believe I am” — and it ends with this is who I’ve become.
Explain the blue motif that’s not only been central to I Am the Blueprint but your overall aesthetics, from your hair to your style.
According to my mom, I’ve loved blue since I was literally conscious. It’s funny, because I was born left-handed, so she would beat my hand and tell me, “No, no, you’re doing things the wrong way. You’re supposed to use your right hand. Pink is for girls.”
I never changed. Every time, I’d be like, “I want it in blue.” Whenever I talk about blue or I implement blue in my hair or my album, it’s me putting in that little piece of me, that younger version of me, in everything I’m doing. If I have blue hair, I’m trying to say Chimamanda is still there. That blue is a remembrance of her.
Love plays a paramount role in this album, from feeling that intense chemistry for the first time with someone special on “Goosebumps” to questioning if your feelings are even valid or reciprocated on “It’s a Game.” Are you singing from personal experiences, or where does your source of inspiration come from?
Love songs are the easiest songs to write, because when I used to write for other artists, I prioritized putting myself in different people’s situations because they were very specific. They would say, “I want to buy a love song about this,” and tell you exactly what they wanted. I play with it sometimes. I have songs like “Ole” that talk about wanting another person’s partner. I’m like, “How crazy would it be to talk about love from this perspective?” So when it comes to love songs, it’s just me playing with my imagination and trying to talk about love in every way possible because it’s such a broad topic.
Considering this album reflects the emotional roller coaster that comes with being in a relationship, how did you figure out the sequencing of the tracks?
I purposefully arranged them to tell a story. We have “Bucket List,” “Ali Bomaye” and “Akanchawa,” and you can tell that slowly this person is growing from a very positive, energetic person to a very rage-filled person. From there, you slowly lurk into songs like “Pressure” and “Damn It All” that are so aggressive that you’re like, “Where does she come from?” In the beginning of the album, it was so welcoming and we’re just trying to lure you into this person who was so sweet and saw the world from this angle, and now she’s growing into realizing not everyone is as pure as she imagines.
It’s a journey of my emotions as a person and how I’ve seen life. The album sequencing is very intentional. I feel like we got the perfect arrangement to tell that story.
“Ali Bomaye” is derived from the chant yelled during Muhammed Ali and George Foreman’s 1974 match in Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo), also known as “The Rumble in the Jungle.” How did you find inspiration from that?
I learned that in school, and I was like, “That is so tough.” Having a word that is so significant to a violent sport put into love was something I thought would be so sick. Some people say, “You knock me off my feet,” like the wind. And I’m like, “You knock me off my feet,” because literally he knocked his opponent off. It’s wordplay for me — and then, obviously, referencing the legend Muhammed Ali is. It shows how deep in knowledge I am about being descriptive about my love toward you.
If you grew up in Lagos, Lagos is such a busy place, everything is always on the go. The record “Ali Bomaye” is about living in this place where there’s so much stress — but when you meet that person, it just knocks you off your feet.
BNXN, Chloe and Kizz Daniel were all featured on the deluxe version of your self-titled EP last year. Why did you decide to not have any features on I Am the Blueprint?
With the album, I really wanted to be selfish. I wanted to show the world, “This is about me. This is not about any other artist.” There are so many artists that would have sounded so great with a lot of the records, but I’m more concerned about showing you who I am. It’s a statement, it’s a movement, it’s a whole confirmation. That’s the artistic part of it.
On the business side, you could put a bunch of artists and say it’s for promotion. But I’m a true artist — I really care more about making sure that my message is heard and I’m able to accomplish the artistry I’m going for.
“Bucket List” mentions some things on your bucket list that you want to accomplish, like winning a Grammy and buying your mom a mansion. What else is on your bucket list?
Definitely tour. I want to go on tour so bad. There are so many countries I’ve never been to, and the fact that I’m not going as a regular person is intriguing to me. I want to meet my fans all over the world. I would try different aspects of art – acting, maybe screenwriting.
What’s been the biggest “pinch me” moment of your career so far?
Naomi Campbell followed me on Instagram. I was like, “No freaking way!” And then I saw she commented, and I was like, “OK, stop.” It was a lot for me, because it’s Naomi Campbell.
Who would you love to collaborate with this year?
I would love to collaborate with Wande Coal, Fave, Chris Brown, Billie Eilish. Kendrick Lamar. I would love to collaborate with him for sure.
What’s next for Qing Madi in 2025?
More collaborations — so many surprises that me and my team are working on. I can’t wait for the whole world to be a part of it.
