Fireboy DML photographed for Wonderland. Photo: Wonderland Magazine
Fireboy DML photographed for Wonderland. Photo: Wonderland Magazine
Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, is where the story of ZUKO! starts. It is the city where Adedamola Oyinlola Adefolahan grew up in a royal family, spent most of his teenage years watching people in church, and lasted just two weeks in a church choir before admitting he did not enjoy not being the star of the show. Seven years after “Jealous” made him a mainstream name, the singer the world knows as Fireboy DML has returned with ZUKO!, his fifth studio album.
Released in mid-October on YBNL Nation and EMPIRE, the album is about faith, fear and growing up, and it arrived with something unusual for the Afrobeats scene: very few guests. Fireboy DML went in wanting more features, watched that plan fall apart, and decided he was fine with it. Here is why, and what the record sounds like without a crowded tracklist.
A Plan for Guests That Fell Apart
The scene runs on collaboration, and Fireboy DML knows it. Speaking on Apple Music’s Afric Now Radio, as reported by DancehallMag, he explained that he had tried to make ZUKO! more collaborative than it turned out to be, but it simply did not work out, and he came to feel that maybe that was how it was supposed to be.
He was candid about the risk. Nigerian fans in particular, he said, love to see their favourite names on the tracklists of their favourite artists, and collaboration has been one of the main ways Afrobeats acts have grown over the years. Going the other way is a real gamble.
His reasoning is short. He told the station that he does not fight anything anymore and simply lets it be, and that listeners will understand the choice once they hear the record all the way through. The result is an album where his own voice carries almost everything, which makes the few collaborations stand out all the more.
The South African Link on IMALI
The guests who did make it get real space. DancehallMag reports that the South African acts Thukuthela and JAZZWRLD join him on “IMALI”, the Zulu word for money, and that the three have already recorded three or four songs together. It is a Nigeria to South Africa link, and it gives the album its widest map.
The subject matter is frank. Fireboy DML said God has blessed him with money in recent years, but that his current mindset is that he needs more to live the life he wants. Coming from an artist whose album is otherwise preoccupied with faith and humility, that tension is part of the point.
The wider sound leans into the continent’s dance styles. According to DancehallMag, “BY FIRE!”, “C’EST LA VIE” and “ONAZO!” put him over some of the most driving dance production of his career while keeping the soul leanings his fans know. He described the record as a grown version of his old formula, with a little more grit, anger and pain.
Seven Years After Jealous
To understand ZUKO!, it helps to see the road behind it. DancehallMag traces it from “Jealous” in 2019 through the reflective Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps, the swagger of Playboy and 2024’s adedamola, which he has described as his way of telling fans he had not lost who he was. ZUKO! turns that idea inward. In his telling, it is not enough to remind people who you are if you also have to remind yourself.
He also believes a misunderstanding of his persona may have created a distance with listeners, and he sees this album as a way to close that gap. The global profile is already there. Wonderland notes that his 2022 hit “Peru”, featuring Ed Sheeran, reached No. 2 on the Official Charts, went platinum in the United States and earned a BRIT nomination for International Song of the Year, while “Bandana” with Asake spent seven weeks at No. 1 in Nigeria. He has since made songs with 21 Savage, Madonna, Justin Timberlake and Seun Kuti.
He told Wonderland that he is very particular about who he works with, and that every collaboration has come from a real connection rather than pressure to conform to someone else’s sound. Seen that way, the short guest list on ZUKO! fits a long habit of choosing collaborators carefully.
Faith Without Becoming a Gospel Record
The album opens with “DEAR FATHER”, which he describes as a letter of supplication to God. According to DancehallMag, he sees the intro as a way to calm the listener’s mind, and says it is the second song, “BY FIRE!”, that really sets the tone.
Wonderland’s writer, Emmanuel Onapa, hears an album that maps vulnerability and faith, a young man still working out what his Christianity should look like, still adapting and still learning. The magazine is careful about the label, though: “despite the biblical references marked across the album, this is not a gospel.” The record moves through love, conflict, spiritual warfare and resilience rather than worship.
His own faith, he explained to Wonderland, did not become solid until he started living on his own. In his first year at university he tried out different churches and fellowships while building that relationship, and the values his parents instilled were reinforced by what he saw in church.
Inside the 13 Tracks of ZUKO!
The official tracklist on Apple Music runs to 13 songs: DEAR FATHER, BY FIRE!, CLAAT!, GODDESS, C’EST LA VIE, IMALI, ONE MAN REGIMENT, KILOWI, ONAZO!, SEX LOVE UNDERSTANDING TRUST, LIGHT OF DAWN, MIMI NAWE and FIGHTING. Most sit under four minutes, with “IMALI” and “KILOWI” the longest, each close to five.
The track he seemed most eager to discuss with Afric Now Radio was “ONE MAN REGIMENT”, which he said explains all of his madness, including why the rollout and visuals look the way they do. The artwork centres on a bull, an image he connects to South American culture and the red cloth used to provoke it. His point, as DancehallMag relays it, is that nobody needs to know you are scared of facing your fears, as long as you look confident while facing them. He credited his creative director with shaping that vision.
He describes the whole project as his own take on what an attempt at a global album from an African artist should sound like. Whether fewer features was the right price for that vision is the question fans are still answering.
The Haircut That Marked a New Era
There is a visual change to go with the new sound. In his Wonderland interview, the 30-year-old explained that his mid-length locs signified an era and that he needed to physically cut them off after seven years, because a lot had happened and it is a new him now. He added that he also just wanted to feel water on his scalp in the shower, and that waving his locs on stage to impress women no longer matters to him.
Wonderland reads ZUKO! the same way, as a record that connotes elegance, authority, power and leadership, much like the new look. It is the sound of an artist from Abeokuta deciding who he is before the scene decides for him, and it joins a busy season for Nigerian stars on the world stage, as we saw when Burna Boy became the first Nigerian artist to present at the Ballon d’Or.
For the AfroMusic.News desk, the verdict is clear: “ZUKO! is Fireboy DML trusting his own voice, and the city that raised him can be heard in every choice he made.” Start with “BY FIRE!” and “IMALI”, then go back to “DEAR FATHER” once the album has told you where it is going.
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