An African Giant Yemi Alade is one of the biggest female artists in Africa. The Nigerian artist is well known for her single ‘Johnny’, which is currently the most viewed song on YouTube by a Nigerian female artist and her versatility in languages as she is a daughter to a Yoruba father and an Igbo mother.
She currently has four albums to her name, the first of which is ‘King of Queens’. She released the album on the second of October, 2014 and according to the platform, ‘A Nation of billions’, it has sold over a 100, 000 copies.
Yemi Alade gained recognition following the release of her 2014 hit music video “Johnny”. The video gained over 800,000 YouTube views within two months and currently has 118 million YouTube views. “Johnny” has also gained her a massive following from other African countries including Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Liberia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Her second album ‘Mama Africa’ was released on March 25, 2016. On that album, she featured some top artists from Africa at that time like P-square, Sarkodie, Sauti Sol, Flavour N’abania, Rotimi Keys, DJ Arafat and Selebobo.
Yemi Alade said that the album was designed to focus on the weaknesses and strengths of African women. Her goal was to capture all of Africa on one CD. She also disclosed that she was going to donate the proceeds from the sales of the album to the ‘Feed a Child charity’ initiative. Mama Africa charted in Germany, Malaysia and France.
Her African theme style of music puts her on the edge and perhaps being a product of two tribes herself has allowed her standout. Additionally, she is one music artist that prides her African culture and heritage which reflects in her amazing hairstyles, seen across her music videos and social events.
“Tribe is a very strong factor in Nigeria, and coming from two major tribes is a big plus for me. Personally, it’s helped me embrace both cultures, and you can see through the fact that it’s all just one culture. Just some different names attached to it and different languages”.
“I’m a lover of languages, and sometimes I’m even a lover of accents. The French version of “Johnny” was for fun, but for “Kissing” there was more of a goal — I wanted it to mean more to my listeners. If I sing one of my songs in your language, you can totally own it. My dad is Yoruba and my mom is Igbo, so those two languages are kind of in my pocket.
I speak English — something we call vernacular pidgin English — but when it comes to international languages I’m stuck on French right now. I’m working on Swahili and hopefully, at some point, I might learn Portuguese”. — Yemi Alade in an interview with FADER
Yemi Alade featured on Beyonce album ‘Lion King’, where she sang alongside two Nigerian acts; Mr Eazi and Tekno in a song titled ‘don’t jealous Me’. She holds the record of being the first female Nigerian musician to gain one million subscribers on YouTube.
She released her fourth album ‘Woman of steel’ on the 30th of August, 2019. The album focus on topics such as love, socio-politics and poverty. She said she chose the title woman of steel because she is her own hero.
On the album, she featured top artists like Rick Ross, Duncan Mighty, Angélique Kidjo and Funke Akindele. She is currently signed to Universal Music Africa (UMA) and UMG France.
An African Giant is someone of African origin who has achieved enormously in a lifetime and is recognized for it. ― Africa Giant.
