Nigerian born megastar and Mama Africa, Yemi Alade is set to release her 5th studio album and 6th body of work. Titled Empress, the album will drop today and crowns her 8-year reign in not just Nigeria, but other African countries. Her album will feature an eclectic set of talented acts like Grammy-nominated singer, Estelle, Patoranking, Rudeboy among others.
Yemi Alade Empress Tracklist
Empress will be out on the 20th of November and will mark yet another highlight in Yemi Alade’s career. But before that, here are some previous highlights:
Winning the Peak Talent show in 2019
The Nigerian music industry and Nigerians at large owe talent shows a lot of gratitude for helping discover incredible talents that have blessed us with good music and Yemi Alade is one of such.
Yemi Alade won the maiden edition of the Peak Talent show in 2009 and a sum of 1million Naira as a 300 level student and according to her, it made her take her vocal talents more seriously.
Ghen Ghen Love
“I dey feel like actor oh (Ben 10)
Sun mo bi make I hold you (ehn)”
That was Yemi Alade on her breakout song, ‘Ghen Ghen Love.’ When it hit the airwaves in 2012, a lot of us were new to her sound but we instantly fell in love with the catchy lines and her belty vocals. From there, Yemi Alade made sure to keep her sound on the airwaves and even beyond.
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Johnny
It was a single released prior to the release of her first studio album “King of Queens” and launched her into the global eye. “Johnny” was released 2014 and till date holds the YouTube record for the most watched African Female music video of all time with a 124m views.
After the success of ‘Johnny,’ Yemi Alade then made a French cover of the song. For Yemi, it was something she just happened to have done in her free time but it paid off big as it earned her a top spot in the hearts of natives of French-speaking countries and marked her journey into becoming the Mama Africa we know now.
MAMAs
In 2015, Yemi Alade continued her record-breaking streak and won the MTV African Music Awards for Best Female in 2015 while bagging a nomination for their artiste of the year.
The next year, she didn’t put a pause on her roll and still clinched the award for Best Female the next year.
Other accolades under Alade’s belt include being the first Nigerian female to be nominated for the MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs) for Best African Act and being nominated for the BET awards for Best International Act: Africa in 2015 and 2016.
Her live performance skills were also officially lauded by the Headies awards not once but twice with the Best Performer award in 2018 and 2019.
Mama Africa to the world, The Lion King: The Gift Album
Once in an interview with Nancy Isime, Yemi Alade admitted to Beyonce living rent-free in her head as her favourite artiste.
Fast forward to 2020, two years after the interview on HipTV’s ‘Trending’ and Yemi Alade has a feature on ‘The Lion King: The Gift album’, an album executively produced by Beyonce.
Yemi Alade also starred in Beyoncé’s Black Is King visual trailer and was featured in the movie as well.
Now, as we anticipate the coming of the ‘Empress’ album, we can only excitedly wait on the new levels Yemi Alade will be unlocking with it.
