Adekunle Gold and Olamide collab after a decade 

For nearly a decade, one collaboration felt overdue. Olamide signed Adekunle Gold to YBNL Nation in 2015. The singer left a year later. The two stayed close. Yet they never once appeared on a song together. On 9 April, that changed. ‘Formation’ arrived as a fuji-inflected Afrobeats single, and fans immediately called it the reunion of the decade.

Before the singer, the graphic designer

The story behind ‘Formation’ runs deeper than a label reunion. Before ‘Sade’ broke through in 2014, Adekunle Gold worked at YBNL as its in-house graphic designer. The label called him the “King of Photoshop”. He designed the YBNL logo that the label still uses today. Olamide heard one of his songs that year and gave him his first real chance. He signed him, then took him abroad for the first time in his life.

That history gives ‘Formation’ its weight. This is not two stars meeting for a strategic feature. It is a mentor and the artist he discovered, recording together for the first time since.

The sound of two lanes meeting

‘Formation’ pairs two very different deliveries. Adekunle Gold brings the smooth, melodic style he calls ‘Electro Fuji’. Olamide answers with his street-rooted rap flow. Chillz produced the track, and Believe UK released it. It follows Adekunle Gold’s ‘Eja Nla 2026’ campaign.

Both artists now work from very different places in the industry. Adekunle Gold tours globally as an Afrobeats act. Olamide keeps expanding YBNL and mentoring the label’s newer signings, among them Asake and Fireboy DML.

A short, direct tribute

Adekunle Gold posted a tribute alongside the release. He traced the relationship back to 2014. He credited Olamide with giving him a chance when he had nothing but a voice and a dream. He called the record “more than a song; it’s a legacy and brotherhood”. He aimed the message as much at longtime YBNL fans as at Olamide himself.

Why it landed the way it did

The reaction reflected how long the wait had been. Fans who followed the label since its early “YBNL Mafia” days did not treat this as a new single. They treated it as unfinished history, finally complete. The designer who built the logo. The boss who built the label. One track, at last.

Afrobeats moves fast, and ‘Formation’ reminds us of something easy to lose. Some of the industry’s most valuable relationships are not features or joint ventures. They are the ones two people build years before either has anything to offer beyond belief in the other. Nearly ten years on, Adekunle Gold and Olamide finally have a song that holds that history. They made it worth the wait.

The post Adekunle Gold and Olamide collab after a decade  appeared first on The Beats of Africa.