Before now, I used to have an unsolicited take on what Olamide must do to get ahead of his counterparts, especially now that he has one of the most promising acts on the continent under his label. I’ve also been of the school of thought that for the artist and his label to break out of the Nigerian/African stage to a more robust and diverse international audience, he needed to take on international distribution deals. That’s exactly what Olamide has done.
The rapper took to his twitter account yesterday to announce the joint venture deal between his record label ‘Yahoo Boy No Laptop’ YBNL and EMPIRE Distribution, Records and Publishing Inc. Empire is an American distribution company and record label founded in 2010 by Ghazi Shami and headquartered in San Francisco. The label has served the the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Tyga, SZA, Snoop Dogg, Anderson Paak and other notable acts.
Not so much of the partnership details was revealed but it appears the deal will particularly benefit Fireboy, his protégé and Olamide himself as they both work to release new bodies of work later in the year. The music executives at Empire are also excited about the deal, which affords them the opportunity of exporting Nigerian sounds to the rest of the world.
