Total Eclipse: Oxlade Is Making Waves
Oxlade is having the time of his life. His latest release ‘Ku Lo Sa’, A COLORS SHOW performance, is currently one of the most popular records across the globe. Since its release, it has accrued more than 70 million streams on Spotify. The performance video which premiered on COLORS has garnered 32 million views on YouTube. The song has sold over 100,000 units in the US. ‘Ku Lo Sa’ has accumulated about 2.3 million Shazams so far, becoming the most Shazamed song in France at one point. It is currently charting in more than 50 countries including France, UK and the US as Oxlade steadily rises on the Global Digital Artist Ranking, joining the likes of Rema, Asake, Burna Boy, and Fireboy DML – some of the acts who he broke out with some years back.
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Oxlade revealed that he didn’t expect the song to blow up so big in such a short period of time. “It’s crazy. ‘Ku Lo Sa’ is my biggest record ever and it’s just barely three months that the song was released,” he says with unbridled excitement. He has been working quite hard for some time and he is reeling from the eruptive success that ‘Ku Lo Sa’ has brought him.
Oxlade didn’t start off the year great. Earlier this year, he found himself in a scandal on Twitter, which tarnished his image and career. In the course of our conversation, I learned that Oxlade was abandoned by those that he considered his close friends when the scandal broke. “Everybody cut me off. All my friends in the industry stopped talking to me except a few that I didn’t even expect to come through for me,” he says with a morose face. Oxlade released ‘Want You’, his first single of the year, debuting at no. 18 on the UK Top 20 Afrobeats Charts. Although the song came with a refreshing sound, it didn’t exactly pick up steam and the singer slowly sank to a dark place.
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“‘Want You’ paved the way for ‘Ku Lo Sa’. It’s basically the same sound but nobody paid attention to the song,” Oxlade tells me when I visit him at his house in Lekki, a highbrow neighbourhood in Lagos. He’s loosely dressed in a brown Jalabiya, oozing an air of confidence. There’s a glint in his eye and when he speaks, there’s an assuredness in his tone. According to Oxlade, during the period that he and his team were promoting ‘Want You’, COLORS (in partnership with Immensum Music) announced their plans to collaborate with Nigerian artists on their platform – leading to astounding performances from other artists like Victony, Joeboy, Ayra Starr, and Bnxn (fka Buju). Oxlade admitted that he took the medley of emotions bottled inside of him and poured it on the Ozedikus-produced instrumental. He delivered the song in a poignant falsetto voice, seasoned with a smooth blend of Nigerian Pidgin, English, and Yoruba. The transparency with which he approached the live performance of ‘Ku Lo Sa’ has now resonated with millions.
When I asked Oxlade about the idea behind the title of the song, he said: “That’s how I like to name my songs. ‘Want You’ was supposed to be ‘Wonchu’ but the label and my team were against it. For me, naming the song ‘Ku Lo Sa’ is just genuine.” ‘Ku Lo Sa’ is a play on the word ‘closer’. Being a creative means that he believes in total freedom of expression and at the same time he understands that being signed to a label comes with a certain compromise.
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‘Ku Lo Sa’ first took off on Tiktok shortly after its release. The social media platform has amplified the reach of Afrobeats songs like Ckay’s ‘Love Nwantiti’ and Pheelz’s ‘Finesse’ in recent times, and Oxlade’s ‘Ku Lo Sa’ is the latest song benefitting from the platform’s colossal influence. The ubiquitousness of the internet serves as a catalyst for Afrobeats, pushing the genre beyond borders, and with the advent of platforms like Tiktok, music from this part of the world is continually spreading like wildfire. The ‘Ku Lo Sa’ soundtrack has raked in more than a million views on Tiktok. There is a plethora of videos of people recreating Oxlade’s hand and body gestures in the performance video of ‘Ku Lo Sa’ littered all over the internet as more people continue to participate in the challenge on Tiktok.
It’s been four years since he waded into the mainstream after delivering a mellifluous hook on Blaqbonez’s ‘Mamiwota’ and Oxlade has since put out a string of successful singles and two EPs. In 2020, ‘Away’ – a song off his debut EP ‘Oxygene’ – became a nationwide hit, earning a spot on Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Songs of 2020, and getting recognition from Drake who posted the song’s artwork on his Instagram story. ‘Ojuju’, a single that preceded his sophomore EP ‘Eclipse’, which was released in 2021, caught on with the local audience and in the diaspora, debuting at No. 19 on the UK Top 20 Afrobeats Charts. However, Oxlade admits that all that is nothing compared to the potential of ‘Ku Lo Sa’ and how the song is gaining ground in foreign markets.
“Seeing what the song is doing worldwide makes me so happy,” he says while we sit in his car. He’s playing me some songs from his debut album, casually boasting that the project would give his fans more bragging rights. Our conversation derails for a moment before he shares details about the album with me. He is pumped for the next level of his career and he’s confident that his debut album would propel him to greater heights. “I can’t wait for people to listen to this album. I put my all in it. Everything. Every emotion. It is all Oxlade.”
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When I asked him about the album release date some weeks after our first conversation, he informed me over a WhatsApp conversation that “it’s not ready yet. There’s no definite date. The mixing and mastering isn’t done yet.” He’s hardly available for a chat as the rapid ascent of ‘Ku Lo Sa’ has made him busier than ever; the silvery-voiced singer is hitting big stages all around the world, rendering spectacular performances in different countries. He informed me that he was backstage at a show in Paris and shortly after our conversation, I saw a video of him performing ‘Ku Lo Sa’ alongside Wizkid to a rapturous audience at Accor Arena.
The singer is at the vanguard of contemporary acts pushing Afropop to global acceptance. As the genre continues to soar in popularity, international record labels are signing Afropop acts like Oxlade to further expand the scope of the genre and its artists. Oxlade tells me how being signed to Epic Records (France) and Columbia Records (UK) has helped his career as these labels “have a structure and a global network that helps with marketing the music and getting placements worldwide.”
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‘Ku Lo Sa’ is out now. Find Oxlade on IG.
Words: Olaniyan Ayomide
