Omah Lay is on His Way to Becoming the Voice of Afrobeats

The torch has been passed to Stanley Omah and he is willing to keep the fire burning.

Afrobeats is at a crazy level right now. On the one hand, artists like Davido, Wizkid, Burna Boy, Tiwa Savage, Mr. Eazi, Yemi Alade are on the verge of exploding at a global level. On the other hand, underground and rising acts are introducing new sounds to the audience. Really, it is an interesting time for the genre. The only way from here is forward and there’s without a doubt a lot of potential. I honestly can’t wait to see where Afrobeats will be in the next coming years.

One of these rising acts who have successfully won the audience over with his sound is Omah Lay. The Port Harcourt-bred musician is slowly becoming a sensation in the music industry. Merely listening to him sing, you get the impression that he has keenly refined his sound to give the listener a certain feel. Not only does he have a unique singing voice, Omah Lay’s songwriting skill is unmatched. He writes his songs in a way that is peculiar to him. His native accent adds a special touch to his music.

So many people have touted Omah Lay to be the rookie of the year. Truly, so far, no other act deserves that award more. Stanley Omah (his real name) comes from a family of legendary musicians. His grandfather was a percussionist for one of the greatest Igbo Highlife musicians, Celestine Ukwu, in the 60s while his father was known as a successful local drummer in the neighborhood. It is this musical background that has primarily made Omah Lay the kind of artist he is. The young singer writes and produces most of his records. According to him, he is more inclined to highlife music which he mainly fuses with Afrobeats to create a dynamic Afro-fusion sound.

Omah Lay first gained mainstream attention when he released You on February 14th. The song immediately climbed different charts and enjoyed airplay rotation. ‘You’ is a love-inspired tune that centers on his willingness to do anything to guarantee the satisfaction of his woman because he loves her. In no time, the song became an anthem and immediately put Omah Lay in the spotlight. The singer dropped another single Bad Influence which proved to listeners that he, truly, had the potential to become a reputable name in the nearest future. Although Bad Influence wasn’t a new song.

After the success of the two singles, the singer went ahead to release his debut project, an EP titled Get Layd. The EP contained 5 songs including the two singles he released before. The project was met with critical acclaim and is currently enjoying maximum airplay. Songs like Damn and Ye Ye Ye seem to be people’s favorites. Another interesting thing to note is that since his project debuted, it has barely left the top 20 on the Top 100 Nigeria playlist on Apple Music. It’s almost like listeners cannot get enough of the EP. There have even been rumors that the singer’s label bought fake streams. But the rumors are baseless. The music is evidently good enough to top charts. Audiomack put out a tweet recently that Omah Lay was the most streamed Afrobeats artist of that particular week (two weeks ago), topping the likes of Burna Boy and Fireboy. Only a clown will argue with facts at this point.

It should be noted that the singer has garnered more than 20 million streams on all platforms. This is really exciting because he entered the limelight this year. Shortly after he dropped Get Layd, he featured on a song Tonight by DJ Spinall. He is the new kid on the block and everyone is starting to pay attention. If you do a little digging, you’ll find out that Omah Lay didn’t just start dropping music in 2020. He’s been on the periphery of the music industry, anticipating an opportunity to enter the field. In 2019, he dropped a couple singles including Hello Brother and Do Not Disturb.

Way before Omah Lay became a pop sensation, he mentioned in his interview on Notjustok with music journalist, Ifeoluwa Falola, that he had worked with a number of Nigerian artists, writing songs (and producing) for them and not getting any credit. It was part of what inspired him to drop Do Not Disturb. It was his way of proving to those who had written him off that he could do better. After releasing the two singles in 2019, the singer took a break from music for 7 months. He returned with Bad Influence, dropping the song as free music because he had yet to release music for some time. And because life works in mysterious ways, Bad Influence, which he later dropped as a follow-up single, remains his highest-charting song.

As much as everything seems to be working perfectly for the singer, it is important to mention that his face is not completely out there. Compared to an artist like Rema or Oxlade, Omah Lay’s identity is not strong enough as an artist. His music is blowing up so fast and we should be seeing more of his face online and offline. Asides from his Instagram page, his pictures are barely anywhere. It is easy for the audience to neglect your face and just focus on your music. I don’t think Omah Lay (and his team) will want that to happen. He has superstar qualities and putting his face out there more will certainly be beneficial for his brand.

Also, the music video for his hit single You isn’t really doing well. Since he dropped the music video three months ago, he has only gotten slightly above 800k views. You’ll have to agree with me that these numbers are not convincing enough and it only means that people haven’t resonated with him as an artist. The singer released the music video for Lo Lo yesterday and so far it has more than 100k views. Hopefully, this one racks more numbers than the previous one.

Signed to KeyQaad, Omah Lay is prepared to take the Afrobeats sound to a new level. He claimed to have been primarily influenced by Drake, stating that listening to the rapper’s music was the spark he needed to chase a career in music. He draws inspiration from fellow Port Harcourt artists such as Burna Boy and Duncan Mighty. He also revealed in the interview with Ifeoluwa that he enjoys listening to Oxlade’s Oxygene as well as Fireboy’s LTG. He refuses to be boxed into one sound and this is discernible when you listen to his debut project. It seems like there’s no limit to his experimentation as an Afrobeats artist.

Side note: I had written this article several months back but was quite confused on the direction to follow. After tuning it every now and then, I eventually got the motivation to finish it up and post when Apple Music launched a new program and playlist, Africa Rising.