Omah Lay announced himself to the world with ‘Bad Influence’. The broody Afrobeats number showcased the raw talent that the artiste possessed, and was the perfect introduction to his emo style of Afrobeats. ‘Bad Influence’ became the most streamed song in Nigeria at the end of 2020. All the songs off the EP ended in the top 15 most-streamed songs of the year.

Following the success of the Get Layd EP, Omah Lay went on to make a blazing trail for himself in the music industry. He was included in BBC Radio 1Xtra’s annual “Hot for 2021” list, named BET’s Amplified International Artist of the Month for November 2020, and in 2021, was featured on the official remix of pop music superstar, Justin Bieber’s single, ‘Peaches’. That wasn’t the end of his collaboration with the star as he went ahead to drop a music collaboration titled ‘Attention’.

In 2022, the artiste released his debut album, ‘Boy Alone’ a fourteen track album which has since surpassed over 1 billion streams across all platforms. The album has also received rave reviews from critics as well as fans, with many hailing it as one of the best Afrobeats debut albums ever. 

In 2023, Omah Lay released the deluxe version of ‘Boy Alone’ with the addition of six fresh tracks. This propelled the album on the chart, moving back to No. 2 on the weekly albums chart and recording its biggest total streams in a week since the original release of the album. “Reason” off the deluxe album is also currently the number 1 song in the country, with Omah Lay holding the no 2. spot on the Artist Top 100 chart. 

In this latest edition of Executive of the Week, we caught up with Valentine “Valo” Ngaji, the CEO of KeyQaad, the record label that houses Omah Lay, to learn more about how the success of ‘Boy Alone’ came to be and to explain the rapid growth of Omah Lay.

TTC: What made you launch KeyQaad at the time? 

Valo: I have been doing music since I can’t remember albeit in different capacities. I have always found myself around talents, and have always offered a thing or two either to their development, marketing or whatever the case may have been. To be honest, KeyQaad only happened to be the one that stood tall. We had launched a couple projects before KeyQaad that just didn’t stand, I guess it was all the learning and molding process.

TTC: How did the working relationship between you and Omah lay come to be? 

Valo: I used to work on radio and one very routine morning, I came to work and opened my email to go through artiste submissions. The very song I clicked play on happened to be a song from a certain Omah Lay from PH. Just like that it swung from a “routine morning”, to the first morning of the rest of our lives. Between then and the next couple of months, he moved to Lagos and we got working, you know the rest! 

TTC: You have two other talents on your roster, Kaestyle and M3LON. How has it been breaking them out following the great success achieved with Omah Lay?

Valo: Kaestyle and M3lon are amazing talents and completely unique in their own different ways. We just put out an EP for M3lon - Ex and Os and it’s doing awesome. Kaestyle is working on a forthcoming EP which is completely crazy!!!  None of them is under any form of pressure from anyone internal or external; at KeyQaad we support and bet on all our talents to go on, and be the best they can be on their own terms, no matter what and how long it takes. 

TTC: Omah lay’s Album “Boy Alone” (The Deluxe) has been received well by the audience, charting at No. 2 on the Top 50 album chart after initially peaking at No. 1 in march and spurning  a No. 1 hit in “Reason”. How impressed are you and the team with this feat?

Valo: Who is number one? Lol, ‘Boy Alone’ is up there on the Mount Rushmore of Afrobeats classics and we are super happy that the fans are rocking with it. That was exactly what Omah wanted, and I’m super proud of him. It took him a whopping 40 months to make that masterpiece, he started working on it after he released the second EP in November 2020. He would always text me “Valo this would go down as one of the hardest albums ever made”, he always knew! 

TTC: What are some of the challenges that you and the team faced while trying to produce a deluxe that can supersede the original album, which did massive numbers to begin with? 

Valo: They are not two different projects, it’s one complete project. The goal wasn’t to supersede the already released songs, it was to complete them. They retained the same theme - the more recent songs has a somewhat brighter sonic that mirrors his current state of mind whereas the songs earlier released were darker and moodier.

TTC: “Reason”, an instant hit off Omah lay’s Album Deluxe is the No.1 song in the country right now, after debuting at No.1 on the Official Nigeria Top 100. Can you tell us what happened behind the scenes while the song was being made? 

Valo: God was definitely in the room when he made that one. It was one of those songs we knew immediately was a banger! No one in the team questioned a note or had any other ideas. It went straight from the booth to the sound engineer. 

TTC: What more can we expect from the team and Omah lay in 2023?

Valo: A lot! Like I said, the new Kaestyle EP, crazy one. We have new singles from M3lon on the way as well. Omah is currently on the road meeting his fans and smelling his flowers, you never know a new single might be on the way, “shhh don’t say I told you”. As a company, we also started a new operation that we had been working on, we would be announcing that in a few weeks. I don’t want to get ahead of myself.