Nigerian singer-songwriter FOLA wasn’t even supposed to be a musician. “I didn’t actually intend to do music initially—I wanted to play football so bad,” he tells Apple Music. “I didn’t know I knew how to sing so well, but at school I met a few guys that were singing, and we started doing it together as a group until we graduated high school and everyone went their separate ways. I actually stopped for a while. I was born and raised in Ivy City, and it was so tough there. I don’t think music is something you can just chase and get [there]. But I started putting out all these short videos online for people to see what I was made of. A friend of mine started helping me out, and gradually I went to Lagos, met people and that was it.” The gamble paid off for FOLA—who describes his sound as “Afro-everything; sometimes it’s Afrobeats, sometimes it’s Afro-drill, Afro-whatever”—and his 2024 hit “alone” (feat. BhadBoi OML) reached the top of Apple Music’s Top 100: Nigeria charts. A remix with Bnxn followed, and soon, Afrobeats heavyweight Bella Shmurda signed FOLA to his Dangbana Republik label. On his debut EP, the artist born Folarin Odunlami fully leans into a lover boy persona, with six tracks that show off his intentional yet laid-back approach to songwriting. “I really fuck with emotions a lot,” he explains. “I don’t want you to listen to my songs and not feel anything. I want you to listen to my songs and get goosebumps and be like, ‘Damn.’ I want you to be able to relate. I want you to be tearing [up].” Here, he talks us through what a feeling, track by track. “who does that?” (feat. Bella Shmurda) “‘who does that?’ was a song I made when I was going through a phase of my life. I just wanted to make a song about pain and struggle. Music is just the place where I pour out my heart, my pains. My life then wasn’t so straight. I was just miserable at all points. Everything wasn’t good how it was supposed to go. So, I just sat down, put something out. The pain came. I don’t want pain today—[now] I want it to be a fruitful pain.” “alone” (feat. BhadBoi OML) and “alone (Remix)” (with Bnxn) “I have a friend and we make music together—if she’s having a creative block, she calls me. She sent me the beat, and she told me she wanted to make a cover of a Wande Coal song, but she said she was blocked there. So I just wrote the first 40 seconds of the beat. I played it for another friend and told him, ‘This song is for [her].’ My guy was like, ‘Damn, bro, I don’t think you should send this song. The song is too sweet. It’s yours, why don’t you just sing it yourself?’ So I recorded one minute of [the] song the following day, and I posted it online; I just wanted people to see. And the post had [over 900] comments. BhadBoi and I had been planning to link up and do something, and he was like, ‘Damn, I think I love this.’ The song wasn’t something I planned putting out—I think it’s just God’s plan. Then, the song started doing well on YouTube, and Bnxn was always making videos of himself listening to the song. I just summoned the courage one night, I texted him, ‘You look like you love this song so much. Why don’t we just do a remix then?’ You know, you don’t lose anything if you try. I didn’t get a response for about two weeks. Then he texted me out of the blue, ‘Gee, I think you sent open verse. I think I have something to put on it.’ I can’t believe I was able to get that. A big shout-out to Bnxn—he’s such a real one.” “tonight” “I just wanted to make a bad boy song. Everybody calls me ‘lover boy’—it is what I portray. So I just wanted to show you that there’s a lot more to me. It’s a song you would be able to sing to your woman.” “mandela (effect)” (feat. Magixx) “[The producer] Magicsticks created this. There are some songs you make out of unconsciousness—you could not know this is what you want to do and boom, by the end of day, you get your results. And you’ll be like, ‘Damn, see what I mean?’ I just went to Magicsticks’ studio to record, but I didn’t know what I was going to sing about. We just flowed with the vibe. And the feature of Magixx…if you see anyone on my songs, that was not the plan. Anything just comes as a surprise. Bella brought the Magixx feature for me as a surprise—and it was really mind-blowing. It is just such a beautiful thing. It’s amapiano, it’s Afrobeats, it’s Afro-everything; the combination of everything.” “bye bye” “In life, people [fall] in love, and [when] you get into a new relationship, you try to move on from your last partner. So the song was just about a girl that does not try to move on from her ex. I think she fucks with me too, but she doesn’t want to move on from her ex. So, if you listen to the song well, it [says], ‘Just like I want money, I want you beside. I want you as much as I want money beside me.’ So after persuading her, telling her all of that, she still doesn’t want to let go of her ex. That was when I said, ‘Say “bye bye” to all your exes.’ You know, that happened with me. [Again], all those pains should be fruitful. Yeah, I just don’t like to feel something alone, I like to put it out too. If anyone has a girl, or if you have a man that is misbehaving, that is not over his or her ex yet, just send them ‘bye bye’.”