D'banj

Nigerian Afro star D'Banj first appeared in 2005 when he issued his opening album, No Long Thing, jointly through the Mo'Hits imprint he ran with business associate and producer Don Jazzy. Born Oladapo Daniel Oyebanjo in 1980 in Zaria, Nigeria, the musician picked up the harmonica during his teenage years as a tribute to an older brother lost at seventeen in a plane crash. His growing passion for music eventually connected him with Don Jazzy, the producer he encountered in London; the pair later relocated to Lagos to launch D'Banj's recording career. Anchored by the track "Tongolo," No Long Thing delivered a polished blend of urban dance pop and Afropop that brought D'Banj sustained success in the years that followed. Acting as an entrepreneur, he and Jazzy added several rising Nigerian pop acts to the label roster and, in 2007, assembled the Mo'Hits All-Stars collective, which issued a string of hit singles spotlighting D'Banj as its central performer.

By 2010 D'Banj had begun working with U.S. artists including Snoop Dogg, and the following year he finalized an agreement with Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music imprint. Also in 2011 he achieved a major success via the single "Oliver Twist," which reached the summit of multiple African charts while performing strongly across the U.K. and Europe. Before ending his association with Jazzy, D'Banj started assembling a large-scale compilation that would eventually appear on his newly established DB Records venture. Issued as D'Kings Men, the project was not positioned as a conventional solo effort, yet D'Banj featured prominently across numerous tracks alongside a roster of African artists and American contributors such as Big Sean and Kanye West. A pair of 2015 releases—"Feeling the Nigga" and "Frosh"—paired D'Banj with Akon as his sound shifted further toward urban hip-hop. Both tracks appeared on the visual EP An Epic Journey, which D'Banj rolled out track by track through a sequence of videos. Two years afterward he resurfaced with the album King Don Come.