2Baba has set November 27 for “Oldest Young Man,” his first album since “Warriors” came out in February 2020. At 51, the title works as a joke on himself. It also names the hardest question a Nigerian pop veteran can ask: whether the man who sang “African Queen” in 2004 can still make an album people keep playing.
“Warriors” tried to answer that with company. Burna Boy came in on “We Must Groove,” Wizkid on “Opo,” Tiwa Savage on “Ginger” and Olamide on “I Dey Hear Everything,” with Peruzzi’s “Amaka,” already a hit from 2018, folded in. Reviews were mixed. Even the kind ones found a star-studded record whose best moments never quite held together, and the talk around it drifted toward what anyone should expect from an artist two decades in.
This time the run-up has pointed back at his own years. He revealed the title in August with three short lines, “I’ve lived it. I’ve seen it. I’m still here,” set to “Rainbow,” a song of his from 2012. The October before, he had marked 25 years in music with a public letter thanking the people who shaped his start, his old Plantashun Boiz bandmates among them.
The listening party on September 19, a day after his birthday, played like a reunion. At Balmoral Event Centre in Victoria Island, Kenny Ogungbe, who flew in from California, stood with Dayo “D-One” Adeneye, the pair who signed him after Plantashun Boiz broke up. “When they mention Afrobeats, 2Baba’s name is always number one and will remain number one forever and ever,” Ogungbe told the room. Efe Omorogbe, his former manager, was there, and so were Tony Tetuila, who was on “Omode Meta” with him back in 2000, African China and Wande Coal. Faze, the bandmate he spent years trading jabs with on record after the group split, got on the mic with him for a Plantashun Boiz freestyle. His mother and his children cut the cake with him, and he told the guests the album runs 15 tracks.
The only new song anyone has heard from it is a love song about staying put.
“Mental,” released on his birthday and produced by Deeyaso, rides a relaxed mid-tempo groove, with 2Baba keeping both verses low and unhurried. The pre-chorus is grown-man courtship in plain Pidgin: “I no plan to fool around / I just want to settle down / I intend to lock it down for you.” Then the hook lifts high into a stretched “Only you,” where Fave’s lighter voice sits on top. She broke through with “Baby Riddim” in 2021, 17 years after “African Queen.”
That is one song out of 15, and it already carries both halves of the title: the oldest voice in the room, singing about commitment, next to a singer from the class that came after him. November 27 decides whether the other 14 hold the same line.