“15 years ago today na when the real problem start,” Davido posted at 12:19 pm, adding “Happy Birthday Dami Duro” and a lightning bolt. By mid-afternoon the post had passed 20,000 likes. He meant October 30, 2011, the day his second single reached the public, eight and a half months before Omo Baba Olowo, the album whose title fans shortened to OBO.
The song got out before he had finished it.
“Dami Duro” was recorded in August 2011 and leaked on October 30 in an unfinished state, according to an interview Davido gave NotJustOk that December. The repeated “na na na” running through it was never meant to stay. Once it was out, he left the take alone and never recorded it again.
The beat had someone else in mind too. In Netflix’s Afrobeats: The Backstory, Davido said he started it in his own studio while “making the beat for Sexy Steel,” then brought in Shizzi, whom he had met at Wande Coal’s house while Shizzi was working on Wizkid’s album. NotJustOk’s 2011 premiere post credited Shizzi as producer and Davido as co-producer. When Sexy Steel’s video claim that the beat was his got reported on October 1, Davido’s own account from the documentary already agreed on where it started.
The hook is why the song outlived the argument. “E ma dami duro, emi omo baba olowo,” don’t stop me, I’m a rich man’s son, and in 2018 The NATIVE wrote that singing it “at the top of his lungs, Davido brandishes his privilege with a flourish, daring anyone to challenge his status.” The same magazine’s notes on his Breakfast Club interview place the song right after his father, the businessman Adedeji Adeleke, had police pick up his road manager and a show promoter in a bid to get him off the club circuit.
What followed came quickly. Clarence Peters shot the video in Lagos, and it went up on January 8, 2012, in the middle of the Occupy Nigeria fuel subsidy protests. Akon recorded a remix with him that May. By June the original had won Hottest Single of the Year at the Nigeria Entertainment Awards, and it went on to Headies nominations for Best Pop Single and Song of the Year. In July, Omo Baba Olowo arrived with “Dami Duro” among its singles, and Davido’s father and Aliko Dangote turned up for the launch at Eko Hotel.
The official video on DMW HQ’s YouTube channel sits at 15.19 million views. In August 2025, Billboard put the song at No. 14 on its staff list of the 50 best Afrobeats songs of all time, one of three Davido records there with “Fall” at No. 8 and “Unavailable” at No. 40.
The anniversary post came two hours after Davido had been cheering for somebody else. At 10:19 am he quoted the news that Peruzzi, Zlatan and Shoday’s “Inferno” had reached No. 1 on Apple Music Nigeria with “God pass man ❤️… congrats,” then turned back to the leak that started his own run. He calls it the start of the real problem, and fifteen years on, the “na na na” is still there.