In February, FOLA put up a clip of himself singing along to “If Love Is a Crime,” the 2Baba song from 2006. A month later 2Baba was on Wazobia FM talking about it: “I really loved it. Soft, smooth vocals. It is amazing.” The song is now “crime,” track 11 on 9, the album FOLA releases today, though the tracklist he posted this week puts no guest beside it.
“Every song came from somewhere real,” FOLA wrote when he shared that tracklist. Seven of the 14 had already reached people in some form before today, and a few of them go back a long way.
Of his own songs, the oldest one 9 returns to is “Miss You.” He put it out himself in October 2023, months before “alone” broke him and a year before Bella Shmurda signed him to Dangbana Republik, and when The Native traced his rise in 2025, it listed the song among the singles that “helped his renown grow.” He kept going back to it, with a mix in February 2024 and a live version the same year. On Tuesday he released a second part, “miss u ii,” which sits at track five. It holds on to the old chorus’s “I miss you bad” and then gets physical about it: “When you comot, e dey give me migraine,” he sings, and soon after, “Like jollof, I go need your plate.” The 2023 song asked her to tell him she missed him, and this one sounds like a man who has already moved in.
“waf,” according to TurnTable, is the song that leaked in May and became a TikTok sound before it had a title. The earlier singles “attention!” and “fine ting” are here too, along with two of the four No. 1s FOLA has sung on this year: “treat u right” with Ayra Starr, and “it’s over,” the song with Bella and Zlatan that knocked his own Davido collaboration off the top in September.
The guest list leans on history as well. BNXN, whose 2024 remix of “alone” took FOLA’s breakout everywhere, is on “my type.” Davido, who put FOLA and Mayorkun on “B4 B4” from his July album Oriadé, returns the favour on “2am in toronto.” When the tracklist went up, Davido posted a ninja and a goat; FOLA answered, “Oriade 👑.” The back cover lists a single executive producer, Afolarin Temiloluwa Odunlami, which is FOLA’s own name.
9 opens on “awade,” FOLA alone on one of the seven new songs, and closes on “it’s over” with Bella and Zlatan, the two men he reached No. 2 with before any of this year’s No. 1s.