Look at the titles Victony has put on his last three projects, and the pattern is hard to miss. Stubborn in 2024 and Very Stubborn in 2025. Both words chosen by a man who spent four days in a coma after a car crash in Lagos in April 2021, lost a friend in the same wreck, spent close to a year in a wheelchair, and has since had four surgeries with a fifth still pending. He has said his leg still hurts. He has said he takes painkillers before he goes on stage. He has also said he does not want to be the guy who happily identifies with that story, even though it is his.
STARLIFE, his second album proper, is the first record he has made that does not seem to be arguing with anybody. There is no defiance in the title and not much in the songs: 15 tracks, no origin story, no explaining. Just a man in fur and silver jewellery describing what the money bought.
He did not intend to make it. The plan for this year was an EP, with a full album held back until 2027. Then he got in a room with Ozedikus, the producer behind Rema‘s “Dumebi” and Oxlade’s “KU LO SA”, discovered they were from the same part of Lagos, and songs started arriving faster than he could hold them back. The two made “FRE$H,” and on the night it came out, they made “SLICK”. That second one has since passed 40 million streams, topped the UK Official Afrobeats Chart, given him his first solo number one at home, and been covered by Summer Walker. Not a bad night’s work.
What Ozedikus brings is restraint. The production across STARLIFE sits back and lets Victony work, which turns out to be the correct call, because the most interesting thing on this album is the singing. He has been quietly turning into one of the best melodic technicians in Afrobeats, and here he is unhurried enough to show it. Little half-whispered asides, a chanted “huh” dropped into the middle of a bar, phrasing that lands slightly behind where you expect it. He still raps, and he is careful to keep the cadence audible even when he is singing, which is a deliberate choice he has talked about at length.
The opener, “TOO LIT”, runs two minutes and five seconds and does not overstay. It puts him alone in the frame, establishes the register, and gets out before BNXN arrives on “WHO THIS”. That sequencing is smart. The features here are chosen rather than collected: BNXN, Blaqbonez and YKB on the title track, Babyboy AV, Young Jonn on the Afro-house turn of “ARMED & DANGEROUS”, and FOLA on “TWIN”, which returns a favour, since Victony guested on FOLA’s own debut a year ago.
The best moments are the ones where he lets a song be small. “CAN JUICE” is built on a strummed guitar with rain in the background, closer to a 1990s slow jam than anything on the Nigerian charts. “MISSIN PIECE” is a two-in-the-morning voicemail of a song, all longing and no swagger, and it is the only place on the album where the confidence drops away completely. “FYNE” samples Orezi’s “You Garrit”, a deliberate reach back into older Afrobeats, and Victony is openly proud of knowing enough history to make the reference. “CLEAR” is the risk he names himself: harder, more aggressive, further from the airy R&B tone he defaults to.
The problem with a record about pleasure is that pleasure does not develop. Across 15 tracks, the mood barely moves. Women are admired, drinks are poured, the fit is described, and then the next song does the same thing in a slightly different key. He has two songs here called “FRE$H” and “2FRESH,” which tells you something about how deep the well goes. By the back third, the album stops revealing anything and starts decorating. “AMAZON” and “TYPO” pass without leaving much behind.
That is a real limitation, but it is not quite a failure, because the album is doing exactly what he says he wanted. He has talked about spending years treating the career like a job, a list of things that had to be got right, and about finally letting go of that. He wants people to hear the freedom he felt making it. On that measure it works. You can hear a man having a good time.
Whether that is enough depends on what you want from him. Victony at his most searching, on “Soweto”, on the better parts of Stubborn, is one of the more distinctive voices to come out of Lagos this decade. Victony at his most relaxed is very good company and slightly less essential. He has earned the right to make this album. The interesting question is what he does once the novelty of not having to prove anything wears off.