For Oyetoro Oluwakayode, known professionally as Kayode, the music of his childhood and the sounds of his generation have never existed in separate worlds.
The Lagos-based artiste and producer grew up listening to Fuji while absorbing the trap, hip-hop and Afrobeats that shaped his musical generation. That combination has become central to the music he is making now.
In February 2026, Kayode posted a clip of himself rapping over a sample of King Saheed Osupa’s “Reliable Pt. 5.” The snippet showed him working his trap flow around Osupa’s vocal, “Aimoye awon eniyan tan ti lo nile aye,” introducing listeners to the direction he was exploring.
He followed “Aimoye” with “Iṣẹ Oluwa,” drawing from Haruna Ishola’s music, before releasing “Bere Mole.” Across the three records, Kayode uses older indigenous sounds as a starting point for contemporary production.
“I think the main thing was not forcing either side of it,” Kayode tells The Nollywood Reporter. “I’ve been making music with Yoruba lyrics over trap production for years, and I also grew up listening to Fuji, so both worlds already existed naturally within me.”
In this exclusive interview with The Nollywood Reporter, Kayode discusses his musical journey, the influences behind his sound, his relationship with indigenous Yoruba music and the creative direction taking shape across his recent releases.
How Kayode Found His Voice
Kayode’s relationship with music started long before he began releasing records. As a teenager, he played the piano and bass guitar, experiences that introduced him to the mechanics of music and eventually pushed him towards creating his own.
Music was also present in the everyday spaces around him. He played instruments in church, wrote songs at home and performed raps for friends in secondary school. At the same time, artistes from different corners of popular music were shaping his ears. Olamide, Lil Wayne, Drake, M.I and Kanye West were among the artistes whose music left an impression on him.
“I’m a music artiste and producer based in Lagos, Nigeria,” he explains. “I make music, and I’ve always loved experimenting with different sounds and finding new ways to express myself through them.”
His journey into releasing music was similarly gradual. He began putting freestyles on social media, and some travelled beyond his immediate audience. The attention brought new listeners to his page, helping him build an audience before he began turning those casual releases into a more deliberate career.
No single moment marked when he decided he had become an artiste. Instead, Kayode describes his identity as something that developed alongside his relationship with music.
“I don’t think there was one particular moment,” he recalls. “Since my early teens, I’ve pretty much built my life around music.”
That history still shapes what he writes about. His songs often draw from his experiences, conversations and observations, letting the world around him become material for his music.
“Sometimes it’s something I’ve personally gone through, and other times it could be something a friend experienced that stayed with me,” he says. “I take inspiration from everything happening around me.”
Building From Indigenous Sounds
“Aimoye” became a clear expression of that intersection. Built around King Saheed Osupa’s “Reliable Pt. 5,” the song places a familiar Fuji recording within a contemporary trap framework. But Osupa’s music appealed to Kayode long before he decided to sample it.
“It was one of those songs that really stuck with me growing up,” he recalls. “His voice, his cadence, even the way he comes into the original record, there was something about it that always stayed in my head.”
By the time Kayode began seriously exploring sampling, the record was already embedded in his memory. He wasn’t approaching Fuji as an outsider trying to borrow from the genre. It was part of the music that had surrounded him, so the collision with trap felt instinctive.
The response to “Aimoye” encouraged him to explore the idea further. He followed it with “Iṣẹ Oluwa,” drawing from the music of Haruna Ishola, another important figure in Yoruba music.
Kayode had already been experimenting with this direction before “Aimoye” reached a wider audience, but the response gave him another reason to explore its possibilities.
“Seeing people connect with Aimoye showed me there was something special in bringing these influences into the music I’m making now,” he says.
The approach also reflects the range of music available to younger Nigerian artistes. Contemporary Nigerian sounds exist alongside older indigenous traditions, giving musicians like Kayode access to both.
“I think as Nigerian music keeps becoming more global, artistes are also looking inward and realising how much we already have to pull from,” he says. “There’s so much depth in our own music, and I think our generation has access to so many different sounds at once now.”
For Kayode, that overlap is part of his musical vocabulary. A young Nigerian listener can hear Fuji at home and trap, hip-hop or Afrobeats elsewhere, eventually absorbing all of them into a single musical language.
That may also explain why “Aimoye” can connect with listeners who do not necessarily understand every Yoruba lyric. Kayode believes music communicates beyond language.
“Sometimes it’s the beat, sometimes it’s the melody, the energy, or even just the cadence and musicality of the Yoruba language itself,” he explains.
Looking Back to Move Forward
Kayode is continuing that exploration with an upcoming record built around Adewale Ayuba’s “Ijo Fuji.” Like the Osupa record before it, the song already has a history for him.
“‘Ijo Fuji’ is one of those records that has lived for generations,” he says. “It was an anthem then, and it still connects today.”
His connection to the song is personal, but his approach to it is shaped by the perspective he has developed as both an artiste and producer. Hearing the record now allows him to imagine possibilities that may not have been apparent when he first encountered it.
“When I heard it with the mindset I have now as a producer and artiste, I immediately started imagining what my own spin could sound like.”
The growing presence of Yoruba references in his music also raises questions about how artistes can engage with the traditions that shaped them. For Kayode, the starting point is authenticity.
“I think the most important responsibility is to make music that’s genuine to you,” he says. “If your heritage and the sounds you grew up around are genuinely part of who you are, they’ll naturally find their way into your music.”
When asked what comes next, Kayode reveals that a larger body of work is already taking shape. He is currently working on a mixtape that he says will go deeper into the world he has been building across “Aimoye,” “Iṣẹ Oluwa” and “Bere Mole.”
“I want the project to feel like a complete representation of where I am creatively right now,” he says. “If you’ve connected with Aimoye, Iṣẹ Oluwa or Bere Mole, there’s definitely a lot more coming.”
The mixtape will give Kayode room to expand the musical ideas already present in his recent releases while continuing to experiment with different sounds.
Five years from now, he hopes to be remembered as an artiste and producer who was willing to push boundaries, create his own path and encourage other artistes to trust their ideas.
For now, that path runs through the music of both the past and present. Kayode is drawing from Fuji, Apala and other indigenous sounds he grew up with, placing them alongside the trap, hip-hop and Afrobeats influences that shaped his generation and exploring what emerges between them.
