How FOLA Went From a Betting Shop Counter to Sold-Out Rooms

From a betting shop counter in Ibadan to sold-out venues in Toronto, FOLA sits down with Joey Akan to talk about locking in before anyone was looking, and why he's still building on his own terms.

Before FOLA was the man behind Catharsis, the album that debuted at number 2 on Spotify's Global Top Albums chart and helped push his total streams past a billion, he was behind a different kind of counter, taking bets at his father's Bet9ja shop in Ibadan. It's the story everyone now knows about him. What's less talked about is the years in between: the pen-and-notepad period when nobody was checking for him, and the quiet decision to keep writing anyway.

Believing It Before Anyone Else Did

FOLA’s rise is not luck meeting timing. He walks us through a decision he made early, and kept making, long before the numbers agreed with him. "I'm such a big fan of myself," he says. "Before anyone believes in you, you really have to believe in yourself."

It's a simple line, but it does a lot of work. From the outside, FOLA's rise looks like a string of lucky breaks: Ibadan to Lagos in 2018, on a cousin's urging. An unsigned writer who found his way into Bella Shmurda's Dangbana Republik. A deal with Kizz Daniel that almost happened, then didn't, followed, not long after, by one that did. From his side of it, the story reads differently. It's closer to a long argument he was having with himself about whether to keep going, one he'd apparently already decided in his own favor.

No Phone, No Laptop, No Shortcut

Part of what makes the betting-shop story land isn't just where he started, it's how little he had to work with while he was there. "I didn't even have a phone," Fola says. "I used to see people opening their laptops like, 'Hey, laptop.' There was no way to do music. It was so hard." The notepad wasn't a creative choice; it was the only tool in the room.

FOLA (Nigerian Music Artist) on Afrobeats Intelligence presented by OkayAfrica with host, Joey Akan.

Building a Sound With Real Life Stories

By the time the conversation moves into craft,  how FOLA actually builds a song, works with his team, and puts an album together, a different picture emerges: an artist who treats songwriting as something closer to reporting than confession. He's open about pulling material from the people around him, including, by his own admission, lifting songs straight out of his manager's love life. It's a small detail, but it says something about how Catharsis, an album critics have described as an intimate, emotionally raw body of work, actually gets made: not purely from FOLA's own diary, but from a wider net of lives he's paying attention to.

That same attentiveness runs through his account of the relationship with Bella Shmurda, the artist who discovered him and brought him into Dangbana Republik. It's a bond Bella himself has publicly described less as artist-and-signee and more as brotherhood, and FOLA's own telling points in the same direction: “a relationship built on more than a contract.”

What the Crowd Changes

FOLA has gone from writing in private to watching crowds spend their own money to come see him do it live, sold-out UK dates, a stop at the Indigo at The O2, and upcoming shows in Canada. He started out with no laptop, and no certainty anyone would ever hear what he was writing. That he's gone from making something for no one in particular to making something people will pay to stand in a room for is its own kind of proof of concept. Ten Headies nominations this year, including Headies Album of the Year for Catharsis, haven't changed the instinct that got him here in the first place: locking in, on his own terms, whether or not anyone's watching yet.

Afrobeats Intelligence presented by OkayAfrica host, Joey Akan and FOLA behind the scenes.

Afrobeats Intelligence host Joey Akan and Úrú Collective team with FOLA and his manager Ini “Melvin” Baderinwa on set.

Watch the full conversation with FOLA on Afrobeats Intelligence, presented by OkayAfrica and sponsored by Martell.

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Afrobeats Intelligence presented by OkayAfrica was created by host, Joey Akan and produced by Úrú Collective. Úrú Collective is a talent management and media production company working with talent, brands, and culture across Africa.