Half past hits: Albums that scored the first half of 2025
Time doesn't wait, and as we cease the curtain on the first half of of 2025, one thing is clear: tune didn’t correct non-public the silence, it gave it which procedure. Between the noise of net page net page visitors jams, deepest losses, and collected wins, Nigerian artists gave us soundtracks that felt deeply deepest. These weren’t correct chart-chasers. They were mood, memory, and medication. Right here are five albums that stayed with us up to now this 365 days.
5ive
— Davido
5ive is a loud, layered snapshot of a man who has seen both extra and emptiness, searching to get a heart floor. At 17 tracks, the album runs extensive, from the high of Awuke with YG Marley to the reflective Funds with Odumodublvck and Chike. Offa Me featuring Victoria Monét drips with vulnerability, whereas the reggae and amapiano infusions indicate an artiste unafraid to experiment. Yes, some facets feel indulgent, but even that speaks to honesty. No longer everything here is polished. No longer everything has to be. 5ive is Davido writing in real-time, generally stumbling, in general lustrous, but continuously exhibiting up. And in that, he provides us one among his most human tasks up to now.
Olamidé
— Olamide
There’s a grounded peaceable that handiest time can exclaim. And on Olamidé, the YBNL boss wears that peaceable like a effectively-outdated skool agbada. His 17-tune album looks as if a collected nod to legacy barely than a plea for attention. From the jazz-tinged heat of Hasibunallah to the Boj-leaning Stronger, the sound is tall but intimate. He reunites with Wizkid on Kai! and provides home to youthful voices like Seyi Vibez, Muyeez and Asake, proving once again that Olamide is both gatekeeper and student. The album is a refined masterclass in longevity in which Olamide whispers with authority after more than a decade in the game. Olamidé doesn’t expose anything else fresh. It merely reminds us that greatness never if truth be told goes anyplace.
Easy The Mayor
— Mayorkun
When Mayorkun returned with Easy The Mayor, he wasn’t shopping for validation. He sounded like someone who had already fought the wars and became once merely singing from the opposite side. With 12 tracks, the album leans more into mood than momentum, swapping flashy choruses for verses. The collaborations are deliberate, Davido, Fireboy DML, King Promise, and Rotimi add emotional texture, no longer correct title ticket. Diamonds and 3:forty five feel like letters unsent, whereas Harmless and Cause 2 Japa preserve voices of frustration and longing. This isn’t the sound of someone searching to desire a success. It’s the sound of someone who’s found out what issues. Easy The Mayor doesn’t plug a moment, it captures one. And in doing so, it finds something a lot more lasting.
The Feast
— Falz
Falz’s The Feast is a fire lit below silence, a moving tongue in a tired land, and a soundtrack for those carrying both grit and wretchedness. The 12-tune venture walks with the fashioned Nigerian, side by side, via the noise of politics, the ache of memory, and the stubborn hope that refuses to die. Round of Applause hits like a gavel in a court docket of denial, whereas Outdated Soja moves like a soldier’s unhurried salute, precise, bruised, but unbroken. Falz delivers his words with the weight of someone who has seen too grand and stated too runt for too long. The Feast is made for recognition, no longer escapism. For every commuter in net page net page visitors, every formative years with collected rage, and every citizen who knows the procedure in which it feels to be spoken over.
Lagos Lover Boy
— Ric Hassani
In Lagos Lover Boy, Ric Hassani doesn’t correct narrate about esteem, he holds a mirror to it. The album, stretching across 21 tracks, is deeply rooted in vulnerability and city nostalgia. Hassani pours out feelings like water, fascinating from ballads like Love of My Lifestyles to the defiant vitality of Adamma, Asanwa, Asampete. Collaborations with Phyno, Portable, Nonso Amadi, and even Ne-Yo feel earned, no longer compelled. What makes the album highly efficient isn’t correct its musicality, it’s its truth. It listens like a man tracing the intention of his non-public heartbreak and boost. And by the purpose Tuale rolls in to cease the album, it’s sure this wasn’t correct about tune. It became once therapy, esteem, confession and healing, woven into one long, breathless letter to Lagos and the girls who fashioned him.
