The World of Ayo40

When Noah Omoyele, better known as Ayo40, released his debut single Breathe, it marked the formal arrival of a voice that has been quietly shaping itself in bedrooms, choirs, and makeshift recording spaces for years. His sound, what he calls afro blues, feels both familiar and disorienting, a meeting point between the raw percussive urgency of Afrobeats and juju, and the weightless drift of contemporary R&B. He describes it as "aggression and compassion," a sonic duality that mirrors the contradictions of his world.

Born into a family steeped in music-an uncle rooted in juju gospel, a grandmother and mother steeped in choir traditions-Omoyele's initiation into sound was less a choice than a given. "See me and music have been friends since childhood," he reflects. Sunday rehearsals, the swell of gospel harmonies, and the informal battles of adolescence (rap freestyles with friends, traded verses in schoolyards) set the foundation.

But his real laboratory was digital: a smartphone, BandLab, and a pair of wired earbuds. What began as experiments during the isolation of the pandemic slowly became a body of work, the archive of a teenager learning to build worlds with nothing more than his voice and an interface. Breathe, like much of his early catalogue, was born in that compressed space.
Still, his trajectory has not been linear. Early uploads under different monikers showcased a restless approach, one track leaning into J. Cole-style introspection, another swerving into trap, another steeped in R&B moodiness. The inconsistency, while confusing for audiences, was part of the process of stripping back to something truer. "Eventually I dug deeper with Afrobeats, given my roots, because that's who I am," he says. The result was Breathe, the track that finally stuck, encouraged by peers who insisted he share it.

The name Ayo40 encapsulates this philosophy. Ayo, a Yoruba name, means joy. The 40 is drawn from Noah's biblical namesake, referencing the forty days and nights of rain, but also evoking endurance, striving, and transformation. Taken together, it becomes a mantra: striving in joy. Where others equate work with drudgery, Ayo insists on retaining lightness, even in struggle.

That tension, between burden and brightness-sits at the heart of his music. Nigeria itself is a constant presence: a country of extremes, where beauty and brutality are often inseparable. "Life in Naija is bittersweet," he explains. "It's always a clear duality of good and bad." This duality finds voice not only in the tonal shifts of his songs but also in his alter-ego, Saintel. Derived from el santo (the saint), but written backwards, it is a tongue-in-cheek rejection of perfection. In Ayo's world, nobody is wholly pure or wholly corrupt; contradictions define us.

His process reflects that embrace of imperfection. The starting point is rarely a lyric but a vibe, an atmosphere conjured by production that sets the stage for what follows. Lyrics are drawn from observation as much as autobiography: overheard conversations, stories from friends, the gestures of daily life. Love or Glory, perhaps his most personal track to date, captures a recurring dilemma: the pull between intimacy and ambition, between being vulnerable and being driven. More recently, LNL has become his calling card, the track he suggests new listeners start with.

If there is a message threading through his work, it is less a manifesto than a mood: "a ballad of two quietly bleeding hearts," as he puts it. Music, for Ayo, is not escapism but a lens, a way of reframing reality in colour, even when the subject matter is difficult. "I want to create a space where people feel their reality in a more beautiful way," he says. "Beautify their experience. That's how music heals."

As for what comes next, Ayo remains deliberately coy. Asked about future projects and collaborations, he replies with a parable: How does a chef feed themself? The implication is that creation is not an event but a necessity, something always in process, always being refined in the quiet corners of his bedroom studio.

Ayo40's emergence with Breathe may seem modest in scope, but the ideas underpinning it, the insistence on duality, the refusal of neat categories, the blend of tradition and experiment, suggest an artist intent on carving a singular path. In his words, if the world were a song, it would hold both aggression and compassion. His project is to make that audible.

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This release was published on openPR.