Music business mogul turned artist Dapper on winning Guinness Records and new single ‘My Type’

Having seemingly conquered the business side of the music industry and elevated many Nigerian afrobeats artists to success, music industry magnate Dapper has set his next challenge: Dapper the artist, releasing his own music. He is the founder and CEO of the Dapper Group, which owns an 8% market share of the industry across the entire African continent. Fresh from earning a Guinness World Record for the largest ever orchestral afrobeats concert with Dapper Live, he brings us his third single, the sultry My Type.

Dapper is no mere record label owner; Dapper Group spans Dapper Music and Entertainment, DapperDigital, Dapper Films, and Dapper Live. Dapper Group has grown to become one of the largest music companies throughout Africa, and has helped to supercharge the rise of Nigerian luminary stars such as Seyi Vibez, Shallipopi and T.I Blaze. In fact, Dapper Group has been comfortably delivering over one billion annual streams from the company’s artists since 2022. Its ecosystem covers almost every conceivable area a musician could hope for, with the label, distribution, publishing, production, and live concerts.

Some have gone as far as crediting him with reshaping the live music scene in Nigeria, especially in the case of his flagship event series, Trench Symphony, which combines afrobeats performances with a live orchestra. The December edition was the moment Dapper added a Guinness World Record to his accolades, as it paired the artists on the lineup with the largest ever orchestra at an afrobeats concert. 

In terms of his own artistic output, he has released three very impressive singles so far: Blessings (Kura), Scenes, and the new single, My Type. While some might question if someone so seemingly business-oriented would be able to release good music, the fact that the singles are as good as they are perhaps makes a lot of sense when he has the perfect pipeline for releasing music already in place around him.

“For me, music dates back to primary school,” he says, casting his thoughts back. “I used to be in a band, I would play instruments, and I also joined an orchestra. I ended up replicating the same thing in secondary school. I became captain of the band, and I’d be playing the clarinet and the saxophone. University is when it morphed into more of the business side of things, because I started managing artists and also working on the side of creating music as an executive producer — just facilitating sessions and artist and producer meet-ups so we were able to create music.”

Like a true entrepreneur, Dapper spotted a big gap in the African music market early on in his career: digital music distribution, which he sought to solve with Dapper Digital. It’s something he has had a big impact on across the continent.

“When we got into the game, there were only a handful of distribution companies, and they weren't doing DIY services. It was very manual via emails. Our industry, as it is today, is not what it used to be. There was no Apple Music some 15 years ago; it was just iTunes. At the time, you would put out your music through blogs — that was how we used to release music here in Nigeria. The idea was for the music to blow up, get a following, and the artist would then get shows and make revenue from the popularity and maybe brand deals. But there was no real way of monetising the actual sale of the record. 

"When we started Dapper Digital, there were local platforms for ringtones, which were a major source of revenue. Then there were physical copies of CDs, but they were going extinct as people moved to MP3s. That was the gap in the market.”

It was in December last year that Dapper Live was officially recognised by the Guinness World Records. The concert graced the Balmoral Eko Convention Centre inside the Federal Palace Hotel, Lagos State. Trench Symphony: The Dapper Live Experience paired the afrobeats lineup alongside an 85-piece orchestra, the latter number being the key factor that scooped the Record.

“The Trench Symphony Guinness World Record was special because for a lot of those artists on that bill, that was their first experience with a live orchestra,” Dapper says, almost beaming. “That was their first experience rehearsing for three months right before a show. It put things in perspective for everybody involved. 

"This is the level that we need to be playing at if we're trying to take this to the world. People deserve excellence. They want you to be at your best every time, and that's what we try to instil in our guys. Nobody has to be paying you or looking at you before you are at your best. Getting the World Record cemented the whole intention and purpose of why we did it. Next up, we're trying to take this same show on the road.”

It would be almost a crime not to ask industry expert Dapper to drop some gems for fellow music artists on what it takes to succeed in an ever-changing and oversaturated music industry. His answer centres on an all-important principle, saying, “I would say stay true to the music and know why you are here. There are a lot of artists who became artists because of Apple Music or Spotify; it wasn't about trying to be musicians, it was more about a means to an end. Ask yourself, why do you do this? 

"The artists I'm seeing excelling are the ones who are doing this not because anybody's watching, but because this is what they're meant to do and what they're dedicating their life to. If you are able to remember why you do it in the first place, that's what's going to keep you going.”

Dapper began the journey of releasing his own music — perhaps his most intimidating challenge yet after being behind the scenes for so many years — with Blessings (Kura), released in August 2025. It’s a delicious slice of afrobeats, with that classic combination of African sounds meeting modern music production, as Dapper sings that ‘blessings flow like water’ and about ‘moving with no compass.’

“Starting out, I didn't have a compass in terms of starting a music group,” he explains. “But whatever I was going to do, I always envisioned it like that. That was why the lyric was so profound to me; I'm not the one planning it. I don't even know where I'm going. God is my compass; I just move, and he directs me. 

"I had been procrastinating releasing my music for a long time. When you scrutinise other people's music so much, you get a bit weary of people doing the same to you. With other artists’ music, I might not overthink as much, but with my own songs, I'm overthinking everything. I just needed to do this. I released it on my birthday, so it was like a birthday present to myself.”

Following the huge second single, the cypher-style Scenes, Dapper brings us My Type, continuing his trend of ensuring each song is totally different to the last. The sophomore track has a big, hip-hop energy with multiple emcees lending a relatively short verse. My Type is a lower-BPM, sultry single which sees Dapper leaning into his romantic side. And as a collaborative piece, also featuring TML Vibez, Singah and Jujuboy, he reveals that this was a very exciting international effort.

“With My Type, I had been sitting on that record for over a year. We made the track in a camp we were doing in Ghana. This was meant to be the first Ghanaian-Nigerian music collaboration project ever. Nigeria is as close to Ghana as any state in Nigeria. If you were to fly to any state in Nigeria from Lagos, you could get to Ghana faster. 

"There's always this banter online; Nigerian versus Ghanaian Jollof, arguments about football and music, but you can tell the love is there. Nigerians love Ghanaians so much, and Ghanaians love Nigerians so much too. So for me, it was like, how have we not made a project?”

Dapper then shares that, with My Type, he worked on the song in the same way he would if it was releasing a song with an artist on his label. 

“I’m going to be honest, I apply the same formula I applied to my work with other artists for myself, which is that I follow what I like. Sometimes the idea is from me, sometimes the idea is from a producer, sometimes the idea is from another artist. Everyone involved will be in the studio, listen to the track so far, and suggest ideas. We just build it from there.”

The conversation closes with the discussion of where afrobeats and African music at large go from here. Artists like Tyla, Burna Boy, and Wizkid are currently paving the way and crossing over into North American success with Grammy wins. And Dapper, who has not built a career by playing it small, is unsurprisingly optimistic that this trajectory will gain more and more steam:

“It can only get bigger,” he says passionately. “There's a line from Tupac where he talks about how, even if he doesn't change the world, he wants to at least spark the mind of the person that's going to change the world. I can tell you for free, there are a lot of young Nigerian stars right now who are able to dream, and that's where it starts. Before, we couldn't even dream of a GRAMMY. We would hear of artists who almost won one, but we didn't know them. It was never artists in our time singing contemporary African music. Now this is happening right in front of us. We're doing our part in terms of instilling belief and leading by example.”