22
Nigerian singer, songwriter and producer Kunmie dropped his debut album 22 not long ago, and if there's one track off it we keep coming back to, it's the title cut. "22" is easily the heaviest, most defining moment on the whole project. It finds Kunmie doing something a lot of artists talk about but rarely actually do: turning around and facing the memories he'd spent years running from. No filler, no easy hooks to hide behind, just a young artist forcing himself to answer the hard questions about identity, purpose and what actually makes his story worth telling in the first place.
If you've been paying attention to Nigerian music at all over the past year, the name Kunmie should already be on your radar. The Agege-raised, Lagos-based artist broke through in a big way in 2025 with "Arike," a record that didn't just do numbers, it took over. Five straight weeks at number one on the Official Nigeria Top 100, charting in 20+ countries, a Top 5 spot on the Official UK Afrobeats Chart, and enough streams to push him past 300 million within his first year in the spotlight. Following that up with the Before We Became Strangers EP and features alongside Bella Shmurda, Simi and Mabel, dude has been putting in serious work.
The title track sits as the emotional gut-punch right at the middle of the album. Where a lot of the project explores freedom, self-belief and the instinct to run whenever life starts to feel like a box closing in, "22" is the one moment where Kunmie stops running long enough to actually look back. It's less about the sound and more about the weight, a record built on confronting the version of himself he used to be in order to make sense of who he's becoming.
Sonically Kunmie keeps doing what he does best: that soulful, melancholic blend of afrobeats and R&B that's made him feel like a natural extension of the Omah Lay / Victony / Oxlade lane while still sounding completely like himself. Silky vocals, emotionally rich songwriting, and that gift for turning something that started as pure feeling into a fully-formed melody.
The album it's pulled from, also called 22, is a big step up in scope for Kunmie, stacked with features from Phyno, Lojay, Zlatan, Joeboy and Wizard Chan, but the title track is the one worth sitting with on its own. It's out now on your favourite streaming platform. Press play below:
Get/stream 22 by clicking HERE
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