Ahmed Ololade Asake released his fourth studio album, M$NEY, on May 1, 2026, through Giran Republic, the imprint associated with his move away from Olamide‘s YBNL Nation. The 13-track album features DJ Snake, Kabza De Small and Tiakola. It is distributed through EMPIRE, the company Asake has worked with since 2022. The release puts his own imprint at the centre of the album’s branding, though the public details of the underlying rights and distribution agreements remain limited.
Reviews of M$NEY have focused on the music. Another question is what the appearance of Giran Republic in the release branding, rather than YBNL, tells us—and what remains unknown about the underlying rights and agreements.
That is the story.
From YBNL to Giran Republic: What the Public Record Shows
In February 2022, Olamide signed Asake to YBNL Nation. The timing of what happened next is the clearest possible argument for what a good label relationship can do for a talented artist in a short period of time. In the same month he signed, Asake released his debut EP Ololade, which contained Omo Ope featuring Olamide and Sungba. By July 2022 he had signed a distribution deal with EMPIRE in San Francisco. By September 2022 his debut studio album Mr. Money with the Vibe, which now has 8.5 million monthly Spotify listeners, broke the record for the biggest opening day for an African album on Apple Music at the time, debuting at number 66 on the Billboard 200.
Two years. From relative obscurity to O2 Arena headline act in two years.
His second album Work of Art in June 2023 matched that Billboard position. His third album Lungu Boy in 2024 was reported as a major chart success in Nigeria. He became the most popular YBNL star on the international scene, witnessing tremendous growth after Olamide signed him in 2022. He holds the record for the most entries on the Billboard US Afrobeats Songs chart 62 by any artist from Nigeria.
Then in August 2024 he launched Giran Republic as a brand, was followed by public signs that his branding was shifting away from YBNL. Public reporting describes his move away from YBNL and the launch of Giran Republic, but the terms of any separation agreement have not been disclosed. In February 2025, he released Why Love as the first single under Giran Republic, officially confirming the departure. Before the departure became official he paid homage to Olamide on his first song of 2025, Military, a move that told everyone paying attention that the exit was structured rather than hostile.
Released on May 1, 2026, M$NEY is Asake’s first full album under Giran Republic, distributed through EMPIRE, the same San Francisco-based company he signed with in July 2022. The label changed but the distributor did not.
What Giran Republic Actually Means
Releasing through Giran Republic gives Asake a company identity separate from YBNL Nation, while the distribution relationship with EMPIRE remains in place. That points to a different business structure, but the public announcements do not establish the ownership terms for every master recorded under the imprint. Those rights depend on the contracts behind the release.
The imprint gives Asake a distinct business identity, but public information does not establish who owns each master. Master ownership can affect an artist’s long-term income, and the terms depend on the contracts behind each release. That question has also surfaced in the Burna Boy catalogue dispute, where rights to recordings are part of an ongoing civil case, and in the Joeboy copyright case, which raised questions about the agreements and evidence presented in court.
Asake built a substantial audience during his time with YBNL and later began releasing music through his own imprint. That sequence shows how a successful label relationship can help an artist build commercial leverage, although the details of his departure and any buyout terms have not been publicly disclosed.
That is not ingratitude toward Olamide. Olamide himself left Coded Tunes in the early phase of his career to build YBNL precisely because he understood what independent ownership meant. The lesson Olamide taught the Nigerian music industry is the lesson Asake applied. The student learned.
Where Independence Stops
But there is an honest limit to what Giran Republic achieves and it matters to say it clearly.
The M$NEY cover tells the story better than any label announcement. Asake is Nigerian the neo-Fuji sound is Lagos. The marble is Italian. The sculptor is Iraqi-Dutch. The distributor is American.
EMPIRE is a San Francisco-based independent label and distribution company. It handles distribution, royalty accounting, licensing, sync placements and global marketing for M$NEY. The streams flow through EMPIRE’s infrastructure. The public announcement does not detail the royalty-accounting arrangements. The licensing conversations with brands and film studios happen through EMPIRE’s relationships.
Giran Republic solves the YBNL problem who owns the masters. It does not solve the EMPIRE problem who controls the global pipeline that converts those masters into money. Nigerian capital is still not sitting on the ownership side of a distribution deal for any Nigerian artist at Asake’s commercial level. The infrastructure layer is still foreign.
This is the same structural gap the Nigerian music industry has been living with since Alaba Market was the only distribution mechanism available. The names on the infrastructure change. The location of the infrastructure does not. Alaba was replaced by music blogs. Music blogs were replaced by streaming platforms. Physical distribution was replaced by digital distribution companies. At every stage the Nigerian creative content moved through systems built and owned by someone else.
Asake’s Giran Republic is the most significant ownership move a Nigerian artist has made at his commercial level since Burna Boy signed with Atlantic Records on terms that kept more master control in his corner than his predecessors had. It is a genuine step forward. It is not the structural solution the Nigerian music industry needs at the distribution and infrastructure level.
The Olamide Question Nobody Is Asking
Olamide signed Asake in February 2022 and transformed his career. Asake left in early 2025. The question of what YBNL’s equity position in that three-year transformation looks like whether Olamide retained any backend ownership of the masters recorded during that period, what the buyout terms were, whether the catalogue Asake built at YBNL belongs fully to him or partially to the label — has not been publicly disclosed.
It is quite a common practice amongst artists who eventually make it big and decide to go solo. That observation is true but insufficient. Common practice in Nigerian music has historically meant artists leaving without clean documentation of what they take with them and what they leave behind. The ambiguity that cost emPawa Africa the Joeboy case was not created in a day. It was created over years of informal arrangements that nobody formalised because everyone assumed goodwill would be enough.
Asake and Olamide appear to have handled this well. Military, the tribute single, signals that the exit was managed. The silence from both camps confirms a negotiated rather than litigated departure. But the question of what Giran Republic actually owns of the 2022-2024 catalogue remains unanswered publicly.
What M$NEY’s Feature List Actually Says
The tracklist has three guest features: DJ Snake from France, Tiakola who is French-Congolese, and Kabza De Small from South Africa. Zero American features & British features.
This is not an accident. Asake appeared at South Africa’s Afrofuture curated by culture event in January 2026 before the Kabza De Small collaboration was announced, signalling that the South African relationship was being built in person before it appeared on record. Tiakola is one of the most commercially successful Afropop-adjacent artists in France, where the Nigerian diaspora community is large and the streaming market is significantly more valuable per stream than the Nigerian domestic market.
DJ Snake is a different kind of feature. He is a French-Algerian electronic producer with global dance floor reach the kind of artist whose collaboration on Worship plants Asake on playlists that have nothing to do with Afrobeats geography. It is the same strategic logic behind Davido‘s Becky G feature on 5IVE, and Wizkid’s Tems collaboration on Essence identifying the market you want to enter and selecting the collaborator whose audience is already there.
The feature list on M$NEY is a precise map of where Asake believes his next phase of commercial growth is located: France, South Africa, and the global electronic music ecosystem. Not America. Not the UK. The markets that have not yet been fully saturated with Nigerian music are the ones he is investing in.
What Comes Next
Giran Republic is a beginning not a destination. The structure Asake has built his own imprint, his EMPIRE distribution relationship, his international booking infrastructure, his Berklee-educated producer relationships — gives him more control over his career than any Nigerian artist in his commercial tier has had at this stage of their trajectory.
The question for the next two years is whether he can convert that structural advantage into the kind of catalogue that compounds in value. Masters owned by an artist who stays independent and continues performing at scale become exponentially more valuable over time. Every sync placement, every streaming milestone, every tour that reintroduces the catalogue to a new audience adds to the value of what Giran Republic holds.
Asake is 31 years old. He has four studio albums, a collaborative EP with Wizkid, 62 Billboard US Afrobeats chart entries, and a first full-length album released under his own imprint on May 1, 2026.
The marble sculpture Athar Jabar carved for M$NEY took weeks of deliberate hand work in Statuario marble without power tools. That is the image Asake chose to represent this moment in his career. Something made slowly, by hand, built to last, harder than everything around it.
The album is good. The label behind it is the real monument.