From A Producer To A Global Superstar

The conference room in the LA office had glass walls that looked out over the city, but Dayo kept the blinds drawn. He didn’t need the view. He needed the numbers on the screen in front of him, and the voices coming through the speaker, and the quiet certainty that the moves he was about to make would matter six months from now.

Alice sat to his left, her tablet open, her thumb scrolling through streaming data without her eyes following. She had grown quieter since the recruitment, more efficient, less inclined to fill silence with noise. Valery was across the table with a notepad actual paper, which he insisted on even in rooms full of technology. Urich and Wayne sat at the far end, Urich nursing a coffee that had gone cold an hour ago, Wayne typing intermittent notes into a laptop that pinged softly every time a new report landed.

On the screen at the head of the table, the feed from Lagos showed three men in a studio that looked too small for the ambition it contained. Akin was in the middle, his face lit blue by the mixing board behind him. Jinad stood slightly off-camera, leaning in only when he had something to add. Shina was new to these calls, sitting to Akin’s right, still adjusting his earpiece.

Dayo tapped the table once. The room went quiet.

"What’s the status of the signed artist ," he said.

Akin spoke first. His voice came through with the slight digital flattening of long-distance encryption. "The EPs are almost there. Frosh has five tracks locked, one left open. Faye’s got four finished, one still needing the feature spot. Kazeem’s sitting on four, same situation. Amara and Tunde—four each, one slot open. The production is clean across the board. No issues with the solo material."

"So what’s the holdup?" Wayne asked.

"The features," Jinad said, leaning into the frame. "Every EP has one track built specifically for a guest verse. That’s the anchor. Without it, the project isn’t complete."

Shina picked up a sheet of paper and held it toward the camera. "We started reaching out two weeks ago. The top-tier artists who obviosuly said a big NO after finding out who we work for."

"Michael," Alice said. It wasn’t a question.

"Michael," Valarie confirmed. "He didn’t just visit random labels. He went to the ones with international affiliations. The big dogs. The ones whose cosign actually moves the needle. He offered them something—your formula, your system, whatever he thinks you’re using. In exchange, they told their rosters to stay away from JD Records Nigeria. But it gets worse."

Dayo folded his hands on the table. He had known this was coming since before Michael left his office. "Tell me."

"The top artists said no, fine. But then we went down the ladder. Mid-tier guys. Up-and-comers. Even the underground cats who should be hungry for any spotlight." Shina shook his head. "Same answer. Or worse, no answer at all. Because in Lagos, everyone knows who feeds them. If Burna’s camp says don’t touch JD Records, the kid with ten thousand followers isn’t going to risk his whole career for a feature. The labels with international affiliations set the temperature. Everyone else just tries not to catch a cold."

Urich set his cold coffee down. "So we’re blocked from the top and the bottom."

"Not blocked," Dayo said. "Outmaneuvered. Temporarily."

Valery looked up from his paper. "How do you outmaneuver an entire industry? You can’t force a feature. And you can’t bribe your way past a blacklist this wide."

"You don’t," Dayo said. "You go around it."

He stood up and walked to the screen. On the Lagos feed, Akin adjusted the camera angle slightly so Dayo’s face wasn’t just a looming shadow.

"Michael looked at the Nigerian market and he made a bet. He bet that if he locked up the local heavyweights, I’d have nowhere to go. He thinks I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to beg Burna Boy or convince some mid-level guy to take a risk." Dayo paused. "He forgot that JD Records isn’t a Nigerian label. It’s a global one. And he definitely forgot that I have artists in the US who are already established, already have fanbases, and already trust me enough to get on a plane."

Alice’s tablet went dark as she looked up at his for the first time since the conversation. "You’re sending American artists to Lagos."

"Two of them," Dayo said. "Signed, established acts from the US roster. They fly to Nigeria. They record the feature verses for Frosh, Faye, Kazeem, Amara, and Tunde. As strategic collaborations to also build fan base there in NIgeria ."

Jinad let out a low whistle. "Dayo, these kids are brand new. They haven’t released a single song to the public yet. Their first official project drops with an international feature on it? That’s not normal. That’s not even unfair to the competition. That’s like giving a rookie a championship ring before his first game."

"That’s exactly what it is," Dayo said. "Frosh hasn’t put out one note. Neither has Faye. But their debut EP features an American artist the Nigerian audience already knows from global charts? An artist Michael can’t touch, can’t block, can’t warn off because they don’t answer to any Lagos label? It changes the conversation immediately. The blogs won’t ask ’Who are these unknowns JD signed?’ They’ll ask ’How did five new artists from Nigeria land US features on their debut projects?’ And the answer will be JD Records. The answer will be that we don’t play by the rules Michael thinks he locked down."

Akin’s eyes widened on the screen. "The local blogs will go crazy. The Nigerian industry won’t know how to respond."

"Let them panic," Dayo said. "Panic makes mistakes. And more importantly, it lets us finish these EPs. Right now, every project has a hole in it. One track per EP, sitting empty, waiting for a voice that isn’t there. We fill those holes with voices Michael can’t reach. We complete the projects. Then we decide when they come out."

Urich rubbed his chin. "Which two US artists are we sending?"

"I have three in mind," Dayo said. "Two will go. I’ll confirm by the end of the week. But they need to be versatile enough to work across different sounds. Frosh needs someone who can ride a hard beat. Faye needs someone who understands melody and space. The others fall somewhere in between."

"And the Nigerian artists?" Shina asked. "Have they been told?"

"Not yet," Dayo said. "You’ll tell them after the US artists land. I don’t want rumors leaking before the plane touches down. Lagos talks. We need this to hit as a finished fact, not a whispered possibility."

The meeting shifted into logistics. Flight arrangements. Studio time in Lagos. Security details for the American artists. Visa requirements. Hotel accommodations that wouldn’t attract attention. The Lagos team mapped out a recording schedule five feature verses across five different EPs, each requiring its own session, its own chemistry, its own creative marriage between an unknown Nigerian and a known American.

Alice handled the artist side, pulling up contract riders and availability windows. Valery worked through the distribution implications how to position the EPs when they dropped, which platforms to prioritize, how to frame the narrative of international collaboration without making the Nigerian artists look like they were being carried.

Wayne took notes on the budget. International flights, extended studio time, additional mixing engineers to handle the new material. It wasn’t cheap. But nobody questioned it. Everyone in the room understood that completing these EPs was the only priority that mattered right now.

"One more thing," Dayo said as the meeting wound down. "The EPs stay incomplete until those feature verses are recorded. That means I can’t give you release dates yet. I won’t schedule anything until I hear the finished masters all of them, with every feature locked. We don’t rush this. We don’t drop half-finished projects just to beat a clock. We do it right, or we don’t do it at all."

Akin nodded. "We’ll have the studio ready. Five separate sessions. Back-to-back if we need to."

"Back-to-back," Dayo confirmed. "I want all five features recorded within ten days of landing. The American artists have their own schedules. We respect that. But while they’re in Lagos, they work."

Jinad smiled. "The producers back home go think we cheat."

"Tell them we do," Dayo said. "Then tell them we cheat better than anyone else."

The Lagos feed cut out. Wayne closed his laptop. Urich finally admitted his coffee was dead and threw the cup in the trash. Valery finished writing and capped his pen. Alice gathered her tablet and stood, pausing at the door.

"The two US artists," she said. "When do you want to approach them?"

"Tomorrow," Dayo said. "One at a time. In person. This isn’t a phone call conversation."

Alice nodded and left. The others followed, filing out of the conference room with the quiet energy of people who had just been handed a plan they believed in.

Dayo stayed at the table. He looked at the five sheets of paper still arranged in front of him, one for each Nigerian artist. Faye. Frosh. Kazeem. Amara. Tunde. Their EPs were sitting in a studio across the ocean, four-fifths complete, waiting for the final voice that would make them whole.

Michael had spent years trying to figure out how Dayo did what he did. He had approached labels, made promises, built blockades. He thought the secret was in the system the invisible engine that guided every decision, every release, every perfectly timed move. He didn’t realize that some decisions came from something simpler. Something older.

Dayo gathered the papers and stood up. The office was quiet now. The city outside moved without knowing anything about feature verses or international bridges or the war being fought in conference rooms and studio booths.

He locked the conference room door behind him and walked toward his private office. The blinds were drawn there too. He closed the door, sat at his desk, and opened the drawer where he kept the device that no one in the building knew existed.

Tomorrow he would choose the two US artists. Tomorrow he would arrange flights and studios and security.

But tonight, he had a different meeting to prepare for. One that involved no managers, no producers, no conference calls. Just him, a locked door, and the interface that Michael would never find.

But he firts went on to write the part that the American singer would use after all most of the songs that the newbies are singing ar from Dayo’s catalogs so only he can make the changes.

He began but didnt finish that night.

Dayo turned off the office lights and let the screen glow fill the room.