Chapter 487: Agreed
Dayo met Blake at a studio in Burbank that JD Records owned but never advertised on its roster. The building looked like a converted warehouse from the outside, corrugated metal and no sign. Inside, it was soundproofed walls and a mixing board that cost more than most houses. Dayo had cleared the room himself. No assistants. No interns. Just the engineer in the back, headphones on, pretending not to listen.
Blake arrived ten minutes early, which Dayo noted. He was twenty-four, built like a basketball player who had stopped growing vertically and started growing in reputation. Two mixtapes, one EP, and a feature on a streaming hit that had kept his name warm for the last eight months. He was hungry, but he was also careful. Dayo could see it in the way he walked in shoulders loose, eyes scanning the room, cataloguing exits and cameras.
"Sit," Dayo said.
Blake sat. He didn’t ask why he was here. That was another sign. He knew that when Dayo called a private meeting, it was either very good or very bad.
Dayo didn’t waste time on small talk. He hit a button on the console and *Essence* played through the monitors. The groove was warm and humid, a midtempo pulse that moved like warm air through an open window. Blake’s head moved before his brain caught up, a reflexive nod to the melody.
Dayo let the first minute play. Then he paused it.
"I need a voice on the bridge," Dayo said. "Not a guest verse. A conversation. Someone who can match the warmth without turning it into a duet. Who can sound like they’re in the same room, same haze, different coast."
Blake looked at the speakers. "Whose track?"
"New artist. Nigeria. First project."
Blake’s expression tightened slightly. "So I’m the feature on a nobody’s debut."
"You’re the feature on a song that doesn’t exist yet in the market you’re trying to crack," Dayo said. He played the section again, isolating the bridge. Empty space where a second voice should live. "This isn’t charity. I’m not putting you on this because I like you. I’m putting you on this because your cadence fits this pocket exactly. The way you switch from melody to bars in that second EP you dropped—’Midnight candle’ second track. That fits here. Nothing else in my roster does."
Blake blinked. He hadn’t expected Dayo to know his tape down to the track number. Most label heads barely knew their own release schedules.
"You listening to my old stuff?" Blake asked.
"I’m listening to everything," Dayo said. He played another demo. *Last Last*. The emotional weight of it filled the room. "This one too. Third verse. You wouldn’t sing on it. You’d talk-sing. Confession style. Like the last verse on ’Midnight Oil’ but stripped down. No ad-libs. No flex. Just the truth."
Blake leaned back in the chair. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment. Then: "Two tracks?"
"Two tracks. Lagos. Ten days. You record, you fly back."
"Why Lagos? Why not bring them here?"
Dayo turned to face him. "Because Lagos is where the song lives. Because the studio there has the right air. Because Michael blocked every local feature I tried to arrange, and now I’m building a bridge he can’t burn."
"Michael," Blake said. The name meant something to him. Everyone in the industry had heard the rumors about the man who had tried to dismantle JD Records from the inside. "This is about the blockade."
"This is about finishing music," Dayo said. "But yes. Michael went to every top label in Lagos and told them to stay away from my artists. He thinks if he cuts off the features, he cuts off the blood supply. He forgot I have a roster here too."
Blake was quiet. Then he asked the only question that mattered. "Do I get a single release out of this? Or am I just the American on a Nigerian EP?"
"You’re the bridge," Dayo said. "When this drops, your name is on two tracks that will play in Lagos, London, and New York simultaneously. That’s not a favor. That’s positioning."
Blake nodded slowly. "When do we leave?"
"Day after tomorrow. Pack light."
They shook hands. No contract signed in that room. The paperwork would come later, drafted by lawyers who didn’t know the full picture. Blake walked out with a USB drive in his pocket containing the two rough demos and the marked-up arrangements Dayo had prepared.
Blake smiled becaus he trusted Dayo after all he had featured in Dayo’s last album in Korea and he had seen a massive followers in Korean and Asian side so when Dayo offered he already knew his answer was yes just wanted to test if that was a thing.
After all Nigerians were knows for how fierce they support artist they believed in so he knew this was an opportunity he couldn’t miss.
Dayo stayed in the chair for five minutes after Blake left. Then he made the second call.
Sarah met him at a different location a studio in Silver Lake, smaller, warmer, with a couch that had absorbed ten years of singer-songwriter tears. She was twenty-two, dark-skinned, with a voice that had made her college acapella group sound professional. Her SS- rating wasn’t public knowledge; only Dayo knew the full scope of what she could do, because he had trained her personally since she signed.
She sat on the couch with her legs crossed, patient. She had always been patient. That was part of what made her dangerous.
"Three features," she said, after Dayo explained the shape of it. "That’s a big ask, Dayo. I’m in the middle of my own project."
"I know. Which is why I’m not asking you to write. I’m asking you to sing what I’ve already written." He played her *Free Mind*. The empty space after the second verse where her voice would enter. Then *Rush*, the harmony stack in the middle eight. Then *On The Low*, the bridge that needed a lower register to complement Tunde’s baritone.
Sarah listened with her eyes closed. She didn’t move. She just breathed with the music.
When the last demo faded, she opened her eyes. "You wrote these sections already."
"I wrote the spaces for you," Dayo said. "The notes are placeholders. The tone is what I need. Your upper register on *Free Mind*. Your speed-precision on *Rush*. Your soul weight on *On The Low*. No one else in the building has all three."
"Faye, Amara, Tunde," Sarah said. "These are the new Nigerians."
"They’re the new Nigerians artist i just signed."
"And you’re sending me because?"
"Because when you sing with another woman, you don’t compete," Dayo said. "You complete. I watched you on that session with Elena last year. You made her sound better without making yourself smaller. That’s rare. These three need that. Especially Faye. She’s introspective but she’s lonely in her tracks. She needs a second voice to make the conversation real."
Sarah looked at her hands. "You always know exactly what a song needs. It’s annoying."
"I know what you need too," Dayo said. "You need a moment that isn’t just your own project. You need a foothold in a market that’s about to explode. Afro-fusion is moving faster than anyone in LA is tracking. In two years, every American artist will be chasing features with Lagos. You’ll already be there."
Sarah smiled. It was small, reluctant. "You make it sound like you’re doing me a favor."
"I’m doing us both a favor. That’s the only kind I make."
She stood up and walked to the window. The Silver Lake afternoon was golden and lazy. "Three songs. Ten days. Lagos."
"Day after tomorrow. Same flight as Blake. You’ll sit in different rows. No public connection until the music drops."
She turned back to him. "Who else knows?"
"Nobody. Not the Lagos team. Not the Nigerian artists. Not the managers. Just you, me, and Blake."
"And the Nigerian artists? When do they find out?"
"When you land," Dayo said. "I want them to walk into that studio thinking it’s a normal session. Then you and Blake walk in. Then we play the demos. Then they understand."
Sarah nodded. "Alright. But I want final approval on my vocal mix. Not the Nigerian producer’s version. Mine."
"Done," Dayo said.
She left with a hard drive containing the three arrangements and a handwritten note from Dayo about the emotional temperature of each track. *Free Mind: introspective, like untangling a knot in front of someone you trust. Rush: joy without innocence. On The Low: gratitude that hurts.*
The next thirty-six hours were logistics. Flights booked under corporate aliases. Security briefings for the Lagos end, handled by Max through a cutout. Hotel rooms reserved at a smaller boutique place in Ikoyi, not the big chains where industry people congregated. The studio locked for ten days, paid in full, the owner told only that JD Records was completing a project.
Dayo handled most of it himself. He didn’t trust this chain to anyone’s assistant. Not because he thought they would leak, but because leaks happened through carelessness, and the only way to eliminate carelessness was to own every detail personally.
The night before the flight, he sat in his office and listened to the five rough demos again. *Essence*. *Free Mind*. *Last Last*. *Rush*. *On The Low*. Nigerian songs built from a catalog only he possessed, now waiting for American voices to finish them. He closed his eyes and imagined the sessions. Blake in the booth, trading melodic bars with Frosh. Sarah leaning into the microphone beside Faye, two women finding a harmony that neither could reach alone.
It sounded right. It sounded inevitable.
He didn’t need a screen to tell him that. He just knew.
The morning of the departure, Dayo drove to LAX himself. He didn’t enter the terminal. He watched from a parking structure as Blake and Sarah checked in at separate counters, sat at separate gates, boarded the same plane without acknowledging each other. Professional. Clean. Invisible.
He texted Akin as the flight pushed back from the gate: *Tomorrow. Noon. Have the five ready.*
Akin replied: *Ready for what?*
Dayo didn’t answer. He pocketed his phone and watched the plane climb into the white sky until it was a speck, then nothing.
In Lagos, the sun was already setting. Akin, Jinad, and Shina were in the studio on Admiralty Way, running cables and checking levels for what they thought was a final mixing session. The five Nigerian artists had been told to arrive at noon the next day for a production review. Frosh was working on lyrics in a notebook at his apartment. Faye was running scales. Kazeem was asleep after a late night. Amara was choosing her outfit. Tunde was drinking tea and reading the newspaper, the oldest of them, the calmest.
None of them knew that in fourteen hours, two voices from Los Angeles would walk through the studio door and change the temperature of their entire careers.
None of them knew that a man named Michael had built a wall around the local industry, and that their producer had simply decided to fly over it.
Dayo drove home from the airport. The Los Angeles traffic was thick and indifferent. He thought about Jennifer, who by now would be learning to clap her hands together with increasing accuracy. He thought about Luna, waiting for him to be present in a way that had nothing to do with airports or studios or wars with invisible enemies.
He would go to her tonight. He would hold his daughter. He would let the world spin without him for a few hours.
Tomorrow, Lagos would wake up to a surprise. And the five artists who had been waiting in the dark would finally understand why their producer had made them wait.
The plane was over the Atlantic now. Blake was listening to the demos through noise-canceling headphones, mouthing his bars silently. Sarah was asleep, her head against the window, dreaming of harmonies she hadn’t sung yet.
The music was coming.