Meet Solana, the technicolour ‘YoruPop’ star trailblazing her own sound

Solana appears on screen in a burst of colour, popping up from a Lagos hotel room with hair that effervesces in a fusion of different styles. Soft yellow roots quickly fade into bright orange strands; a block fringe frames her face and long, silky-straight locs form her signature mullet. When she sweeps it to the side, she reveals layers of intricate orange braids underneath.

Like her hair, the Nigerian singer’s artistry is immersed in colour, from her texture-blending, pattern-clashing outfits right down to the stage name that she’s chosen. Her moniker melds fragments of her birth names, Busola and Ogunlana, but also coincidentally derives from the Spanish word for sun. It fits the blazing artistic world that she’s curated, captured in the neon-yellow cover art of her euphoric breakthrough track.

Enter ‘Okunkun’, the disruptive, genre-defying single that exploded online this summer, where Solana proudly showcases the endless possibilities of African music. In an exhilarating collision of sounds, the song pulsates with Afrobeats and Yoruba drums at its core, embellished with synth-pop sonics, rock-infused production and the palpable energy of a 1980s dancefloor. With no formal rollout, ‘Okunkun’ turned heads as soon as Solana teased it on social media in early June, later catching the attention of Little Simz, SZA, Diplo, Tyla and listeners worldwide.

As she settles into our conversation, Solana’s tranquil spirit is at odds with the ecstatic energy of her music; her creative output and aesthetic contrast with her soft and calming demeanour. When she isn’t making music, she’s often focused on more solitary activities, like playing Fortnite, crocheting, making jewellery or working her way through a new colouring book. “I don’t like talking,” she laughs. “I’d rather write or sing. I feel like music is the way that I express my emotions.”

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The Lagos loyal has been pouring her feelings into her artistry since 2020 – the year that she was embraced by Mr Eazi’s emPawa Africa music initiative. The talent enterprise supported her with funding and mentoring, ultimately building a launchpad for her early career and giving her the “freedom to be myself without the pressure of having to sell the music on my own”.

She released her debut single ‘Far Away’ in collaboration with key emPawa breakthrough artist Joeboy, which turned heads with its warm Afrobeats sonics, bouncing syncopated rhythms and infectious hook. In 2021, Solana explored these sounds further with the self-assured ‘Badder’, followed by the smooth flows of ‘On My Way’, which featured fellow Nigerian hit-maker Victony. However, it would be another five years and a handful of singles before Solana’s trailblazing breakthrough.

What seems like an immediate hit was, in fact, a song that had been held hostage for years. ‘Okunkun’ was originally penned in 2023, but was met with resistance from industry figures around Solana, stirring up a period of “crazy anxiety” and self-doubt for the musician. “I put myself in a cage,” she confides about the impact of that reaction. “I withdrew from my friends, from everybody. I was always gaming, just staying indoors, keeping to myself.” But then it dawned on her that she had the power to change her trajectory. “Suddenly I was like, ‘Bro, you can do whatever you want. Where’s your free will? Did you sell it?’ I realised that life is beautiful and I’ve got value.”

“For me, music is a safe space. I can be whoever I want to be”

Ready to honour her own intuition, Solana shed the weight of outside opinions: “I finally thought, ‘This is me. Take me as you want to. If you don’t like it, it’s all right.’ I had already made up my mind.” Now, she describes ‘Okunkun’ as part of a much bigger story – one about “expressing yourself, and telling people who have been caged in for so long that there’s a whole world out there”. Compelling others to follow in her footsteps, she advises: “Just look forward. If you fall, get up again.”

Along with another two releases taken from her upcoming EP ‘Girl From The West’ – the punchy and insatiable ‘Dide’, followed by the lovelorn, darkly passionate ‘O Rí Mi’ – Solana’s 2026 offerings are unified in their eclectic tones, punctuated by drums, synths and syncopated beats. When it comes to the building blocks of this soundscape, she’s quick to credit her producer and longtime musical collaborator, Killertunes, with whom she shares a strong creative synergy. “He knows what to do, I know what to do,” she explains. “Whenever we come together, it always aligns. We’re always experimenting. If people were to hear some of the crazy stuff that we’ve experimented on, they’d be like, ‘What?!’ But then sonically, it’s just amazing.”

This unpredictability makes Solana’s sound difficult to define. However, she’s been crowned a pioneer of “YoruPop”, a unique fusion of Yoruba language and culture with pop and electronic music. It’s a label that she “accept[s] with open arms”, but does not limit herself to: “YoruPop is just another part of me. It draws out just one part of my world, ’cause I’m made up of a whole lot.”

What the YoruPop title does best is spotlight the homegrown foundations at the core of her artistry. Often adorned in traditional west African prints, she films almost all of her visualisers in the markets, streets and beaches of Lagos. “I’m a Yoruba girl,” she declares with a nonchalant sense of pride. “I would really love people to come into my world. African culture is beautiful, and we’re so, so cool.”

The majority of the lyrics in ‘Girl From The West’ are uttered in Solana’s mother tongue, Yoruba – a contoured, tonal language which allows the words to almost double as percussion embellishing the melodies. “If you’re talking, it can sound like you’re singing… But for people that don’t understand [Yoruba], I’m not even going to lie, I feel you might be slightly cheated,” she smiles. “As a songwriter, I’m very intentional about what I’m saying… In Yoruba, a particular word can have different meanings depending on the emotion you are putting to it. It’s a really deep language. You’ll still enjoy the music either way ’cause the sound is beautiful, but if you understand what I’m saying, I think it will give you a whole different experience.”

But to delve further into the trappings of her sound, beyond the veil of language, we must understand Solana. “The way I write my music is to draw inspiration from so many things. Everything I take in, I just put out in my own way. What you are listening to is the work of someone influenced by her environment.”

She speaks of an environment coloured by the sprawling sounds of fuji music, introduced to her by her mother whilst growing up in Lagos State. She soaked up the sounds of Nigerian icons like King Sunny Adé, Ebenezer Obey and Lagbaja alongside pop culture heavyweights from Rihanna to Nicki Minaj. These intermingling sonic worlds inspired her own creative playground, where she would gallivant across genres, from trap to R&B to rap to pop – “I think I’ve tried everything at this point,” she shrugs. The multifaceted nature comes naturally to her. But the words that come to mind when Solana thinks about her evolving sound right now are these: “Freedom of expression. For everybody that listens to my music, I would love them to get lost in it.”

So far, this Yoruba vanguard has been successful in her mission to make art that sets us free, with an unapologetic boundlessness that illuminates her. The message that she leaves us with is as personal as it is expansive. “For me, music is a safe space,” she confides. “I can just forget every other damn thing and be in that world. I can be whoever I want to be. I want my music to do that for anybody listening, ’cause that’s what music has done for me.”

Solana’s ‘Girl From The West’ EP is out on November 13 via Since 93.