For a music lover, few things compare to the thrill of stumbling onto an emerging act and watching them transform—slowly at first, then rapidly—from a raw, unpolished state, into a fully formed star with all the trappings of fame. It’s a story we’ve witnessed in countless iterations—from Wizkid’s blistering rise in 2011 to Asake’s phantasmagorical run in 2022. But regardless of how many times this narrative plays out, it always comes with the same surreal charm. Mavo, an upstart whose fine form this year evokes the titillating sensation of watching a player edging closer to a goal, appears to be poised for such a moment.
Last Friday, amidst the flurry of releases that ineluctably accompany Fridays, he released the remix to his proto-hit single Escaladizzy. This turbocharged version swaps Wave$tar’s verse in the original for guest appearances from Shallipopi, Ayra Starr, and Zlatan. The Zlatan feature especially feels portentous of a breakout moment for Mavo. If you recall, Zlatan’s verse on OdumoduBlvck’s Pincanto supplied the added oomph and cachet that ultimately occasioned OdumoduBlvck’s breakout moment in 2023. The examples extend beyond OdumoduBlvck. Zlatan was one of the first mainstream artists to confer BNXN with a vote of confidence, collaborating with him on a record titled Spiritual in 2019, before he signed to BurnaBoy’s Spaceship Records. His verse on the remix of Shallipopi’s Elon Musk, also provided forward propulsion to the artist’s nascent career. The examples are so plentiful that a Zlatan feature has become a shorthand for a breakout moment.
Mavo is one of those artists who exist in a universe separate from the mainstream. Interestingly, he doesn’t quite fit into the alternative, or what is colloquially referred to as the Alté scene. He’s hyper aware of this and has christened his sound “Bur Bur music,” a title that aptly bespeaks the free-floating nature of his sound. His fanbase is as singular as his sound. His professional career started sometime in 2023, with a 7-track EP titled Ukanigbe. The project, which runs for some 20 minutes, functions as a window into his lurid internal state. It is here that we are first introduced to his idiosyncrasies and curious predilection.
He’s constantly lovelorn, caught between the quixotic allure of a pure, picturesque kind of romance—the kind peddled by romance films and novels—and the more transactional romance of this age. He’s deeply allergic and contemptuous of poverty. Indeed, to date, the phrase “No more way for poor people,” which he frequently and irreverently deploys, functions as an insignia in his work. As such he’s pathologically obsessed with a life of wealth, of excess. These themes which shimmer across his debut EP, are still very much present in his current work—perhaps more so. Tumo Weto, from his debut project, is a few thousand shy of a million streams. Many of his old songs have garnered north of five hundred thousand streams—impressive numbers for an artist who until recently was underground. Despite these numbers, he was relatively unknown, wholly buoyed by an army of faithful, until the snippet of Escaladizzy went viral on TikTok earlier this year.
Spurred on by the rapturous response on social media, he enlisted Wave$tar on the track and raced to finish the song before the attention he was attracting started to ebb. The song was a phenomenon right from its release. With some 4.2 million streams, two months out from its release, its commercial performance is nothing short of impressive. But the song’s cultural impacts transcend quantifiable metrics. Outside of Laho, it’s hard to name another song with the level of cultural significance it has wielded this year. It’s this ubiquity and cultural impact that attracted Ayra Starr, Shallipopi, and Zlatan—a triumvirate whose heft seems almost disproportionate to be staked on a single song—to the remix.
Outside of the co-signs and his recent successes, what makes Mavo so compelling as an emerging act is that his sound is so singular to himself. This is not to suggest that his work is monotonous, it’s not. But when you hear a Mavo song, you can tell—and so it cuts through the noise. He also has a teeming army of loyalists who have stuck with him over the years. These factors are strongly indicative of an imminent ascent to stardom. On the question of whether Mavo is poised for a breakout moment, the stars are aligned, it now falls to him to seize the moment.
