Fireboy DML: The new 'YAWA' music video is all types of celebration vibes

We might be well beyond Father’s Day but it doesn’t mean the warm and cozy barbecue vibes need to slow down, right? Turns out hip-hop artist Fireboy DML is keeping things sizzling with the rollout of his new ‘YAWA’ single and music video.

It’s more than just audio heat. The visual brings you into a celebratory and fun vibe from start to finish. Peep the details and keep scrolling to see Fireboy in action.

Today, award-winning Nigerian singer-songwriter Fireboy DML drops his second single of the year “YAWA” via YBNL/EMPIRE. This release comes on the heels of the emotional record “Someone” which explored the ups and downs of romance as an in-demand music artist.

Fireboy opens the song with conviction, delivering lines like, “Man on a mission, I see no competition”. The song features an up-tempo beat characterized by a blend of traditional drumming and a modern Afro-pop cadence. The bridge reinforces this nonchalant attitude of the track as he boasts “don’t give a f*ck”, an attitude shown by letting worries go and “giving it all on the dancefloor 24/7”. The song ends with a harmony of vocals and a string instrumental, evoking a feeling of all of your problems washing away.  

In the accompanying video, directed by Primo and Perliks, Fireboy can be seen riding top down in a red Cadillac with a white leather interior, wind in his face, and the city lights illuminating the sky. A high-spirited tone is set as he cruises down the street against the dazzling skyline with his love interest by his side. He is later shown surrounded by women with their heads in the clouds, marveling at his success and reading a newspaper headline about him to which he brushes off dismissively. The video ends with Fireboy crumpling up the newspaper and throwing it at the camera, exhibiting an uninterested, “no yawa” attitude. 

Using his innovative yet global artistry, Fireboy released his third studio album Playboy in March of 2022, which has amassed over 2.6 billion streams to date, alongside platinum single “Peru” which has surpassed 1.6 billion streams. Accompanying the release of the new album, he set out for his month-long global tour which kicked off on March 16th in Switzerland making stops in Paris, Netherlands, and Denmark before coming to an end in Poland. This followed on the heels of his successful first headlining US tour, “Apollo”, which made stops across the US in Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Georgia, Texas, Colorado, California, and Washington. Fireboy was nominated for “Best International Act” at the 2022 BET Awards where he made history becoming the first Nigerian artist to perform on the BET Awards stage and is slated to perform at this year's Afro Nation Portugal. 

Want to learn more about Fireboy? Keeping tabs on DML’s grind? Say less.

Dubbed the ‘future’ of Afrobeats, Fireboy DML first emerged on the Nigerian music scene in 2019 with the re-release of his breakout single “Jealous” which was originally a part of YBNL’s 2018 collaborative album, YBNL Mafia Family. On June 14, 2019, he followed up “Jealous” with the explosive romantic number “What If I Say” and later that year, on the 29th of November released his debut album, Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps. LTG had no features for a debut album and amassed over 100 million streams by January 2020. The album maintained the #1 position across the Nigerian charts for over 12 weeks with ‘Jealous’ becoming one of the most played songs on African radio stations that year.

Building on the success of LTG, Fireboy followed up his debut with an inventive sophomore project, Apollo. It received a whopping rating of 8.3 on Pitchfork, amongst other accolades. In 2021, Fireboy released his biggest single yet, “Peru”. The single would go on to feature Ed Sheeran in an explosive remix peaking at No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart and garnering over 20.6 million Spotify streams, earning it a hallowed place as the most streamed song in Nigeria in early 2022. His newest album, Playboy, sees the sensual, sweet-natured artist shift gears into a confident, self-possessed bad boy persona resulting in a Pitchfork review of the album, which got a 7.4 rating. He has been nominated for a number of awards including the Best International Act award at the 2022 BET Awards, where he became the first Nigerian artist to perform on the BET stage and the NAACP Image Awards in 2021, amongst others. Fireboy remains one of the leading Afrobeats talents reinventing a wholly global future of the fast-rising genre.