From The Curator at BlackFM
There is something rather delicious about the timing of a homecoming that isn’t, strictly speaking, a homecoming at all, but rather the granting of permission to visit a city one has long been denied. Such is the peculiar poetry surrounding Young Jonn Dear London, the Nigerian singer-songwriter and producer’s new seven-track EP, released to coincide with his debut headline performance at the 12,500-capacity OVO Arena Wembley. According to notjustok.com, Young Jonn had reportedly been barred from entering the United Kingdom for a decade, and was granted leave to attend this long-anticipated show. One imagines the sensation was not unlike being readmitted to a favourite club after years languishing on the wrong side of the velvet rope.
It is a narrative arc that lends itself naturally to music, and Young Jonn, ever the astute chronicler of his own ascent, has conceived the project as something of a victory lap. There is a long and storied tradition, stretching from the griots of West Africa to the boastful bravado of hip-hop’s golden age, of artists using their work to narrate their own triumphs. Afrobeats, with its confident swagger and unapologetic celebration of success, sits comfortably within that lineage, and Dear London feels like a natural extension of it.
A Solo Statement in Seven Movements
The EP opens with the aptly named Destiny, a title that does rather a lot of narrative heavy lifting before a single beat has dropped, and closes with Ws in the Chat, an uptempo number that toasts both romance and success in equal measure. Between these bookends sit By 4, Shege, Elumelu, Glass in the Air, and Hold Somebody, five tracks that, taken together with the opener and closer, form a tidy and deliberately concise statement.
What distinguishes Dear London from much of Young Jonn’s prior output, and indeed from a great deal of contemporary Afrobeats more broadly, is its resolute absence of guest features. There are no cameo verses to lend star power, no collaborative hooks to widen commercial appeal. Young Jonn handles every performance himself, an approach that feels almost old-fashioned in its confidence, harking back to an era when an artist’s name alone was expected to carry a record. It is a decision that places his own vocals and songwriting squarely at the centre of the work, rather than leaning, as he has done on past hits, on the drawing power of collaborators.
Money, London, and the Afrobeats Ascendancy
Thematically, the pursuit of money remains as central to Young Jonn’s worldview as ever, a preoccupation that has powered much of his catalogue and, one might argue, a good deal of contemporary Afrobeats’ continuous rise on the global stage. Across the seven songs he offers a blend of melodic performances and rhythmic productions, the lyrics turning introspective as he reflects on his London experiences, giving fans a rounded portrait of his artistry within a single, compact body of work.
The release arrives less than a year after the melodic leap represented by his sophomore album, Blue Disco, which debuted at number one on Apple Music Nigeria’s albums chart, a considerable achievement by any measure. That album followed his 2024 debut, Jiggy Forever, and together the three releases sketch a trajectory of an artist steadily refining his craft while retaining the commercial instincts that have made him a fixture of the scene.
Joining London’s Afrobeats Roster
London has, over the past decade or so, become something of a second capital for Afrobeats, a city where the genre’s diaspora audience is large, engaged and increasingly influential in shaping which artists cross over into the British mainstream. Wizkid, Burna Boy and others have long treated the city as essential territory, and Young Jonn’s Wembley debut, paired with this EP, positions him as the latest to join that roster of acts who have made the British capital something akin to a home away from home. It closes out what has been an eventful September for the artist, one that also included the release of his single Let It Go.
What emerges from Dear London, then, is not merely a collection of songs but a considered piece of self-mythologising, the sort of project an artist releases when he wishes to mark a particular juncture rather than simply fill a release schedule. Whether the EP’s seven tracks will prove as enduring as the story behind their creation remains to be seen, but as a document of a specific moment, one hemmed in by years of exclusion and capped by triumphant arrival, Young Jonn Dear London succeeds admirably in capturing both the relief and the swagger of a long-delayed return.
Source: notjustok.com. Keep listening on BlackFM Afrobeats radio.
