Popular Nigerian singer Yemi Alade has said that she sought God’s guidance before coming up with he stage name. She recently had her say during an interview with the BBC, and fans have been reacting.
Revealing that she experimented with a few stage names early in her career, Yemi disclosed that she eventually decided to keep her birth name after asking her Creator to direct her.
The “Johnny” crooner added that her decision to translate her songs into other African languages is inspired by the support she receives from her fans abroad.
Her words, “One of the names that I had played with in my early days was Electra, but I changed my mind because I felt that the minute you hear Electra, you already expect me to be electrifying, and I didn’t want people to see me coming or overexpect.
I wanted them not to know what’s coming, and then I tried another name, Ginger, but the problem is, in Nigeria, when you say ginger, it means energy, and I’m just telling everybody who I am before they meet me.
I had a moment where I just sat on the idea, and I honestly just reached out to God and just asked, ‘Please lead me,’ and the reckoning that came to me was that I needed to stick to my birth name because it had a huge meaning behind it. Opeyemi means ‘thanks be to God,’ and Alade means ‘the one who holds the crown.’ I feel like that embodies who I am, so I held on to it.
The first language I translated my music into was French, and it was born out of curiosity. I felt a very strong connection with many French-speaking African fans when I saw them in the front row of my concerts, singing my songs even though they didn’t speak English or any of my native languages.
So I thought to myself, why don’t I do something very dear to them and show them I truly love them? That’s where my desire to start translating my music came from. I later went on to translate my music into Swahili and Portuguese.”
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