Fireboy DML’s Masters Carried YBNL Nation Alone Through His 2019 Debut Album. Every Release Since Has Read ‘YBNL Nation / EMPIRE,’ a Deal Olamide Calls a Joint Venture, Not an EMPIRE Signing

Fireboy DML’s phonogram credit has changed exactly once. Every release from his 2018 debut through his 2019 album, Laughter, Tears & Goosebumps, carries the notice ℗ YBNL NATION alone. Every release since his second album, APOLLO, in August 2020, carries ℗ YBNL Nation / EMPIRE, a line that has now held for six years and seventeen releases, most recently a single out in August 2026. The change lines up exactly with a joint venture Olamide, YBNL Nation’s owner, announced six months before APOLLO came out. What it is not, on the record of the American company’s own Africa executive, is Fireboy DML signing to EMPIRE.

What the catalogue shows, release by release

Apple Music’s own catalogue metadata and Deezer’s label field agree, independently, on where the line falls. “Star” (21 September 2018), “Jealous” (25 March 2019), “What If I Say” (14 June 2019), “King” (1 August 2019) and the debut album Laughter, Tears & Goosebumps (29 November 2019) all carry the notice ℗ 2018 or ℗ 2019 YBNL NATION, nothing else. Deezer’s label field for the album reads the same way: YBNL Nation, UPC 194690050770.

APOLLO, released 19 August 2020, is the first release to carry a different credit on both platforms: ℗ 2020 YBNL Nation / EMPIRE on Apple, and a label field on Deezer reading YBNL Nation / EMPIRE, UPC 194690237744. Every Fireboy DML album and single after it, New York City Girl, Eli, Peru and its five separate remixes and edits, Playboy, Someone, Outside, everyday, adedamola in August 2024, Dopamine, Story, the Peace by Piece EP in September 2025, and CLAAT! on 6 August 2026, carries the same two-name credit. Across seventy releases catalogued under his own artist name, the pattern does not break once after August 2020, and it never appeared before it.

The deal behind the line

Olamide announced what changed on social media late on 18 February 2020: YBNL Nation had signed a joint venture with EMPIRE, the independent American distributor and label founded by Ghazi Shami. He named Fireboy DML in the same post, writing that he and Fireboy, “with any other act I sign next,” were covered by the arrangement. EMPIRE’s own account replied publicly the same night, calling it “Nigeria going global” and saying it was continuing the relationship with “the YBNL family.” Neither statement, nor any report of the deal at the time, disclosed a price, an advance or an equity split.

Speaking about the arrangement a year and a half later, Olamide described it in terms that rule out an acquisition: “It’s a joint venture, so it’s not just Empire owning YBNL or owning Olamide’s brand and all that. So, it’s like we are coming together as two different entities to come together as one.” That description, from the label’s own founder, is the clearest first-party account of the deal’s structure this record could find, and it is consistent with what the catalogue shows: YBNL Nation’s own name stays on every release, EMPIRE’s name sits alongside it, and nothing in any source checked states that EMPIRE holds the masters outright.

Signed to YBNL, not to EMPIRE

A distinction that is easy to lose in coverage of this kind of deal is who an artist is actually signed to. Fireboy DML signed his recording agreement with YBNL Nation in 2018, before the EMPIRE relationship existed. An EMPIRE Africa executive drew the line explicitly in 2022, describing Fireboy DML and label mate Asake as both “signed to YBNL Nation, which has an existing deal” with EMPIRE, and characterising EMPIRE’s role as working “side by side” with YBNL to “strengthen the existing infrastructure” around Olamide. That is a description of a distribution and services relationship sitting on top of an existing label-artist contract, not EMPIRE acquiring or directly signing the artist. Coverage that refers to Fireboy DML as “an EMPIRE artist” is, on this evidence, imprecise: EMPIRE is his label’s partner, not his label.

What isn’t documented

No source checked for this record discloses an equity percentage, a purchase price or an advance for either the 2020 joint venture generally or for Fireboy DML’s catalogue specifically. Nigerian coverage at the time characterised it loosely as a “multi-million naira deal,” a media estimate rather than a disclosed figure, and this record does not adopt it. A search of SEC EDGAR’s full-text index for both “YBNL” and “Fireboy” returned no filings; EMPIRE is privately held and not a US securities registrant, so that is expected rather than notable, but it means no regulatory document exists to check the joint venture’s terms against.

Some contemporary reporting described the 2020 deal as covering “distribution and publishing,” but no source checked specifies what publishing administration means in practice for YBNL’s writers, or names a distinct publishing entity separate from EMPIRE’s distribution arm. A handful of tracks where Fireboy DML appears as a featured artist, rather than the lead, carry other labels’ credits entirely, Penthauze paired with EMPIRE on Reminisce’s 2021 single “History,” or TheCAPMusic on two CKay releases, because those recordings belong to the other artist’s own catalogue and say nothing about who owns Fireboy DML’s masters. And while multiple sources place his YBNL signing in 2018, none checked here gives an exact date; secondary coverage describes an informal approach over WhatsApp, but no on-the-record account from Fireboy DML himself, in his own words, was found to confirm the specifics.

What this means for artists

A joint venture with a distributor is not the same thing as a label deal, and the difference matters more than the shared credit line suggests. On the evidence here, YBNL Nation kept its name on every Fireboy DML release before and after the EMPIRE deal, which is consistent with YBNL retaining the masters and EMPIRE providing distribution, marketing and possibly publishing administration under a partnership structure, not with a sale of rights. An artist signed to a label that later strikes this kind of deal with a bigger distributor should ask, specifically, whether the new partner takes any ownership interest in existing or future masters, or purely a distribution fee and a share of net receipts. Those are very different arrangements that can produce an identical-looking credit line. The credit line itself is a useful, checkable signal that a deal is live and current, seventeen releases in six years is a real pattern, but it does not by itself say who owns what, and neither party in this case has published anything that does.

Limits of this record: the phonogram-credit and catalogue-metadata evidence for the 2020 change is independently confirmed across Apple Music’s and Deezer’s catalogue databases and is not in dispute. What is not established: any equity split, purchase price or advance in the YBNL Nation-EMPIRE joint venture; the specific mechanics of the “publishing” component some reports attribute to the 2020 deal; the exact date in 2018 Fireboy DML signed to YBNL Nation; and whether any written agreement exists that would resolve these questions, since none was made public by either party. Neither YBNL Nation, EMPIRE nor Fireboy DML was reached directly for comment before publication.