Taves Knows Who He Is. The Music Is Still Catching Up.

_{Written By Tobi Oke}

_{The talent has never been the argument. His songwriting, his melodic instinct, his ability to make something feel genuinely personal without losing its broad appeal…}

Two years ago, a video stopped my scroll. A guy in a corporate shirt, singing. Not performing, not trying. Just singing, with the kind of ease that makes you suspicious. Like he already knew something you did not. I did not know his name yet. I just knew I was going to find out.

Then Folake dropped and the suspicion became a certainty.

Fast forward to now, the question Popstar – Side A is quietly answering in 2026 is a different one. Not “who is this,” but who is this becoming, and is it happening fast enough?

The talent has never been the argument. His songwriting, his melodic instinct, his ability to make something feel genuinely personal without losing its broad appeal, all of that is intact and visible on this project. What has been harder to name is why someone with his level of ability, his styling thanks to Fadil, his creative direction courtesy of Anike, and his ear for a song, has not yet seized the room in the inescapable way his talent suggests he should. Popstar – Side A is him responding to that question by refusing to wait for permission. The title is a declaration. Everyone does not have to agree. He knows who he is, and there’s still so much more to him than what we heard on this project. Which is exactly why I’m already waiting for Side B.

The project opens with Chaos, and it is a fitting starting point. He is singing about a rollercoaster life he is not driving, asking the people around him to understand his inconsistencies while he figures things out. It is not the strongest narrative hook, but it sets the emotional register correctly. This is an artist in the middle of becoming, and he is choosing to document that rather than perform the finished version.

Isn’t It Beautiful carries soulful choral vocals over a funk-inspired beat. The writing is warm if not particularly revelatory. Simone reaches for something more western in production, almost Weeknd adjacent, and it is the project’s most uncomfortable stretch. You can hear him on unfamiliar terrain, and it shows. But Deliver Me pulls things back immediately, mid tempo Afropop with shakers and an acoustic guitar, and on the second verse he is entirely in his element.

Then Uche Jombo arrives and it is the record that holds the project together in the public imagination for good reason. Sampling Wizkid’s Don’t Dull was not an obvious move. Nobody had touched that record in the years since it helped reshape Nigerian pop, and the way Taves approached it tells you something about his taste. He does not replicate Wizkid’s looseness. He brings his own energy and lets the sample breathe underneath it. The result is a song that honours the lineage it is borrowing from while sounding entirely like him. That is harder to do than it looks.

The back half of the project moves through Preaching, which is introspective without being particularly urgent, Space, which is old school earnest RnB that rewards his day ones, and Take Me Away, which closes things with soft piano and drum rolls and a gospel-tinged quality that gives the project an ending that feels considered rather than tacked on.

Production across the board is neat. Spax, OG Sterling, Arie, and Synx bring enough variety to keep the project from feeling monotonous, and the Samklef sample on Uche Jombo shows the kind of instinct for sonic heritage that sets confident artists apart. He also wrote every single song on this project himself, which is not a flex for its own sake but a statement about what these songs are and where they come from.

Here is where the honest criticism lives. Popstar – Side A does not fully do what its title promises. The songs are solid, occasionally excellent, but rarely startling. Compared to some of what he has released previously, this does not feel like an escalation. It feels like a holding pattern dressed in confident branding. The rollout was arguably stronger than the project, with listening parties in Lagos and Ibadan and a visual identity that finally matched the artist he has been presenting himself as. Side A suggests Side B is coming. That is either the right move or a way of managing expectations. Time will settle which.

What is undeniable is that the foundation is real. The talent is real. And Taves is one compelling project away from the moment that makes his self-given title feel inevitable rather than aspirational.

Rating: 6.95/10