Fireboy DML Faces the Bull: Inside the World of ZUKO!

ZUKO!, Fireboy DML’s fifth studio album, arrived on 16 October 2026 through YBNL Nation and EMPIRE, two years after Adedamola. It runs 13 tracks and opens a new chapter for an artist who has spent seven years being understood, and sometimes misunderstood, since “Jealous” broke him through in 2019.

An artist reminding himself

The earlier eras are easy to list. Laughter, Tears & Goosebumps was the bleary-eyed debut, Apollo and Playboy brought swagger, and Adedamola was a return to self. ZUKO! is the next step, and by his own account it is aimed as much inward as outward. Where the last record reassured fans that he had not lost his identity, this one is made by someone who needed to reassure himself, and who wants to show the sides of his persona that the past few years kept hidden. In his words to The Native, the disconnect between his public image and the person behind it is what the album is trying to close.

The mood is assured, and the sound is more physical. The set leans on vibrating, dance-driven instrumentals while keeping the soul-inflected writing that built his audience. He describes the new songs as the grown version of what people loved: more mature romance, with a little more grit, anger and pain, and “still Fireboy DML regardless.”

Three continents in one tracklist

The guest list is deliberately small. He says he tried to make the album more collaborative but it did not work. “I don’t fight anything anymore,” he says, and the record is more personal for it. Nigerian audiences love a collaboration-heavy tracklist, he acknowledges, so the restraint is a choice.

The features still travel. Judah Earl opens the record on “DEAR FATHER.” Lojay appears on “GODDESS.” Jamaican dancehall star Masicka is on “CLAAT!,” which started the rollout in August. South Africa’s JAZZWRLD and Thukuthela feature on “IMALI,” an Afro-house-leaning cut that sets Fireboy’s melodies against South African 3-step.

That is the diaspora circuit at work: Lagos melody, Johannesburg groove and Kingston grit, all pushed through a Nigerian pop lens. He sums up the aim as his own take on what a global album from an African artist should sound like.

The bull and the red suit

The album’s visual language is its most direct statement. Red runs through everything, and the central image is the bull, which he links to the bullfighting tradition of Spain, where the matador provokes the animal with a red cape. For him it stands for facing fear with composure: nobody needs to know you are scared, as long as you look confident while you do it.

It is a fitting image for where he stands. Seven years in, Fireboy is no longer the newcomer the industry had to make room for. He is the established star choosing to walk back into the ring on his own terms.