The Toronto-based Nigerian artist opens his 2026 account featuring Lagos-based collaborator Meyar.

There is a particular kind of honesty in admitting that love has arrived before you were ready for it. ‘Follow You,’ the new single from Nigerian-Canadian artist Joey Jaey is built entirely around that admission. Released under Joey Jaey Recordz, this is one of the more emotionally precise records the artist has put his name to.
Sonically, the track moves in the space where Afropop and amapiano meet a clean, rolling bounce that sits easy whether you are alone or outside, indoors or in a crowd. The groove of the production is built for replay value and holds the right temperature that lets the vocal work do what it needs to do. For Joey Jaey, that intentionality has always been his strength, and here it is deployed in full.

The song opens mid-thought Joey Jaey insisting he has something to say, that it is important, that it is not redundant. Gotta let you know what’s on my mind / It’s not redundant / Gotta let you know just all the time. It is the sound of a man caught off guard by what he is feeling, reaching toward someone who arrived without warning, without context: never really seen you before, you must come from far away. He is not performing certainty. He is, simply and honestly, present and trying to stay that way.

The most striking moment in the record comes in the Igbo refrain ‘Maka love a togbue mụ, togbue mụ’, which translates loosely as because love is killing me. It is not a metaphor that asks for interpretation. It lands with the full weight of something felt rather than constructed a moment where the multilingual texture of Joey Jaey’s identity stops being an aesthetic and becomes the most direct possible expression of where he is. Following immediately: never been in love you see / I’ll go wherever you be yeah. The admission costs something, and the song lets you feel that cost in full.

The hook, ‘anywhere you carry me go, I go follow you go so’, arrives like something already decided, not something being argued. That quality is what gives the record its centre. The follow-through is just as unambiguous: call me when you’re needing in love / and I’ll be running through the storm. These are not lines written for effect. They are the kind of words that get said when the feeling has already settled and there is no longer any point pretending otherwise.
As the record deepens, so does the resolve. The second verse strips away any remaining ambiguity. ‘I know your intentions / I ain’t tell no lies I’ve been true to you / girl I’m your ride or die / I don’t need saving / running through the storm girl / I ain’t caving.’ This is no longer a man asking whether what he feels is real. The question is, is it love? Is it love that I feel for you? returns as a refrain, but by this point it reads less as doubt and more as wonder. He already knows the answer. He is simply living inside the feeling of knowing it.

The feature from Lagos-based Meyar Oti gives the record a second gravity. The two artists, one rooted in Toronto, the other in Lagos, bring an easy chemistry to the track that sounds less like a collaboration assembled in post and more like two people who found something together and trusted it. Their dynamic is conversational, unhurried, each voice making space for the other. That quality is difficult to manufacture. Here, it is clearly real, and it adds a dimension to ‘Follow You’ that the song could not have carried alone.

The single’s visuals were shot across Lagos and Toronto, reflecting the geographic reality of both artists without turning that duality into the subject of the work. The two cities appear as context rather than statements which is, again, the correct instinct. Joey Jaey has lived the Lagos-Toronto corridor long enough that it does not need to be explained or performed. It simply is. The visuals honour that fact.

ABOUT JOEY JAEY
Joey Jaey is a Nigerian-Canadian recording artist from Delta State, Nigeria, based in Toronto. A former lawyer and human rights advocate, he makes Afropop and Alte-influenced music defined by emotional honesty, cross-cultural depth, and a sound that travels without losing its centre. His work has earned recognition from Lagos to Cuba, cementing his place as one of the diaspora’s most distinctive voices.
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