Victony has spent the last few years making music about survival, but his new album ‘Starlife’ is about something quieter and more personal: becoming.
Where ‘Stubborn’ was about arriving and ‘Very Stubborn’ was about reflecting, this next chapter is the one where he finally lets his actual personality into the room.
The shift started when he stopped treating his career like a checklist. For the longest, I used to always see it as a job; like we have to do this, we have to do that,” he told Apple Music’s Africa Now Radio. Giving himself permission to just be human in the process changed how he makes music entirely.
That loosened-up energy is all over “FRE$H,” one of the album’s early signals of where Victony is headed. “I’m just fully embracing who I am finally,” he said of the track, describing it as less of a song and more of a mood shift, a marker of stepping into something new without overthinking it.
SLICK” has been the one turning heads the most, and Victony says he had his own doubts while making it. Sometimes I was like, well, am I sure?” he admitted, pointing to how the track blends a Hip-Hop hook with an Afrobeats verse in a way that felt unfamiliar even to him. His playlist running from Playboi Carti to P-Square explains a lot about how that combination even came to exist.
The fan response to “SLICK” has clearly meant something to him. He talked about watching the recreates and reading the comments, saying it just makes him happy that people appreciate the work. That kind of direct, unguarded reaction is part of what makes this era feel different from his earlier output.
Collaboration on ‘Starlife’ was never forced. Victony described a process where he would make a record, sit with it for months, and only then realise it needed another voice.
BNXN on “WHO THIS?” came from Victony noticing how comfortable the Lagos artist sounded in his own skin lately, and wanting that same settled energy on the record.
Young Jonn on “Armed and Dangerous” was the natural result of already being in the studio together and recording two other songs before that one even happened.
AV, who also features on the project, is described simply as family. “When I have a song, I kind of understand that he’s going to fit into this soundscape very perfectly,” Victony said. It is less about strategy and more about knowing your people.
Touring has added another layer to how he sees all of this. Walking out at a 20,000-capacity show in DC during the Davido tour and hearing the crowd react to just his name being announced gave him a jolt of perspective. “They know me this much here,” he said, describing the ten seconds before hitting the stage as genuinely surreal.
The experimentation across ‘Starlife’ is not random either. Victony frames himself as a permanent student, someone whose taste keeps expanding the more he consumes, and who wants that growth to show up in the music with a consistent signature underneath it.
The chants, the genre blending, the structural choices, all of it gets more deliberate with each project.
What ties the whole thing together is that line about recognising music as an opportunity to live rather than a job to perform.
Once that clicked, he said, he stopped trying to perfect everything on the first attempt and started actually learning in real time. ‘Starlife’ is what that sounds like in practice, and it is still taking shape.
