The timing here says a lot. Rather than just letting his 51st birthday pass with social media tributes, 2Baba turned it into a release moment, dropping “Mental” featuring Fave and backing it up with a listening party and the launch of 2Baba Jollof in Victoria Island, Lagos.
His manager Mallam Yankee made clear this was all deliberate, designed to give fans a reason to celebrate the milestone right alongside him.
“Mental” was produced by Dee Yasso, and the pairing of 2Baba and Fave is genuinely interesting on paper.
You have a veteran whose career goes back to his Plantashun Boiz days stacked up against one of the younger voices who broke through in 2021 with “Baby Riddim” and made her name on emotionally raw, direct writing.
The contrast in their styles is what gives the record its texture. Fave’s lighter vocal approach sits against 2Baba’s heavier, more grounded phrasing, and that gap between them creates space in the song rather than crowding it. The subject matter, the overwhelming weight of love and deep emotion, is territory 2Baba has visited across multiple eras of his career, so it fits naturally.
For Fave, this is the kind of collaboration that puts her in a very specific conversation. Sharing a record with someone whose “African Queen” just topped Billboard’s list of the best Afrobeats songs ever is not a small thing, and it signals that her trajectory is being taken seriously beyond her own fanbase. She is not here as a feature for the sake of it.
For 2Baba, “Mental” is doing double duty. It is his first release of 2026 after the earlier single “Celebrate,” and it is also functioning as the opening statement for his forthcoming studio album “Oldest Young Man,” which will be his first full-length project in six years.
Six years is a long time, especially in a genre that moves as fast as Afrobeats does right now, and the anticipation around what that album sounds like is real.
The Billboard recognition for “African Queen” arriving right around this moment is not lost on anyone following his career.
It reframes the conversation around 2Baba from nostalgia into something more active, a reminder that his catalogue is still being discovered and measured against everything that came after it. That context makes “Mental” land differently than a standard birthday single would.
What is worth watching is how “Oldest Young Man” actually positions him. The title alone suggests he is aware of the tension between legacy and relevance, and leaning into Fave as a collaborator on the lead single shows he is not trying to stay in his lane from 2005. Whether the album follows through on that instinct is the real question.
The listening party in Lagos has already happened, which means early reactions are already forming in rooms and on timelines. The rollout is moving.
