Full Name: Crown Uzama
Born: April 12, 2000
Origin: Benin City, Edo State
Label: Plutomania Records (founder), Since '93
Genres: Street-Pop, Afrobeats, Afro-Pluto (his own term)
From Benin City to "Cast"
Shallipopi's rise has been one of the fastest in recent Nigerian street-pop, built less on a single breakthrough and more on a consistent run that hit critical mass in 2023, the year his collaboration with ODUMODUBLVCK, Cast, reached number one on the TurnTable Top 100 Songs chart — the same year his solo work, including Blood on the Dance Floor with Bloody Civilian, kept his name in equally heavy rotation. He founded his own label, Plutomania Records, and that independent ownership has shaped how he's approached every release since.
Afro-Pluto, Not Afrobeats
Shallipopi has been explicit in interviews that he doesn't consider his music Afrobeats — he calls it Afro-Pluto, a term he uses to mark out his sound as his own category rather than a subset of the wider genre. He told 78 Factory he's also a believer in saying less publicly and letting the music carry the weight: "I believe that when you talk too much, you start to lose your value. So I try to stay silent and let my music speak for itself." He's specifically named Wizkid as the model for that approach.
Laho and the Label Dispute
His most significant 2025 single, Laho, carries real backstory. The original was meant to be his first release under his own independent label, but a publicised dispute with a former label executive delayed it — the song was pulled in February 2025 and re-released in March after the situation resolved. In Edo, laho loosely translates to "please don't let me fall" or "don't let me down," and the title's defiance matched the circumstances of its release almost too neatly. Laho went on to peak at number 5 on the US Billboard Afrobeats Songs chart and became one of the biggest Nigerian records of the first half of 2025.
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Shallipopi ft. Burna Boy – Laho IIThe remix, Laho II, brought in Burna Boy — who had just performed to over 80,000 people at a sold-out Stade de France earlier that same year, the first African artist to do so — and the combined record dominated club rotation from Benin City to London. Shallipopi's brothers Zerrydl and Famous Pluto appeared in the original video, keeping the project a family affair even as it scaled internationally.
2026 and Worship
His momentum has continued into 2026 with his fourth studio album M$NEY, which dropped May 1, 2026, preceded by pre-release singles including Worship featuring French producer DJ Snake, already covered on this blog. The DJ Snake collaboration — built on production from one of the biggest electronic producers in the world, behind global hits like Lean On and Taki Taki — signals where Shallipopi's ambitions are now pointed: not just dominating Nigerian street-pop, but building genuine international production relationships.
From Cast topping Nigerian charts in 2023 to a French EDM superproducer collaboration in 2026, Shallipopi's trajectory has been a study in scaling without diluting — the Afro-Pluto label still applies, the Benin City identity is still front and centre, but the rooms he's now operating in have gotten considerably bigger.
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