From Producer to Star: Young Jonn Defines the Sound of Modern Afrobeats

Earlier this year, Young Jonn sat down with Joey Akan on Afrobeats Intelligence to reflect on his life and career. He spoke about a journey that has meandered without warning, guided mostly by gut instinct and anchored by the self-belief he has cultivated over the years. Now, with his new album Blue Disco officially out in the world — in our ears, influencing how we perceive and engage Afrobeats — he speaks to OkayAfrica about the character-building that led him here. He’s firmly in his bag as a solo artist, carrying more than a decade and a half of experience lacing hits for everyone from Davido to Tiwa Savage to Olamide, and his producer tag — “It’s Young Jonn the Wicked Producer” — has long served as a signal that chaos and delight are imminent.

Blue Disco is his most ambitious undertaking yet: a leap into the unknown as he attempts to outdo everything he’s achieved so far, his gaze now fixed firmly on the world. The project captures the duality of his life – the ‘blue’ symbolic of the vulnerability and emotional depth at his core, and ‘disco’ embodying the joy and release that have defined his output until now.

“It’s been a long time coming,” he says, carrying the anticipation of someone who knows their moment has arrived, even if it’s a spotlight he never actively sought.

He tells OkayAfrica this new project reflects the headspace he’s occupied over the past year – a generous, spirited undertaking recorded between LA and Lagos, featuring collaborators like Focalistic, Wizkid, Asake, Shanseea, and Franglish, with production from P.Prime, Larry Lanez, and ECHO, among others. “I’m excited to see how the world will connect with this new phase. It’s a different phase, a new level. I’ve grown as a person, as an artist, and as a producer. There are so many things I used to like that I don’t like anymore. I just made music from all of that,” he says.

Unlike before, he’s learned to be patient with himself. “I understand that time is a very important factor. I’ve also learned that family is important. We all come and go; we don’t even know our time. So you need to spend a lot of it with family. On the project, I talk about family a lot.”

It took a lot of convincing for him to finally release his own music, but once he did, it felt as though the universe had been eavesdropping. “Dada” blew through dancefloors and charts alike in 2022, setting him on a collision course with destiny and laying the foundation for the artist he’s becoming. The Davido remix pushed the song even further, cementing Young Jonn as someone to watch and someone worth paying close attention to.

The Spiritual and Sonic Foundations of Blue Disco

Raised in the church, Young Jonn started out on the drums and picked up other instruments along the way — the piano among them — encouraged by his late mother, an accomplished multi-instrumentalist who pushed him toward voracious learning. The church provided discipline through weekday and weekend services, where he was constantly playing.

“I feel like I was just really interested in everything [about] music. I first had access to the drums, so maybe that’s why it was easy for me to pick them up. Over time, I tried being in front of the keyboard too. I learnt by watching people play,” he says.

As said on Afrobeats Intelligence, the creative slump that followed his mother’s passing in 2017 — shortly after he won the Headies Award for Producer of the Year, at a time when his production career was soaring — was devastating. “I felt like I was drowning,” he said. “It’s not like I didn’t try [to make music], but my heart was not in it. I tried, trust me. I was just there.” The year he spent away from music eventually brought clarity. “It was cloudy at first, then a lot of clarity came. I realized that I just needed to get myself back up.”

That clarity colors the 21 songs on Blue Disco, engulfing them in deep shades and bright tones. The album embraces the current sonic state of Afrobeats, where the Amapiano-inspired log drum threads its way through seismic house beats, synths and pads that communicate without speaking, and a collage of outside influences — hear the Roger Troutman/G-Funk nod on “Jiggy Bop,” or the 50 Cent echo on “Go Shawty (It’s Your Birthday)” — that give the project its locally-rooted, globally-aimed edge.

During a trip to South Africa in 2014, a producer friend shared a playlist of Gqom tracks that were bubbling at the time. With each song, he heard more variation until he landed on early Amapiano productions that sparked the idea of incorporating the log drum into his own work, like Phyno and Olamide’s “Ladi.”

“The beats were really good, but I didn’t know what it was at the time,” he says. “I started incorporating [the log drum] a lot into my sound, but people were not really familiar with it at the time.”

Young Jonn is economical with his words, yet every utterance still offers a window into his mind. He uses words like ‘mood’ and ‘vibe’ to describe entire worlds, and the meaning never gets lost. Some pieces on the album simmered for months; others came together immediately after he received a beat. That discipline that was cultivated in the church — and the work rate he witnessed while working closely with Olamide — underscores everything.

“[Blue Disco] is a new phase and a new era. You just know when it’s time to transcend into that phase, and this album is evidence of that,” he says. “A lot of the features are not ones that I planned out. These particular ones came at the right time. That was just God doing his thing. The album just took shape by itself, and here we are.”

“I was in the studio with my guys when I made the beat for ‘Che Che.’ I never thought it’d be what it was, but my guys started saying, ‘we’re looking fly today, everybody’s looking fresh today.’ That ended up as the hook. Jhaytunez came over and finished it up. In my mind, I was like, Asake would sound good on this. We’ve had records in the past that never made it out; we’re always doing records. I sent him this one, and immediately, the next day, he sent me his verse. Things that come easy like that are the best.”

Another Asake collaboration appears on “2Factor,” which also features Focalistic. The song began as a simple studio vibe between him and Asake in LA. “I got back and was like, this thing sounds [good]. There’s a snippet I posted on my Instagram while we were in the studio, and it went crazy. So I knew it’s the one. I had already linked up with Foca before, and asked him to put vocals on that beat,” he says.

The sequencing on the album is impeccable. Three-track runs spill into each other like fountains, building and folding without losing momentum. “Jiggy Bop,” “Airdrop,” and “Close Friends List” typify this continuity. He says the P.Prime-produced “Jiggy Bop” encapsulates where he is mentally — “all of a sudden everything’s changed, my priority different […] we dey work on the weekend / I don’t want all of the girls in the world anymore.” “‘Airdrop’ is more of an R&B vibe – shoutout to Larry Lanez, who produced that. It happened seamlessly, just like ‘Close Friends List.’ Jhaytunez sent me that beat a while ago, and I just slept on it till later.”

They went to LA to film the video for “Cash Flow” with Wizkid. “Shoutout to Big Wiz, he’s shown so much love and support. Shooting the video was amazing. I spent time in America recording my project and just vibing. I just reached out to know what particular day he’d be available to shoot — he’s a hard man to catch. He also came on set, and he took his time. He didn’t stress, didn’t hurry us,” he says.

If the past decade introduced Young Jonn as a force behind the boards, Blue Disco announces him as someone far more restless and ambitious. It’s a project that mirrors the global elasticity of Afrobeats while staying grounded in his own story. As the world tunes in, Young Jonn isn’t chasing the moment; he’s defining it.