Before the platinum plaques, sold-out arenas, and global Afrobeats dominance, there was a contract — and a father who wasn’t afraid to rewrite the rules to protect his son’s future.
In a recent revelation that’s stirring conversations in the music industry, Nigerian superstar Davido opened up about how his billionaire father, Dr. Adedeji Adeleke, paid a whopping $200,000 to buy him out of his first record deal—an act that preserved the young artist’s creative freedom and ownership of his masters.
The year was 2011. Davido had just inked a deal with Black Diamond Promotions, co-managed by Tosin Ashafa and Cecil Hammond. Still finding his footing in the industry, the then-up-and-coming artist had already begun to cause a stir with his infectious debut single, “Dami Duro.”
As Davido tells it, everything changed the day he played his father a cut of the song’s video. “He watched it in his office and told me, ‘This is going to be big.’ That was the moment he said, ‘Let’s buy this thing out now,’” the singer recounted. The elder Adeleke, recognizing the massive potential in both the track and his son’s talent, swiftly stepped in and wrote a check that would set Davido free from contractual obligations.
“It wasn’t a bad deal at all,” Davido clarified in a post. “But my dad wanted me to own everything — 100 percent of what I was building.”
That single decision reshaped Davido’s career trajectory. While many artists in similar positions struggle with the consequences of early contracts, Davido was granted the rare privilege of complete autonomy — a move that not only helped build the DMW empire but also allowed him to inspire a generation of artists to prioritize creative and business ownership.
In a landscape where stories of label disputes and lost rights are all too common, Davido’s journey is a bold reminder that support, vision, and timing can change everything — and sometimes, it takes a father’s belief to buy the future.
