Victony did not begin 2026 expecting to make his sophomore album. When the process behind Starlife started in February, the initial plan was to produce a four-song EP. Then came “FRE$H,” which sparked a creative surge that quickly expanded the project into a mixtape and, ultimately, a full 15-track album, out today (Aug. 21). “It’s just been such an interesting process,” Victony tells Billboard U.K., reflecting on the organic growth of the LP. “But it always felt like it was meant to be this way.” By then, cutting anything was out of the question: “If I left out any song from this, it would feel incomplete.”
When we speak, Victony – whose sound melds afropop, R&B, soul and beyond – is in London, where another listening party is being planned after one in Lagos the previous week. “I can’t feel any better right now. I’m just very excited,” he says. The excitement around Starlife also feels different from his first album, Stubborn, released in 2024. Back then, Victony was concerned with proving himself musically. “With Stubborn being my very first album at the time, you know, what I cared about the most is just like musical excellence,” he explains. “I wanted to put out the best records that I have and just show people that I can do this.”
This time, there is less proving and more revealing. “I’m at a point in my life where my personality is really just shining through the music,” he says. “This is me telling people this is how I feel right now.” It explains why a project that started with four songs kept growing. For Victony, the finished album captures a specific version of himself. “I felt it within me to show people that this is what I’m on and I feel like this body of work completely represents where I am right now.”
That moment arrives as Victony’s world looks very different from when he started making music. He remembers working on songs in bedrooms and kitchens in Lagos; now, those songs have taken him around the world. “Just being all the way in Lagos, Nigeria, making music from our bedrooms, our kitchen, and a few years later you’re getting booked for shows in Canada, stuff like that. Obviously, it feels really good, and that’s something I’m really grateful for.” The possibility of reaching listeners outside Nigeria wasn’t entirely unexpected, though. “We always knew there will come a time where the world will start to have eyes on us,” he says.
His 2022 breakout track “Soweto” showed just how far that music could travel. Victony had previously been a rapper and describes the song as one of his earliest attempts at Afrobeats. “’Soweto’ itself was an experiment, but it just felt very authentic to me,” he says. The original track with Tempoe peaked at No. 5 on the U.K.’s Official Afrobeats Chart, and the following year, a version with Rema reached No. 1. An expanded edition with Don Toliver and Tempoe crossed onto the main U.K.’s Official Singles Chart, peaking at No. 65 and spending nine weeks in the top 100.
The scale of “Soweto” convinced him to keep taking chances: “Seeing where it got to has also encouraged me to keep doing that and experimenting.” He is equally resistant to treating every new release as something that has to outperform the last, saying that doing so “takes away from the joy you feel. It takes away from you enjoying the process… I just want my next work to be my best, regardless of the results.”
That willingness to experiment runs through Starlife. On “Clear,” an upbeat, more aggressive record, Victony pushes beyond the smooth, airy vocals and R&B touch he typically associates with his music. “That was me challenging myself, and one of the risks that I took on this album,” he says. “I think it’s the first time I’ll go on something that aggressive.” But pushing himself didn’t mean losing what made the music his: “I like that it still has my personality.”
Starlife also came together through collaboration, with BNXN, Blaqbonez, YKB, Babyboy AV, Young Jonn and FOLA appearing across the album. Victony describes himself as “a very collaborative artist,” often thinking after a song is recorded about whether another voice could add something to it. The choices are intentional, rooted in finding artists who can bring their own sound into his world.
Victony says he and his manager began building that vision for LP highlight “SLICK.” The experimental collision of R&B, Afrobeats and hip-hop has since become one of his biggest solo records, surpassing 40 million global streams and earning a cover from Summer Walker. It also gave Victony his first solo No. 1 on Nigeria’s Official Charts, while reaching No. 1 on the U.K. Official Afrobeats Chart and No. 2 on Billboard’s U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart.
The music is only part of how Victony wants people to experience Starlife. Visuals have been a major focus too, with “FRE$H” and “SLICK” helping establish the album’s world. Victony sees video as particularly important to the way music moves online and says the team plans to double down on it across the project.
Once Starlife is out in the world, Victony will turn his attention to performing it. He says a tour is coming next year and is teasing a return to London and New York. Before then, however, there is The Bonfire Experience, his annual hometown show, which launched in 2023 as a way to reconnect with the fans who have been with him from the beginning. “That’s one time of the year where I get to actually be with the fans who started the wave,” he says.
For all the milestones that have come with that growth, Victony is particularly proud of simply making it to album number two, especially because he never planned to make Starlife this year in the first place. “So being able to put out another album, even when I didn’t plan for it, it just makes me extremely proud,” he says.
And perhaps that’s why his hopes for Starlife aren’t really about what comes next. The record captures where he is now, but Victony ultimately wants it to close some of the distance between himself and an audience that has grown far beyond Lagos. “I want this album to solidify the relationship between me and the fans,” he says. “I want them to understand me better.”