Llona has landed his first top 20 entry on the Official Nigeria Top 100, with “Masculine Love” rising to a new peak of No. 20 this week.
The song comes from On The Road, the follow-up to his 2024 album Homeless, and represents the highest chart placement of his career so far on the country’s official singles chart.
On The Road grew directly out of a landmark tour in which Llona travelled by bus to 25 cities across Nigeria, performing in places most Nigerian artists never visit. He has described the album as part journal, part life story, built from things he wrote down while moving between shows.
Speaking to OkayAfrica about the project, Llona framed it as a record of a genuinely surreal stretch of his life, saying the tour made him realise how beautiful Nigeria actually is.
The album is a tender, inward-facing body of work, closer to solitary listening than to anything built for a room. That restraint is unusual for a project written during constant movement, and it is the vulnerability in the delivery that makes it land.
“Masculine Love” sits squarely in that mode, working through emotional honesty rather than reaching for a hook, which makes its chart climb all the more notable in a top 20 dominated by street-pop and Afropop records.
Llona first broke through with Homeless and has built a reputation as one of the more introspective writers of his generation, having previously won Rookie of the Year and picked up Headies nominations.
The No. 20 peak marks a real commercial step up for an artist whose appeal has largely been built on depth rather than immediacy.
“Masculine Love” by Llona is available on all streaming platforms.
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