Glazia is excited to join the celebration of Black History Month to spotlight, honor and celebrate people from the motherland who are making the nation proud by making global impact all around the globe. As CNN host; Fareed Zakaria described last year described during one of his shows – “Nigerians are the most educated and hardworking immigrants in the US and have added over $26 billion dollars to the US economy.” according to statistics provided by certain studies cited by him.
In honour of Black History Month, we are celebrating Nigerians putting their footprints in the sands of time all around the globe, and today we are celebrating Stanley Omah Didia aka Omah Lay.
Stanley Omah Didia aka Omah Lay
Singer, Songwriter, Record Producer
“We can’t complain about the rain when we are asking for flowers.”
Omah Lay clutched his first plaque at the just concluded 14th Headies Awards, where he won the Next Rated.
Stanley Omah Didia known professionally as Omah Lay is a singer, songwriter, record producer. He was born on May 19th 1997 in Port Harcourt, South South Nigeria. Growing up, Omah Lay started producing music at an early age as he took after his grandfather who was a percussionist for legendary Highlife singer Celestine Ukwu.
Omah Lay started music as a teenager rapping in the streets of Marine Base as Lil King but then he got bored and started learning how to produce music. He made his mark first on the local music scene in early 2019 as a producer making a couple of records that got massive radio spins in his hometown but he thought he didn’t get the accolades and credit he deserved writing and producing those records; that was when he made up his mind to pick up the mic and do it.
In 2019, he recorded and put out ‘Do Not Disturb’ and ‘Hello Brother’ and they enjoyed good spins on his hometown radio stations. This caught the ears of record labels and he ended up signing with KeyQaad in July 2019.This meant he had to leave his home town to Lagos – The entertainment hub of West Africa.
In January 2020, he teased his Instagram followers with a verse he had recorded and the feedback was amazing so he decided to make the song available for free as teaser to his official single, that song became ‘Bad Influence’ which went on to garner millions of streams on Digital stores. He then released his official single ‘You’ on the 14th of February 2020 which is deemed by many to be a sleeper hit.
On the 22nd of May, Omah Lay dropped his debut EP which included the previously released ‘You’ and ‘Bad Influence’. The EP became an instant commercial success becoming the most streamed Afrobeat album on Digital stores like Audiomack, Deezer and Apple Music and went on to earn him Apple Music Favorite New Artiste of The Month of June in Africa.
On Friday 3rd of July, he was picked as the debut star for Apple’s Africa Rising Campaign which spots talent in Africa and projects them all through the continent and internationally.