Executive of the Week, Asa Aika

Executive of the Week, Asa Aika: How Davido’s ’Timeless’ Rewrote the History Books and Soared to the Top of the Charts

“Every time we’ve dropped an album, we’ve always set new records,” says TurnTable Executive of the Week – Asa Asika.

For the past few months, albums from heavyweight Afrobeats artistes have consistently raised the bar for the biggest debut weeks on several streaming platforms in Nigeria. Burna Boy’s ‘Love, Damini’ held the biggest debut for both Spotify and YouTube in Nigeria while Asake’s ‘Mr. Money With The Vibe’ held records for Apple Music, Audiomack, and Boomplay. But Davido’s ‘Timeless’ didn’t just break these records, it took the bar to a different stratosphere.

For the Spotify debut week record, it took the album only 24 hours to surpass it. For the Boomplay debut week record, it took only four days to shatter it. It took longer to break the records for the remaining platforms but it inevitably did before the end of its first seven days of release. In the end, ‘Timeless’ tallied 50.4 million on-demand streams across all platforms in Nigeria – an almost insurmountable figure that was more than the rest of the 49 albums on this week’s Official Top 50 Albums Chart put together.

All these are testament to the sheer star power of Davido – eight of the songs on the album debuted in the top ten regions of Official Nigeria Top 100 (a new record) – and a marketing effort and rollout campaign that included a collaboration with Beat FM, a dance challenge for the album’s lead single “UNAVAILABLE, (it debuted at No. 3 on this week’s singles chart behind two other tracks from the album” a Puma collab drop of original clothing, two intimate shows in London and New York, several collaborations with Spotify and a display of the album in Europe’s biggest football stadium. The ‘Timeless’ experience has been a spectacle to behold for all, with Davido returning to his status as Nigeria’s foremost social media personality and taking us on a ride for the ages.

This week, Davido became only the first artiste to debut at No. 1 on both the singles and albums chart in Nigeria – and first to occupy the top spot on all three major charts as a lead artiste (No. 1 on the albums chart, artiste chart, and singles chart).

The campaign involved several teams, organizations, and brands in different parts of the world. But everything was held together by Davido’s longtime manager and business partner, Asa Asika. When informed about his title as Executive of the Week, Asika was quick to point out that other clients apart from Davido had a great week too. Victony’s “Soweto (Remix)” only missed out on a top 3 peak due to the arrival of eight new Davido songs in the top ten; Ckay’s Boyfriend Campus Tour while the masked hat-wearing duo of Maze & Mxtreme performed at Big Brother.

In this interview, Asa Asika talks about working on ‘Timeless,’ first-week performance, all of Davido's albums having 17 songs, managing several superstar Afrobeats acts, and more. 

TTC: Can you tell us about yourself?

Asa: My name is Asa Asika, co-founder of The Plug, popularly known as Davido’s manager, I also work with Ckay, Victony, Bella Shmurda, BOJ, and a few other people.

TTC: One of the major conversations around ‘Timeless’ has been the impressive rollout in which everything seemed extremely planned and detailed; how long was the planning process, who are those that worked on it and how did you manage to tie everything into the music? 

Asa: In December [2022], we decided we were going to put the album out in March but it wasn’t until January that we got to work. It took us about 3 months of prep, getting the paper works sorted, mixing, and mastering music. Deciding on an album name also took a while, we went back and forth on it; then picking songs for the album took some time too because we’ve been working on this album for 2 years. Songs like “Champion Sound,” and “Legends Can Never Die,” are some of the old records that made the final cut.

For the marketing part, it took us about 3 months to put the whole campaign together. The LVRN teams led by Tunde and Ronx, Bobo and BFA team, my staff at The Plug, my business partners Bizzle Osikoya and Tobi Mohammed, our label Sony Music and other people such as Nonso & Korie who work with us at The Plug; It was a joint effort where a lot of people played different parts. Thankfully, it all came together well, and all glory to God.

TTC: All Davido albums have 17 tracks, is that coincidental or calculated?

Asa: 17 tracks on all the albums, it is a funny coincidence. ‘A Good Time’ had 17 tracks because we had so many singles out before the album came out. For ‘A Better Time’ we were just making a lot of music and it happened to be seventeen. For ‘Timeless,’ we had 16 songs and needed one more to release the album preorder link, so we added “Champion Sound” at the last minute.

TTC: Is there any other thing aside from 17 that you think has been consistent?

Asa: We’ve always shot visuals for a lot of videos, we always break records every time we release, and I think that’s it.

TTC: Going into this particular album, did you see it as a comeback moment where you needed to make a statement?

Asa: I don’t think it was a comeback moment, everybody knows the predicament we were in before putting this out for personal reasons. So we just thought it was important that we return to the music scene with great music. Davido was still No. 1 on the different charts last year without actually putting out his music. It wasn’t a comeback but it was very important that we run it out and make it a big deal, put attention to details, and have a very loud rollout.

TTC: So, you don’t see any comparison between what’s happening this year to when he came back in 2020?

Asa: No, at all, I feel I can say that the album came out because of Covid like we were bored and just decided to drop something.

TTC: For an artiste like Davido, he’s about to start his second decade at the top, what do you think are some of the things that you do now to ensure that he’s still on that level?

Asa: I’m always learning, always doing my research, I’m always asking questions from the new generation of artist managers. Whether it’s Anthony with Lojay, or Muyiwa [Awoniyi] with Tems. I’m not from the TikTok generation but I had to learn that stuff because of the success of one of my clients on the platform. I’m not afraid to learn, I’m not afraid to make mistakes, I just feel like every time I come back, I come back harder.

TTC: How do you balance your clientele as they all operate within the same market, how do you balance it by making sure everybody is a priority on your clientele list?

Asa: I don’t take on clients if I don’t believe in them, I don’t just work with people for the hype of it. For example, Ckay will tell you how many months I chased him before we finalized something. I try to make time for everyone, even if it is one call a week and I align with everybody on the team. Also, I have an amazing support team including my business partners at The Plug; so I have a team of people I can trust with certain things.