So here’s something Yemi Alade just dropped that’s both gut-wrenching and uncomfortably real, the singer opened up about being sexually harassed by music executives when she was still a teenager.
According to her on the Swift Conversations podcast, she walked into business meetings and studio sessions as a hungry young talent, only to have some of those “gatekeepers” making disgusting advances. She recounts how, in one meeting, a managing director allegedly rubbed her thighs under the table. Yes, while negotiating her career.
Yemi said she didn’t start with money or clout, just talent, hope, and a promise she believed God had made to her. But so many of the people she approached weren’t interested in her vocals, they apparently wanted something else. That realization shook her.
She describes moments of shock, humiliation, and fear, remembering how powerless she felt as a teen with “no bank account full of money.” But in the middle of it all, something inside her refused to quit. She says she made a decision, if the door offered to her was “okay,” she’d walk through it. But if that door was corrupt, she’d stop waiting, and start breaking down walls instead.
Yemi’s testimony doesn’t just spotlight her own experience, it amplifies a much bigger issue in Nigeria’s music industry, power imbalance, predatory behavior, and an environment where young women are expected to compromise to succeed. Her bravery in naming these abuses, and insisting she wouldn’t be silenced, is powerful.
And the question now, how many others have had to make that same gut-wrenching choice, between their dreams and their dignity?