Zlatan Ibile is a Nigerian rapper, singer and songwriter, and the man who put the Zanku dance in front of the whole country.
His real name is Omoniyi Temidayo Raphael. He was born on 19 December 1994, which makes him 31.
He was born in Lagos and raised in Ikorodu, and his family roots are in Ijurin, in Ijero Local Government Area of Ekiti State.
The name came from football. As a boy he dreamt of playing professionally, and he took Zlatan from Zlatan Ibrahimović. The music came after the dream changed.
He finished secondary school and went to Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, where he earned a national diploma in Business Administration in 2011. Then he chose music.
His first real break came in 2014, when he won the Airtel One Mic Campus Tour, a talent competition held in Abeokuta, Ogun State. He was 19.
For a few years after that he was a Lagos hustler with a name people were starting to hear. The song that changed it was My Body in 2017, which featured Olamide.
In 2018 he signed with Alleluyah Boiz Entertainment, and the year kept opening. He jumped on Able God with Chinko Ekun and Lil Kesh, and the country could not escape that record. Then came Osanle with Davido.
Then he dropped Zanku at the end of 2018. The song came with a dance, and the dance came with a generation of teenagers bending their knees in every compound in Nigeria. The word stuck to him, and it never left.
On 3 November 2019 he released his debut album, also called Zanku. The title was an acronym he made from his own name. Zlatan Abeg No Kill Us.
That same year he was on Burna Boy's Killin Dem, from the African Giant album, and he signed a Coca-Cola endorsement deal in July. His second album, Resan, came in 2021.
He is not only an artist. On 1 January 2020 he announced his own label, Zanku Records, and later unveiled Papisnoop, Oberz and Jamopyper, with Rexxie as producer and Manager Jiggy as manager. He built a house, not just a career.
His catalogue runs from My Body and Able God to Shotan, Lagos Anthem, Bolanle and Unripe Pawpaw, and the street has stayed with him through all of it.
Off stage he is a family man, and quiet about it. His partner is Davita Lamai, a fashion entrepreneur, and they have two sons, Shiloh and Benaiah.
The way he tells it, they met in 2019 on his first trip to London. He did not understand how the banking system worked over there, so he linked up with someone who wanted to talk music, and that person arrived with Davita.
She helped him. She changed his hotels, sorted his money, and drove him around for hours in her small car to the places he needed to go. He has said it reminded him of his university days, when God used somebody to find him a place to sleep.
He asked to see her again. She said she had to check with the person she came with.
Her own version of the story is shorter and funnier. He was too shy to ask for her number, so he sent someone else to collect it.
They came back to Lagos together, and eight years later they are still together.
He calls her the final piece, the last thing he saw that made him believe the story God was writing for him was complete. She says she does not need flowers to feel loved, because she understands him.
They have two sons, and the elder one has already been given a microphone. When the couple announced their wedding date, it was Shiloh's voice on the video.
The boy from Ikorodu with the borrowed name is 31, he owns a record label, and he is a father twice over. The hustle worked.
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Editorial note: The writer of this article does not claim to know Zlatan Ibile personally. The information regarding his background and career, as published on Global News Arena, is based entirely on independent internet research.
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