From a nightclub in Jos to a global-facing African music company, Chocolate City’s rise is a story of raw talent, unlikely beginnings and an institution that refused to remain small. At its heart is M.I Abaga, the Jos-born rapper who moved from the city’s underground music circuit to the corner office of the label, helping shape its most influential era before eventually leaving it behind. But as SHALOM KASIM and CHRISTIANA LOT reveal, the story of Chocolate City did not end with M.I’s exit. Instead, the label entered a new phase in which the institution began to stand on its own, beyond the personalities who gave it its earliest identity
For a few weeks this August, Nigerians returned to the music of P-Square, not without a tinge of nostalgia. The twin brothers, Peter and Paul Okoye, have been formally estranged as a duo since their bitter split. But their catalogue staged an unlikely comeback amid a fresh war of words between the brothers, sending streams and chart positions upwards almost overnight.
According to VANGUARD Newspaper, their compilation Best of P-Square climbed 87 places to reach Nigeria’s Apple Music Top 100 albums chart, while Get Squared and Game Over re-entered the chart.
Zikoko traced the immediate spark to a video Paul, now performing as Rudeboy, posted about his heritage, which was widely interpreted as a swipe at his brother. Peter responded with a six-part video rebuttal airing grievances that stretched back to their first split in 2017.
Depending on your appetite for celebrity drama, it was either a family soap opera or an unusually revealing case study in the enduring power of nostalgia. Either way, P-Square once again became one of the most talked-about acts in Nigerian music again. Even if briefly.
For this story, however, the more important detail is where the brothers came from. Long before Lagos became their professional base, the Okoye twins were performing Michael Jackson routines at St Murumba Secondary School and breakdancing under the name Smooth Criminals — in Jos.
That fact deserves a second look. P-Square is arguably the most commercially prominent product of this high-altitude city of Jos, which has produced an outsized share of Nigeria’s biggest musical stars. Much of that creative legacy can be traced, directly or indirectly, to a record label founded by a group of law students who transformed the remains of a nightclub into an ecosystem for artists.
Tin City’s musical legacy
Jos’ economy, for much of the twentieth century, revolved around tin mining, brewing and biscuits, according to The Africa Report’s 2008 survey of the city’s musical lineage. The same account lists a remarkable roll call of artists associated with the city: 2Face Idibia and Asa, both regarded among Nigeria’s most accomplished vocalists; the Okoye twins; and a generation of rappers and producers including Jesse Jagz, his older brother Jude, better known as M.I Abaga, as well as Ice Prince, Chopstix and Ruby Gyang.
But Jos’ defining story in the twenty-first century has also been considerably darker. Beginning in 2001, the city became the scene of recurring ethno-religious violence rooted in disputes over land, indigeneity and political representation between predominantly Christian indigenous groups and largely Muslim Hausa and Fulani settlers.
Human Rights Watch figures cited in a Geneva Declaration report put the death toll from the September 2001 riots at roughly 1,000, with further large-scale violence occurring in 2008 and 2010. A city once marketed, without irony, as Plateau State’s ‘Home of Peace and Tourism’ spent two decades confronting a starkly different reality.
Against that backdrop, a generation of Jos musicians increasingly built their careers elsewhere, particularly in Lagos. Yet the city’s influence on Nigerian music remained difficult to erase.
The label that would eventually formalise much of Jos’ creative pipeline began in 1997 as a nightclub. Music Wiki’s account of the company says it quickly developed into a leading promotions outfit in northern Nigeria.
In 2001, its co-founder, Audu Maikori, and Paul Okeugo, both then law students at the University of Jos, established the Guild of Artistes and Poets. The initiative grew into a youth movement of more than 3,000 members across Jos, Abuja and Lagos, while Maikori also provided pro bono legal assistance to artists who passed through the organisation.
By 2005, that creative network had evolved into a commercial enterprise. Maikori, Okeugo and Maikori’s brother, Yahaya, formally established Chocolate City Music, which would go on to become one of Africa’s most prominent independent music companies.
Its first signing was not a rapper but Jeremiah Gyang, a Jos-born gospel vocalist who sang predominantly in Hausa. Culture Custodian’s twentieth-anniversary retrospective notes that, before the arrival of the label’s now-famous rappers, Gyang was effectively Chocolate City’s entire artist roster.
The emergence of M.I, Ice Prince and Jesse Jagz together towards the end of the 2000s changed that identity. Their success transformed Chocolate City into a formidable home for Nigerian hip-hop and gave the label a reputation that extended well beyond Jos.
The rapper who became CEO
Jude Lemfani Abaga, better known as M.I Abaga, was born in Jos in 1981 and returned to Nigeria from abroad in 2003 to pursue music professionally. Before Chocolate City signed him, he and his brother, Jesse Jagz, together with Ice Prince and other Jos-based musicians, had already established Loopy Music.
The collective operated from a three-bedroom bungalow off Lamingo Dam Road that a local clergyman had handed to the Abaga brothers before leaving for the United States, according to The Africa Report. Jude served as studio manager, while Jesse, already an accomplished producer, worked as engineer.
The bungalow, once a landmark for Jos’ emerging hip-hop community, now reportedly sits abandoned, “hidden in one of the crevices” off the road.
M.I signed with Chocolate City in 2007 or 2008, according to various accounts, and released his debut album, Talk About It, in 2008. His influence within the company grew alongside his profile as an artist.
In 2015, Chocolate City restructured its leadership, appointing M.I as chief executive officer while Audu Maikori became President of the parent Chocolate City Group.
The change also created an opportunity for M.I to bring Loopy Music into the Chocolate City structure. The label absorbed Loopy outright, bringing artists including Ruby Gyang, Loose Kaynon, DJ Lambo and Milli under the same umbrella and expanding its roster to 13 artists.
The merger, however, was not universally viewed as a success by the artists involved. Afrobeats Intelligence’s account of rapper Milli’s experience at the company describes a young artist who was initially signed to M.I’s personal label in 2014 before being absorbed into Chocolate City the following year, with a contract that, in the account’s telling, offered considerable promise but comparatively limited label investment.
Under M.I’s leadership, Chocolate City continued signing and releasing artists. Ruby Gyang, CKay, Yung L, Milli, Koker and Loose Kaynon joined during his tenure, while Jesse Jagz, who had previously departed, briefly returned.
For several years, the arrangement appeared to work. But the company’s next phase would ultimately separate M.I from the institution he had helped build.
The split — and Chocolate City’s second life
In March 2019, Warner Music Group entered into a distribution partnership with Chocolate City, bringing its artists into Warner’s independent-label services arm, ADA, as confirmed by Chocolate City.
The deal was followed soon afterwards by a change at the top. Pulse Nigeria reported on September 13, 2019, that M.I had vacated the CEO position. A source who spoke to Kemi Filani News at the time suggested that Audu Maikori was preparing to return to the label after the Warner agreement, while M.I had already stepped aside.
The definitive separation came the following year.
In March 2020, M.I announced his departure from Chocolate City after what he described as “over 13 years” with the company. The announcement coincided with the release of Judah The EP, his first project under his new label, Incredible Music.
In the accompanying Instagram video, M.I revisited Chocolate City’s history through archival footage and described the sacrifices that had gone into building the company. He recalled a period when he viewed the label’s artists as “the biggest family in the history of music.”
His departure marked the end of one chapter. But it was not the end of the relationship between his legacy and the company.
Years later, M.I spoke candidly about undergoing therapy following his exit from Chocolate City. He described the period as humbling and credited the experience with helping him “step out of old patterns” and rebuild an identity independent of his former position.
He also praised Abuchi Ugwu, the sound engineer-turned-executive who eventually became Chocolate City’s CEO, describing him as “perhaps the most stellar” chief executive the Nigerian music industry had produced — an unusually generous assessment of the leadership that followed his own.
Chocolate City, meanwhile, kept moving.
In 2025, the company marked its 20th anniversary with a celebration in the Hollywood Hills. The organisation had by then grown beyond the artists and executives who established it, with interests including publishing and radio licences and a roster that continued to evolve with each generation.
M.I’s own label has remained considerably smaller. Rather than replicate Chocolate City’s scale, it has largely served as a vehicle for his music, while Chocolate City has continued to expand its artistic, executive and commercial operations.
M.I spent more than a decade with Chocolate City, first as an artist and eventually as its chief executive. His influence on the company’s formative years is difficult to separate from its history, particularly during the period when Jos-bred hip-hop helped define its identity.
Yet Chocolate City’s most significant achievement may be that it survived the departure of one of its most recognisable architects.
The label’s story has therefore outgrown the people who founded it — and M.I, despite his enduring place in that story, is no exception. His departure in 2020 did not close the book on Chocolate City. It simply opened another chapter.