Nigerian singer Yemi Alade has revealed she considered two other stage names, Electra and Ginger, before settling on her birth name.

Speaking to the BBC, Alade said she dropped both alternatives for giving too much away. Electra, she said, would have set audiences up to expect nonstop energy; Ginger carried the same problem, since the word already means hype in Nigerian slang.

She said the decision to keep her birth name came down to prayer and its meaning. "I honestly just reached out to God and just asked, 'Please lead me,' and the reckoning that came to me was that I needed to stick to my birth name because it had a huge meaning behind it," she said. "Opeyemi means 'thanks be to God,' and Alade means 'the one who holds the crown.' I feel like that embodies who I am, so I held on to it."

Alade broke out in 2014 with "Johnny," a track that leaked before its planned release. The video went on to become the most-viewed music video by an African woman on YouTube, crossing 130 million views, and she later became the first African female artist to hit a million YouTube subscribers.

She also spoke about why she began translating her music into other languages, tracing it to fans who sang along at her concerts despite not speaking English or her native languages. 

"I felt a very strong connection with many French-speaking African fans when I saw them in the front row of my concerts, singing my songs even though they didn't speak English or any of my native languages," she said. "So I thought to myself, why don't I do something very dear to them and show them I truly love them?" French came first, followed by Swahili and Portuguese.