Patoranking opens a new era with “No Jonze,” a brisk, street-steeped single that looks backward and forward at once. According to the release, the track is built on late ‘90s and early 2000s Galala, the Ajegunle-born, dance-led strain that has long informed his Afro-dancehall approach, then tightened with contemporary low-end and chant-ready hooks.

Lyrically, “No Jonze” positions its title as everyday instruction: don’t fumble the opportunity, keep your focus, stay moving. The mood is celebratory, but its message is practical, casting hustle and discipline as the point rather than the pose. As a lead taste of a forthcoming fifth studio album, it reads as an intent statement: revisit the streets and culture that shaped him, translate that energy for today’s global Afrobeats audience, and do it without sanding down the edges.

The single also functions as a short primer on Galala’s context. The press notes describe it as a “stepchild of dancehall”: raw, percussive, and community-driven. Patoranking widens that frame by tracing shared DNA across the diaspora, linking Lagos street rhythm to Caribbean and East African offshoots such as Dominican dembow, Ugandan kidandali, and Kenya’s gengetone.

The implication is less about genre taxonomy and more about continuity: similar pulses powering different local stories. Framed this way, “No Jonze” argues that Afrobeats’ breadth remains under-heard, and that subcultures like Galala still offer active wells of style, movement, and narrative.

Visually, the Director K-helmed video returns to Ajegunle aka “the Kingston of Nigeria”, and leans into documentation over spectacle. Shot on location, it places Patoranking alongside Galala figures Marvelous Benjy and Allen B, and threads in a mural that salutes forebears including Daddy Showkey, Daddy Fresh, Oritse Femi, Baba Fryo, African China, and Danfo Drivers.

The aesthetic of street faces, improvised choreography, high-contrast fashion mirrors the record’s minimal, kinetic bounce. Rather than reconstruct the ’90s, the clip presents today’s neighborhood with an archival mindset, arguing for continuity between generations.

Set against a catalog that stretches from “My Woman My Everything” to 2023’s ‘World Best’, “No Jonze” lands as a concise reset rather than a dramatic pivot. It foregrounds the movement that raised Patoranking and lets the production’s negative space carry the message.

The broader narrative around him sits in the background here, relevant but not the axis. What the single makes clear is the thesis of the incoming album: a recommitment to street-level rhythm as both local memory and exportable language. If the rest of the project follows this lead, expect craft over gloss, lineage over novelty, and a steady argument that the well still runs deep.

Watch the video for “No Jonze” right here!