Every big catalog get one first brick — and for Nathino, that brick is painted bright yellow and called “Winner.” On 20 March 2020, the Ghanaian urban-gospel / Afrosounds rapper and engineer put out “Winner”, a three-minute-plus single that now stands as the oldest solo record in his Apple Music catalog. Before the 2021 single storm, before the Gratitude EP, before Bless Me — there was one young man from the Rap For God Music camp telling himself, and anybody listening, that quitting was not on the menu.
The Man Behind the Yellow Cover
Nathino is the RFGM — Rap For God Music — voice who later became a familiar name across the BLACK NETWORK MUSIC GROUP lane, and he is not only the guy on the mic. He mixes and masters too, which means when he says a record is ready, he has probably heard it more times than his own mother has heard his excuses. The streaming credits list Nathino himself as the composer on “Winner,” so this one is his thought from start to finish. The cover keeps it simple: loud yellow, brush-stroke “WINNER,” his name underneath. No yacht, no rented Benz, no smoke machine. Just the declaration.
Months in the Making
Here is the part many people miss. Long before the single reached the stores, Nathino’s own YouTube channel dropped a “Winner” studio session video in September 2019, tagged with three hashtags that read like a mission statement: Rap For God Music, Winners Never Quit and We’re Mad For God. So the song did not fall from the sky in March 2020 — it was cooked, tasted, and served after half a year on the fire. That patience fits the title. You do not call a song “Winner” and rush it like trotro mate shouting “one more seat.”
Why It Hit Different in 2020
Timing is a funny teacher. “Winner” landed in the final days before Accra and Kumasi went into partial lockdown at the end of March 2020, when everybody suddenly needed something to hold onto. A faith-forward rap record about winning — and, if you trust those hashtags, about refusing to quit — was the kind of song that made sense on a phone speaker in a quiet room while the whole world was asking what next. Comic truth: some of us were “winning” at sleeping 14 hours a day. Nathino was winning at building a catalog.
The Rewind Lesson for 2026
Go back to “Winner” today and you hear the starting point of an artist who would go on to stack Million Questions, Elevate, Tamale, Fake Love, Love Me Now, Helping Hand and the Bless Me EP. Every journey has a “before they knew him” chapter, and this is his. For the new fans who met Nathino through the recent Afrosounds runs, this is homework — sweet homework. For the day-ones, it is a reminder of where the confidence came from.
🎧 Stream “Winner”
- Apple Music — Winner
- TIDAL — Winner
- Boomplay — Winner
- Amazon Music — Winner
- YouTube (Nathino – Topic, official audio)
- Watch: Nathino – Winner (Studio Session Video)
- song.link hub — Winner
- Nathino on YouTube
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