Steve Monite's 'Only You' to get official vinyl release on Soundway Records

Steve Monite’s classic ’80s boogie album ‘Only You’, featuring the well-known cut of the same name, is to be reissued on vinyl for the first time later this month.

Soundway Records is overseeing the reissue, and it’s been remastered especially for the new release.

Monite recorded ‘Only You’ in the early ’80s after travelling to London to pursue a career in music. He failed to find a label there, but was signed to EMI Records shortly after returning to his native Nigeria. It was there that he met producer Nkono Teles, and they collectively decided to introduce the boogie and disco sounds of ’70s and ’80s New York to Nigeria.

Speaking now about the album’s title cut, Monite said: “I was the first African artist to play electro-funk. Teles was the visionary behind that song.”

The album was ultimately released in 1984, but failed to gain much commercial or critical success and his record deal fizzled out. The album has since gone on to be discovered by a new generation of music listeners, picking up regular play among record crate-digging DJs such as Hunee, Antal and Palms Trax.

“‘Only You’ has woken up from the graveyard,” Monite said of the album’s new-found popularity. “I went to visit my brother in Reading and my seven-year-old nephew told me, ‘Uncle, I didn’t know you were a star.’ I said, ‘What are you on about?’ He said, ‘You’re an internet sensation now’. So I went on the internet, and I say, ‘Wow’. I saw Steve Monite everywhere.”

Soundway’s reissue of the album will arrive on 22nd April.

The release on Soundway follows the recent issuing of compilation on the label, featuring Balearic Spanish synth-pop, boogie And house from 1982-1992.

For more on the work of Soundway and other reissue labels, revisit DJ Mag’s 2021 feature on the fascinating world of reissue labels here.