YouTube Win: Why Gaise Baba’s ‘No Turning Back’ is Unbelievably Popular -By Ugochukwu Ugwuanyi

From the stables of global music service Spotify comes a yearly recap that provides insight into users’ top five artists, top five songs, and total minutes spent streaming over the year. Spotify Wrapped 2025, released on December 3, reveals a strange streaming pattern that recalls Jesus’ words: “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” This verse isn’t invoked as a judgment but to properly situate the weird welding of the secular with the spiritual. Pray, how do you reconcile that those who love Nathaniel Bassey and Dunsin Oyekan’s music are also enamoured of Olamide’s and Odumodublvck’s songs?

If someone had insinuated this before now, many a Christian would insist it’s not true. Alas, it has been technically proven that some persons in the Body of Christ blend what shouldn’t be mixed. Luckily for them, the stats are collegiate, not detailing personal music preferences. Otherwise, people would be shocked to see those in the mix. The possibility of pious Christians indulging worldly passions in private is scandalous. Let’s hope their irreconcilable pastimes stop at music and don’t stretch to the X-rated realm. Such hypocritical brethren had better come out of their closets to find help. The Lord knows those who are His!

The Spotify Wrap more or less indicates that certain Christians who worship like angels when the choir sings or during Bassey and Oyekan’s concerts later vibe to Olamide and Odumodublvck when they mount the stage and in clubs. As conversations around balancing faith with music preferences trended online, the tweet stood out: “Imagine starting your day with the Most High and ending it on a high.” How contradictory! Even if they don’t act like their other favs, having a playlist of secular and gospel musicians exposes the Christian as neither hot nor cold – the lukewarm who the Lord threatened to spit out of his mouth! (Revelation 3:16).

While there’s no scintilla of semblance between the lyrics and symphony of both classes of musicians, the audiences seem bent on wedding them. Dunsin, who couldn’t wrap his head around the oxymoronic playlist combinations, responded with this emojis-laced tweet: “Spotify wrap… These mixtures…” BTW, congratulations to him, Bassey, and Moses Bliss for significantly breaking into mainstream listening habits, sharing the limelight with Davido, Wizkid, et al. They are proof that Jesus reigns and that woke people are increasingly getting thrilled by gospel music. They may initially struggle with wholesale detachment from tunes they are used to, but would eventually be alright.

While excuses can be made for these babes in Faith, not so for Christians who present as Believers yet see nothing wrong in enjoying worldly music. Some of them would even challenge you to point out the scripture that condemns eclectic music taste. When they do, cite 1 John 2:15, which exhorts: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.” (NIV) Also take them to James 4:4 to wit, “Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.” (NLT). Satan desires to have these complacent Christians if they don’t think that feeling entertained with secular songs is tantamount to befriending the world!

The truth about Christians who have no qualms with secular music is that they’re not yet fully yielded to the Spirit of God. Otherwise, he would have converted them from finding pleasure in such sounds and unedifying lyrics. Indeed, ridding the believer of appetite for the things of the world is one of the first operations by the Holy Spirit upon inhabiting a person. You won’t even know when this happens. You’ll, at some point, realise, like that Sunday school song, “the things I used to do, I do them no more; the things I used to love, I love them no more…” God is definitely not a man who Spotify has shown juggles between two opposing extremes. In Him, there is no darkness whatsoever!

There’s this teenager who in the early 2000’s was glued to Coal City 92.9 FM Enugu for two primary reasons. First is the signature tune for their mid-morning show and next is the theme song often used by DJ Misilo E in his evening broadcast. The boy grew so fond of both sounds that years later, they usually evoked nostalgia in him. All his attempts to get copies came to naught because he didn’t know the artists or the titles. Radio presenters and DJs who he hummed them to couldn’t tell the old-school songs he was referring to.

Leveraging his flair for AI tools and search engine intelligence, our man, now in his 30’s, eventually discovered the classics he had craved to be: Deep Forest’s Sweet Lullaby (released in 1992) and Enigma’s Sadeness (1990). He wasted no time downloading the MP3 and video versions, setting the EP of both serenading songs to auto-replay in his playlist. He was never going to be tired of listening to both songs. In fact, they and Enya songs became sedatives for his occasional insomnia. Yet, a short while after he found Christ and received the Holy Spirit, he would now be hard-pressed to find Sweet Lullaby and Sadeness on his phone. It’s been over a year since he last listened to the classics. If he changed phones, it’s possible he forgot transferring both to his new device or playlist. The Holy Spirit quietly severed his ties with the once-cherished songs. That’s how it works!

In the main, thank you for your patience in reading along, even when the article seems to have veered off the caption. It’s not clickbait, addled by beating about the bush. A careful reading between the lines reveals that we are actually on track. Buckle up as we plainly adduce the reasons presently!

YouTube recently named ‘No Turning Back II’ by Gaise Baba, featuring Lawrence Oyor, as Nigeria’s most-watched music video of 2025. Within six months of its release, the production amassed 41 million views with 397,000 likes. The rave around the song, earlier criticised by prominent pastors for lacking Christian authenticity, validates Spotify Wrapped insights. Having not been entirely weaned from secular rhythms, Christians who want to be spiritually correct have since found comfort in Gaise Baba’s hit track with its Afrobeat ring.

But for “No Turning Back II”, you can be sure that Spotify’s tally of concurrent streams of Nathaniel Bassey and Odumodublvck would have been more. Singing talent in churches should note these opportunities as they trust God on how to use their musical potential to populate the Kingdom. It’s another affirmation of the harvest being plentiful and the labourers few!

All said, one major utility of Gaise’s music is serving as an enticement for unbelievers who, after joining the wave or bandwagon, will over time become Spirit-filled believers. The song is peculiarly popular for being a sickle for end-time harvests. Little wonder Baba would observe while reacting to the feat: “See what the Lord has done with our simple obedience. Of a truth, we shift the culture.”
Bear in Mind (BIM): What is externally dissonant can’t be internally consonant!

VIS Ugochukwu writes from Lagos, and tweets via @Sylvesugwuanyi