The popular songstress Salawa Abeni had become nationally renowned after the release of "Late General Murtala Ramat Mohammed" in 1976, which was the first Nigerian recording by a woman to sell more than a million copies. In the 1980s, she remained one of the nation's best-selling artists, creating her own unique variety of music called waka; she was so closely associated with the genre that a royal figure, the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, crowned her the "Queen of Waka Music" in 1992. Waka was a fusion of jùjú, fuji and traditional Yoruba music.