“Forget About Love” Singer Adekunle Gold Says He Wouldn’t Have Married His Wife, Singer Simi If She Wasn’t AA

The singer has lived with sickle cell disease his entire life, and that history shapes everything he said in the interview. The comments have split Nigerians online not over whether genotype testing matters, but over whether “forget about love” was the right way to say it.

The Moment That Got People Talking

There’s a particular bluntness Nigerians have come to expect from singer Adekunle Gold whenever the conversation turns to sickle cell, and his latest interview didn’t disappoint. Speaking on the One 54 podcast on September,2016, he was asked a question many couples quietly wonder about but rarely say out loud: what would he have done if the woman he loved wasn’t genetically compatible with him?

His answer was immediate. “I wouldn’t have married my wife if she were SS or AS. She’s AA,” he said.

He didn’t stop there. Pressed further on why he felt so strongly about it, Adekunle Gold explained that for him, this was never really a debate; it was math with a human cost attached. Bringing a child into the world already knowing they’d likely inherit a painful, lifelong condition wasn’t something he was willing to gamble on. He urged listeners to take genotype seriously long before feelings get involved, arguing that two people who both carry the sickle cell trait can’t simply love their way around the biology and that skipping the test, in his view, is how families end up blindsided by heartbreak they could have seen coming.

Why He Brought It Up At All

The genotype talk didn’t come out of nowhere; the host had asked him, point blank, what he’d have done if singer Simi’s result had come back differently. His answer doubled as a small window into how their relationship actually started. Long before Adekunle Gold and Simi became one of Afrobeats’ most-watched couples, they ran a genotype test almost as soon as they started seeing each other, treating it less as a romantic milestone and more as due diligence. Simi came back to AA. The relationship had the green light.

It’s worth understanding why this particular detail sits so close to home for him. Adekunle Gold has lived with sickle cell disease since birth, and he’s spoken before about what that actually looked like growing up: the pain crises, the hospital stays, the restrictions that came with a body that didn’t always cooperate. He went public with his status in 2022 and folded the experience into his song “5 Star,” turning a private struggle into something his fans could actually hear. That history is the quiet engine behind everything he said in this interview. This wasn’t a celebrity dabbling in a health topic for content, it was a man talking about the condition he’s managed his entire life, and the lengths he went to make sure he didn’t pass that same fight on to his own children.

Their Marriage, In Brief

Adekunle Gold and Simi married in January 2019, capping off a relationship that had already been public for a while by the time they said their vows. Both established names in Nigerian music before they got together, their union has often played out partly in public playful social media banter, the occasional aired-out disagreement, and just as often, warm glimpses of family life. They now have two children, including their daughter Deja, who’s already shown flashes of following her parents into music. Beyond the romance, the couple share a track record of using their platform for causes that matter to them, with Adekunle Gold’s sickle cell advocacy including a free health insurance programme he launched in 2025 to support people living with the condition standing out as a throughline in his career, long before this interview brought it back into the spotlight.

The Nigerians Who Agreed With Him

For a good number of people online, Adekunle Gold’s comments weren’t controversial at all; they read as common sense dressed up in an interview soundbite.

One user, @IfeanyiOny95278, captured that sentiment well, calling it “a serious decision when genetics and a child’s wellbeing are involved.” Others were even more succinct @sucomovic12345 simply called it a “nice and good decision,” and left it there. A recurring thread among supporters was that Adekunle Gold, of all people, has actually earned the right to speak this bluntly. He’s not a bystander moralising about a condition he’s never faced; he’s lived the crises, the hospital runs, and the physical toll firsthand, which made his warning land differently for a lot of listeners.

Several commenters also pointed out that Nigeria still has a genotype-illiteracy problem plenty of couples get married without ever testing and that a celebrity as visible as Adekunle Gold saying this so plainly might actually push a few more people toward getting tested before, not after, they fall in love.

The Nigerians Who Pushed Back

But not everyone was applauding, and the criticism wasn’t really about the science it was about the framing.

One user, @Harribest, took the conversation somewhere unexpected, drawing a line between genotype ignorance today and the old superstitions that used to explain unexplained child deaths as “abiku” or “ogbanje” spirits returning to torment a family. The point being made was that genetics, not juju, was likely the real culprit all along and that Adekunle Gold’s honesty, however sharp, was chipping away at a myth that’s caused real harm. Others weren’t as generous.

@GramMetax_ pushed back specifically on the “forget about love” framing, worried it unfairly casts AS carriers who are otherwise healthy and live completely normal lives as somehow undesirable partners. The comment also reopened old rumours, with @ODEpskf resurfacing chatter from 2024 that Adekunle Gold himself might be SS, while @Sweet_juliebaby half-jokingly dragged fellow singer Falz into the conversation, questioning his genotype status too.

Underneath the jokes and the speculation, though, was a more serious worry shared by several critics: that language like “forget about love” even from someone as credible as Adekunle Gold risks making people who carry the sickle cell trait feel like damaged goods in the dating pool, when the actual goal should be information, not stigma.

Additionally, strip away the celebrity names and the Twitter back-and-forth, and what’s left is a conversation Nigeria has needed to have loudly for years. Genotype compatibility isn’t a niche medical footnote here it’s a quiet, often-avoided variable in a country where sickle cell disease remains one of the most common inherited conditions, and where plenty of relationships still get built entirely on chemistry, with the blood test, if it happens at all, treated as an afterthought. Adekunle Gold’s own life is the counter-argument to that approach: he knows exactly what an SS diagnosis costs a person, physically and otherwise, because he’s the one who’s paid for it. That’s precisely why his words carried more weight than a passing celebrity opinion and also why the words themselves mattered so much.

“Forget about love” is the kind of line that sticks, for better or worse; it can either save someone from years of preventable heartbreak, or make someone carrying a trait through no fault of their own feel unfairly written off. Both readings were on full display online, and neither one is likely to fully win out. What does seem certain is that Adekunle Gold isn’t backing down from the subject if anything, between the song, the advocacy work, and now this interview, he’s spent years building toward exactly this kind of blunt, no-filter conversation, and he doesn’t appear finished having it.

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