How Michael and Alicia Olatuja Went from 'Life Partners to Musical Partners' 10 Years After Divorce (Exclusive)

The exes-turned-friends and musical collaborators released 'Olatuja,' their first album since 2011, in May

• Alicia and Michael Olatuja reunited 10 years after divorce to release their latest studio album, Olatuja, in May

• The exes, who were married for eight years before divorce, open up about their journey from life partners to musical collaborators

• The duo also discusses the hidden lessons behind Olatuja

When exes and collaborators Michael and Alicia Olatuja got divorced a decade ago, the love and respect was never lost.

The duo, who released an album called The Promise in 2011 under the name Olatuja Project, were married for eight years before they went their separate ways. Still, they never lost touch — and decided to give their musical collaboration one more shot during the pandemic.

When they got back in the studio, making music as friends created a completely different environment. Over time, they realized that the love they once had for one another never went away, it just took a different shape, and it could create a message of hope for their listeners.

"Being able to come together and make music together again, it was like I had that before and after picture," Alicia tells PEOPLE exclusively. "We've grown so much. How we created the music for this album was so different from how we created the music for the first one, because we are so different."

She continues, "I didn't really realize it, honestly, until we did this album. Everything was different. It was better, it was lighter, it was more fun, but also it was therapeutic."

Below, Alicia and Michael tell the inspiring story of their reunion — and the making of Olatuja.

Take me back to the moment you decided to make an album again.

Alicia: During the pandemic... I came upon our first album. While listening to the album, I started feeling that healing experience. I was like, "You know what? We have to do another album." If there's ever a time where the world needs to come together and heal and feel love, it's now. So I reached out and I asked him, I said, "Hey there. Hey Michael." We talked and hung out and spent time together in between the transition of our relationship into being friends, so it wasn't weird for him to hear from me, but we never talked about doing another album. So when I asked him to do it, he was so on.

Michael: Around the time that Alicia mentioned it, I actually went on a trip to Nigeria during the pandemic. I was there for 10 days, and we ended up seeing a series of places in Lagos, Nigeria. I remember one of the singers came up to me and said, "Oh, are you Michael Olatuja from the Olatuja Project?" That was the confirmation that I needed to know what would happen if we did a follow-up to the 2011 album. Asking that question, I knew that whatever it would be, would be amazing.

What was it like getting back in the studio after all these years?

Alicia: It was surprisingly easy. I say surprisingly easy because we had changed so much. When you're in a relationship with somebody and you're creating music with them and you're traveling with them and you're writing with them, it's a totally different dynamic. We always had magic when we would create music together, but it was just — you don't change hats, really. You're still who you are in that relationship. But it was amazing being able to come in and create as our own entities, as people who had now traveled the world, as people who had now put out our own solo project albums here.

Michael: For me, it was very inspiring. I've always felt from day one that we met at the Manhattan School of Music, Alicia gets the music that I write, so she gets my writing process. And when she writes, she complements it and vice versa. For me, it was like being reunited with one of — probably, in fact, my strongest — collaborator to date. I felt like when the two of us got together in one room, the songs would write themselves and we would just, in a way, get out of the way for the song to manifest.

Alicia, you said making the album was therapeutic. In what ways?

Alicia: Just being able to talk about the things that were going on, that was the source of our inspiration. Because we don't know what we're going to write. We would talk about things that we had experienced. Also, things that we've learned and wrestled with as individuals in the industry, in our families, life. We would talk about those things in a way that there was going to be a purpose to talking about it. It wasn't just about complaining and talking. No, we were really navigating those experiences.

But ultimately it was like having these long conversations made it so that by the time we were like, "OK, we've talked about friendships and we've talked about healing and reconciliation and this particular circumstance in our life, let's write the song now." Then the song would just flow. There was no resistance.

The first song we wrote was "Gold and Silver." "Gold and Silver" is about the journey that Michael and I took from the time we first started making music together all the way till now.

Tell me about your journey of becoming friends after divorce.

Michael: Of course that's never easy. If you talk to anybody, any kind long-term relationship going in different direction, it's just never easy. But even that was, I would say, done with respect and love. Nobody was out to get anybody. Nobody was trying to paint anyone as the villain. Even during that year that it happened, we had engagements through that year that we still did, that we still showed up to and that we gave our very best to. I think that set the tone from moving on. As the years went by, as Alicia mentioned, we always stayed in touch. We'll do dinner maybe once a year, we always checked on each other. The love and respect never changed, but it just got repurposed from life partners to musical partners and collaborators.

Alicia: Any transition is challenging because you're trying to figure out how to feel about it. That's the hardest thing. Like we said, we were never out to get each other. But whenever you have any type of breakup, people do want to find the villain. People do want to find the victim. In that experience, I found myself not necessarily trying to defend myself or defend Michael or try to... But more so just try to defend what our relationship was. I didn't want to allow anyone to turn the story of us into a she versus he, he versus she, victim, villain type of thing. To whittle something down like that, it does a disservice to your full story, especially when it didn't occur in that way. We stayed respectful towards one another and we gave it our best shot. We really did.

We were together for eight years. I was still in school when we got married and all that, so I was still a student. There was so much to learn and so much to grow from. But I think it's important when you are transitioning, to really be careful about the messaging that you allow into that process and to protect your healing journey. Protect your journey.

How were you able to look past everything?

Alicia: Music is the overarching thing. That was the thing that actually first started our friendship. We said we wanted to create music, we wanted to help each other on our musical journey, and that was how we started our friendship. I don't think that that had to necessarily end just because we were exploring the different ways in our relationship that we could actually be connected. But the music brought us together and the music keeps us together in this way. The music was like, "Hey, you guys want to marry, date, divorce, start over, I don't know what you're doing, but this is our plan. I don't know about y'all's plan." That's kind of how I feel. It's getting to the bigger picture. Is it really about the breakup? Is it? Or is it about music that's healing people and changing people's lives and healing us in the process?

Have you both found love since the divorce?

Alicia: I'm happily married. Michael is hot on the scene, beating off women with a stick, just running for his life from his fans.

Michael: I'm taking my time, just being... At the right time things will happen, in that sense.

Alicia: But the funny thing is, he and my husband are actually friends.

Michael: Oh yes. He is awesome.

Alicia: Never in my wildest dreams when I thought this was going to happen. Never, never.

Michael: Because really at this point, we are family. We share such a big part of each other's journey that we are family at this point. So that feeling doesn't change.

Alicia: It also feels like you're not discarding the beautiful things that kept the relationship together for as long as it was. I think that's so important. Because I know a lot of people, especially us women, when we are in long-term relationships and they transition out of it and you're not... You're like, "I lost the greatest years of my life, I wasted..." Yeah, you can look at it like that if you want. Or you can choose happiness and choose to recognize that there are no wasted years.

What is the biggest lesson you learned through all of this?

Michael: I was saying that, if you fall, pick something up. For me, the marriage wasn't a waste, it was a period of growth, you learn something. They also say, you either win or you learn. Whatever lessons that I learned from that marriage, just helps my personal growth. For me, when I look at it like that, if you fall, pick something up, it is not wasted. In fact, they're precious and they're valuable. Without that part of my story, I wouldn't be here today talking to you. That's the way we see it.

Alicia: I think it also helps people not be afraid. I know right now there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of uncertainty going on, and our music speaks to that as well, but I think our lives speak to it even greater. That's why it's important to kind of live the life you sing about, live the life that you write about, which is what this album is. We are living the life that we wrote about. When I look at this album and how difficult it was 10 years ago to decide, "What are we going to do? Should we end this? Should we keep going? How do we do this?" My biggest difficulty was, if I walk away from this relationship, will I be ruining my life? I will fail? But when I listened to this album, when I look at the funny pictures that he sent with them piecing of each other, and the funny conversations that we have, I'm like, "You know what? I didn't fail." Now I know my biggest fear was just an illusion. So I'm really, really grateful that we moved forward in the way in which we found best for us, as scary as that was. Now look at what's on the other side of it.

Michael: Time helped too. If I want to be honest. Five years ago or more, I wouldn't have been ready to make an album. Time really does help. In that time, I was just talking to Alicia a while ago like, the overarching theme of my mind was gratitude. Gratitude because we didn't fail. After the marriage ended, we still thrived, we still made leaps in our profession, we still achieved our dreams, we still worked with legends, so we didn't fail at all.

What do you want people to take away from this album?

Michael: I hope that they feel empowered. So much of our message is about empowerment... but also inspiration. I feel like I want them to leave different. I feel like I want them to leave feeling a sense of possibility.

Alicia: It's important for people to know that they are active participants in their own lives. Life isn't happening to you unless you let it happen to you. But if you decide to be a co-creator of your own life, your own story, your own reality, and you actually take on the day-to-day responsibility of crafting your next step and knowing that you can do it, and knowing that you can make it, and knowing that everything is going to be okay. You can learn how to then surrender and do this dance called life.

One of the messages that I think are the most powerful is a song that we wrote called "Kadara" (Yoruba for "destiny") Because the message is, if you have a dream for your life, if you have a vision for your life and what you want, who cares about what anybody else says? Life teaches you those types of lessons and that's what we were able to pull up and put into an album that is now Olatuja.

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