Bien, The Kenyan singer-songwriter begins a new chapter through a joint venture between Quality Control and Courtesy Of, ahead of his forthcoming album, Alusa Continua, scheduled for November 20. Kenyan singer-songwriter Bien has entered a new phase of his solo career through a joint venture between American record label Quality Control Music and Courtesy Of,…
From FOLA and Davido’s late-night collaboration to Phyno’s romantic expression, Bien’s reflections on heartbreak, Vector’s meditation on fatherhood and new connections across African music, this week’s 13-track Afrobeats Heat Different explores what it means for an artist to deliver. In football, the number nine carries a particular responsibility. It belongs to the player expected to…
From Wakadinali and Buruklyn Boyz to Njerae, Tina Ardor and Keemlyf, the latest Nairobi Grooves maps a city whose musical identity is becoming harder to reduce to a single sound. There is an old temptation when documenting a music city: find its sound. Give it a rhythm, a genre, perhaps a movement with a name….
From Mr Eazi and MOLIY’s Ghana-Nigeria conversation to Terry Apala’s reworking of Apala, DopeNation’s Ghanaian rhythmic vocabulary and a new generation of street-pop and rap voices, this week’s Afrobeats Heat Different finds African music moving forward without becoming distant from where it came from. African pop does not have to abandon its old musical languages…
East Africa is beginning to sound less like separate national music industries and more like one connected market. Spotify’s Global Impact List for the first half of 2026 offers a clear sign of that shift. Four of the five leading East African collaborations on the list bring together artists from different countries, while the fifth…
For weeks, Solana Tii has been doing something deceptively simple: showing up for her music. Across a steady stream of videos and social posts, the Nigerian artist has continued introducing audiences to her sound, performing it, explaining it and repeatedly carrying the language of Yorupop into public view. Now, according to the singer, that persistence…
After a run of major releases and collaborations, BNXN opens another chapter with Still In Charge, a six-track EP that sees the Grammy-nominated Nigerian Afrofusion artist embrace a more energetic, carefree side of his sound. Released via EMPIRE, the project follows his No. 1 sophomore album, CAPTAIN. It brings together previously released records with new…
Discovery culture has developed a strange obsession with being first. With Custodian Gems, we find the artist before everyone else. Catch the song before it moves. Name the next star before consensus arrives. But discovery becomes far more useful when it stops behaving like prophecy. The more interesting question begins after an artist has our…
Six years after For Broken Ears and a decade after “Mad Over You”, Spotify ’s Lagos showcase asks a bigger question: what keeps older Nigerian records culturally alive? There are songs you remember, and then there are songs that remember you. Runtown’s “Mad Over You” belongs to the second category. For many listeners, the 2016…
