Category: New Music
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Bien Joins Quality Control as Label Expands Into Africa, Releases New Single “I’ll Be Okay”
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,…
Nairobi Grooves: What If Nairobi’s Sound Is the Conversation Between Its Genres?
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….
Afrobeats Heat Different: Mr Eazi’s “Comfort” Leads a Week of Old Languages Finding New Forms
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…
BNXN Returns With Still In Charge, A Six-Track EP Featuring Asake and FOLA
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…
Custodian Gems: BLNDE Leads a New Edition About the Work of Becoming
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…
“No AI Needed”: Chaka Khan Reminds the Internet She Was Already There
As social media users turn to artificial intelligence to imagine themselves in the 1980s, Chaka Khan has responded with something better: the archive. The internet is busy imagining itself in the 1980s. Chaka Khan has receipts. Across social media, a new AI-driven nostalgia trend has users transforming present-day photographs into imagined portraits from the decade…
Afrobeats Heat Different: Young Jonn Leads a Week Where African Music Refuses One Sound
Afrobeats Heat Different continues to document what those sounds are doing while the map is still changing. From Young Jonn and Rema to Yemi Alade, FOLA, The Cavemen., Gyakie, Medikal, Octopizzo and a closing South African movement, this week’s 19-track Afrobeats Heat Different documents an African music ecosystem becoming increasingly difficult to contain within a…
Custodian Gems: KAESTYLE Leads 12 Records Worth Hearing Before Consensus Arrives
With KAESTYLE on the cover, this week’s Custodian Gems moves through 6uff, Kayode, Taene, Pabrymo, OluwaMillar, Ef Moon, Abefe, Sigag Lauren, Lil Frosh, Lasmid and Hunnyboy – a selection interested less in who already commands the conversation than in where attention might be moving next. Discovery becomes less useful when everybody has already agreed on…
Jua’s “Eshi” Finds Pan-African Connection Without Asking Africa to Sound the Same
Bringing together Maa, Swahili, Sesotho and Amharic alongside musical traditions stretching from Kenya and Ethiopia to Lesotho, Mozambique and North Africa, on Eshi, Jua’s latest CHIKKA experiment asks a more interesting question about Pan-African music: what if connection does not require sameness? Africa has spent generations being described through its differences. Different languages. Different borders….
Xenia Manasseh, Ukweli and Ywaya Tajiri Ask “AJE?” as Nairobi’s R&B Ecosystem Keeps Building Outward
The new collaboration AJE? arrives as one of the early releases emerging from Cinq Music and Nairobi-based Soul HQ’s developing relationship – bringing three distinct creative voices into a record whose significance extends beyond the song itself. There is something increasingly interesting happening around Nairobi’s contemporary music ecosystem. Not simply more releases. Not simply more…