I just did a double take at the list of Channel O Music Video Award nominees and noticed how evenly split the selection of artists is over the categories. This will be why Burna Boy, who otherwise would have swept the awards clean, is up for just one – Best Newcomer, against South Africans Moneoa and Khaya Mthethwa , fellow Nigerian Lola Rae and Kenya’s Victoria Kimani. Needless to say there [...]
Stripping down to the basics yet retaining ALL of the power that Kwabs’ tremendous voice is endowed with, here is the London-based Ghanaian singer born Kwabena Achepong giving yet another pitch-perfect performance. Tickets to Kwabs’ first headline show at Wilton’s Music Hall on December 3rd went on sale today. (Get yours!)
Someway Bi is the latest single from Ghanaian rapper supreme M.anifest. On this jam Fest flexes lyrical over a thumping Hip-Hop beat with an afrobeat swing served by Ghanaian producer Yung Fly. Son come his EP Apae: the price of free EP
Clarence Peters did it again! He took this feel-good Afropop single and translated all of its cutesiness via 70s retro-inspired visuals where even Don Jazzy – whose video cameos tend to generally be imposing and unnecessary – cuts a pretty likeable figure. Eminado, off Tiwa Savage’s acclaimed debut album Once Upon a Time, loosely means “good luck charm”. And indeed there has been no shortage of good fortune for the first [...]
You know it’s not too late to learn the Azonto dance right? If it’s a case of two left feet, a new slightly easier spin-off of the Ghanaian dance sensation is here in the form of Akayida. Please remember it is just in jest and is just a dance! Africans love to make fun of even the most serious of things, hence why in Malawi you can find bin ladens [...]
Nakhane Mahlakahlaka is the latest in a slew of celebrated South African musicians the Eastern Cape keeps churning out – to name a few, Thandiswa Mazwai, Simphiwe Dana, Zahara, Bongeziwe Mabandla and now this 25-year-old singer/songwriter born in Alice, raised in Port Elizabeth and now based in Johannesburg. Aesthetically, Mahlakahlaka’s lineage is far wider reaching. First of all, he adopts Touré as his stage second name in honour of the prolific Malian singer [...]
The Fela Kuti tributes came in thick and fast this month as the pop world remembered what would have been the Afrobeat luminary’s 75th birthday. New Naija pop sensation Burna Boy drew mixed reactions when, as a hat tip to Fela, he stripped down to his underpants to perform his hit Run My Race at the recent Felabration event in Lagos. (The video for that song was shot at the [...]
Who remembers Ya Kid K, the fly lead rapper for Technotronic? No idea what she is up to now these days but her younger sister Karoline “Leki” Kamosi, lay in the cut putting down vocals the 90s techno/Hip-house group at the height of their reign. She went on to become a fully fledged star in her own right in Belgium, going from radio and television presenting to her current occupation [...]
They don’t call her “boss lady” for nothing. I know hardly any music entrepreneurs holding their own like Muthoni the Drummer Queen (let alone African female ones). The mastermind behind East Africa’s premiere and most consistent live music experience Blankets and Wine moves from the boardroom back to the mic again and she sounds like she means business! With her forth-coming album MDQ, the drummer/rapper has figured out a way [...]
Crowd-funding for startups in Africa, and more so as a means of financing music startups, is yet to prove its viability. Pim Betist, a Dutch pioneering crowd-funding evangelist (of Sell A Band fame) found this out when in 2009 he introduced the Africa Unsigned campaign which invited pledges for new African music talent from different parts of the continent and in the diaspora. The outcome was subdued and sent him [...]
My mind back-tracked to one afternoon in the mid-2000s during a radio programme on BBC World. I recalled running around the house looking for a spare tape onto which to record that moment. Tony Allen was being interviewed, a man of whom great things were spoken. It was Allen’s loose groove which drove many of Fela Kuti’s seminal releases, including Expensive shit, a personal favourite. My memory of the nineties [...]
Merchants, Dealers and Slaves, the new album from ex-Chocolate City crooner Brymo is expected to drop at the top of this week. Not sure if that title references his unceremonious exit from his former camp (home to Naija rapreneurs M.I and Jesse Jags). I am just glad they gave him his free. Brymo’s gorgeously gravel voice belongs to more than a mere hook singer. It’s telling also that on this [...]
And now for a journey through the heart of Lagos with funk rocker Keziah Jones – in his newly adopted role, with the alias Rugged Man the superhero – as your tour guide. Why not? Afronewave is the new single from his forth-coming album. H/T Guardian
It was around 2010 that the UK’s Afrobeats scene started to make real strides towards mainstream recognition. Songs like Nigerian rapper Panshak “Ice Prince” Zamani’s ‘Oleku’, released as the lead track for his 2011 debut studio album, ‘Everybody Loves Ice Prince’, formed the cornerstone of that movement. (There’s a rather awesome pared down version of ‘Oleku’ at Maida Vale recorded by Ice Prince as part of BBC 1Xtra’s Afrobeats special [...]
(photo credit: Capital fm 98.4) Coke Studio, a television series with a successful track record in Pakistan, India and the Middle East, kicked off in West and East countries including Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana and Kenya at the weekend. I was lucky enough to lurk behind the scenes for the making of some of the episodes for season one. Its premise is to pit African musicians from older and younger generations [...]
