In this week selection: David Walters’ electro-creole 2.0 album, Gqom Oh! compilation dedicated to the prodigy Citizen Boy, new long-format opus by the one and only Lil Wayne and more to hear this week.
Photo: Ingrid Mareski
Soleil Kreyol
David Walters
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From Avoca Hills to the World
Citizen Boy & Mafia Boyz
Gqom Oh! label dedicates its 11th release to young South African producer Citizen Boy with 13 tracks produced between 2013 and 2019. Founding member of the Boyz Mafia and now active member of Gqom Oh!, Citizen Boy is a staple of Durban and South Africa’s electronic music scene. Influenced by house and kwaito, Citizen Boy draws inspiration from Zulu cultures to create a dark, raw and minimalist sound personality. Celebrating both the debut of the label and the kids of Avoca Hills, this mixtape contains seven classics and six new tracks. It’s an opportunity to return to the source while ensuring their primary mission; expose the Durban sound to an international audience.
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Funeral
Lil Wayne
Less than two years after Tha Carter V, Lil Wayne is back with a new opus that features 24 tracks including Jay Rock, Lil Baby, Big Sean, The-Dream, Adam Levine, among others. Funeral is Lil Wayne’s thirteenth album. Funeral sounds much more on-trend with rap’s current sound than previous offerings. Nonetheless, his long-time friend and collaborator Mannie Fresh appears on the production credit list.
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Amewuga
Elom 20ce
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Revolution (Live Disco Show In New-York)
Sidiku Buari
Revolution (Live Disco Show In New York City) is the fourth and final BBE reissue of Sidiku Buari’s unique and sought-after body of African disco albums.
Revolution’s side 1 is (possibly!) live throughout, from a 1979 show at the (possibly mythical!) La Cheer Nightclub, NYC, but very well recorded for a live album with clean, bright top notes, sharp percussion and heavy basslines.
Side 2 consists of four very varied tracks all recorded at Aire L.A. Studios, the two openers “Revolution” and “Together We Can Rebuild It (Ghana Motherland)” being polemics against government and army corruption, and a battle-cry for Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, who ruled the country for a brief period in 1979 when this recording was made. Side 2 also rounds off with the super-heavy afrobeat-disco groover, “Happy Birthday”.
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Apala: Apala Groups in Nigeria 1967-70
Various Artists
Apala: Apala Groups in Nigeria 1967-70 focuses on a wide selection of recordings made in Nigeria in the 1960s, a time when Apala music was at the height of its popularity. Apala is popular music that also functioned as a form of cultural resistance–Apala music involved no western instrumentation and is sung in the Yoruba language, its aesthetic an implicit cultural rejection of the British Empire’s colonial rule over Nigeria which lasted from 1901 until independence in 1960.
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LÉVE LÉVE sounds 70s-80s
Various Artists
The album unravels a story of liberation where the music of Africa, Europe and the Americas unify with a carefree spirit personified by a phrase the islanders use all the time: ‘léve, léve’ (‘take it easy’). From the mid-1970s, coinciding with independence from Portugal in 1975, the islands’ groups featured an even stronger African influence and nowhere was that more apparent than with Africa Negra. This compilation shows how much São Tome & Principe has in common with other Lusophone countries and boasts a richly complex and idiosyncratic musical DNA.
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