Asake’s Mr Money With The Vibe is a new take on Afrobeats

9 sep 2022 - 15:24

Published under the Creative Commons Licence

In his own way, Nigerian singer-songwriter Asake has been responsible for the distinct, boundary-pushing Fuji-pop aesthetic currently being witnessed through the in-vogue sounds of Afrobeats and amapiano, proving their non-stop mutability.

Asake.

And so, although the artist – whose work is loaded with palpable street candour and ancestral dazzle – boasts wholesale chart presence for multiple singles and an eponymous debut EP already this year, an Asake album has been feverishly anticipated.

Why not? Since coming into his current status as one of Afrobeats’ most exciting new voices two years ago, Asake has remained a hot cake, hardly shedding the superstar aura that surrounds him. This week, the expectation of a full-length collection has been met, and Mr Money With The Vibe doesn’t disappoint. It finds Asake picking up right where he left off on the precursor EP.

In its execution, the 12-track dissertation occurs as a bold and authentic adventure that further highlights its author as a man in possession of rare sonic intellect, devotion to inherited melodies, and superior instinct for harnessing modern music magic. “I swear, I no go dull / Wetin mama go chop?” he asks rhetorically at the start of the LP – in case you’re wondering what his incentive is.

The crux of Mr Money lies in the last word of the album’s title – “vibe” – like Asake’s easy vocal tone that still manages to retain enough passion to explore the whole gamut of human emotion, but also “vibe” like producer Magicsticks’ soulful piano and violin contributions, among other orchestral manipulations – a rarity in pop from these parts, but key to the infrastructure of the songs on the LP and Asake’s signature.

“Heavenly sounds from the street,” explains the artist on ‘Nzaza’, which oozes with sobering breeze. On Mr Money, even love songs feel like triumphant anthems. Thus is the synergy shared between singer and producer.

One must be particularly daring to drop an album in a year that has witnessed releases by heavyweights like Burna Boy and Fireboy DML, and likely impending collections from Wizkid and Davido. Not a problem if you are carving out your own unique moment within Afrobeats. Few things are truer than this: Asake couldn’t hand in a poor song if he tried – not in 2022 anyway.