Pa Salieu nonetheless had his three blue jail luggage slung over his shoulders when he arrived at Angelic Studios in Oxfordshire, England, at the beginning of September. The grin he wore, strapped broad throughout his cheeks, had stayed the journey from the jail gates, too. Pa had simply been launched after serving 21 months of a near-three-year sentence, handed down for his half in a 2018 brawl following the killing of his pal, Fidel Glasgow. Earlier than his sentencing, Salieu had launched a beautiful debut album that had him teed up for a lot larger issues. So as soon as he bought again into the studio, he produced a battered A4 notepad and started working, chronicling his cellblock daydreams on household, freedom, and what it’s to be African and really feel alien within the UK. These reflections type the spine of Afrikan Alien, which flits from confrontation to catharsis over a melee of rap, millennial Afrobeats, non secular mantras, and rolled log drums. It’s a quick rush, at a hair over 27 minutes, however covers a exceptional quantity of floor. And as a blueprint for a brand new, pan-African pop music, it’s totally convincing.
He steps with lightness. “Allergy” turns and twitches like a flower’s bloom in timelapse, as Pa whirls over clip-clop percussion, drunk on a mantra: “I’m allergic to the unhealthy vibes…I’m allergic to the BS.” The opening promise of “Stomach”—“I been gone for some time, however I nonetheless make it again to you”—is directly a few woman, the skin world, and the music itself; the heavier tones of final month’s loosie “Crash” freestyle are notably absent right here. It helps that his voice stirs like honey in sizzling water. He invitations Black Sherif, Byron Messia, and ODUMODUBLVCK for a choice of field workplace cameos—the latter’s tear of a verse on “Massive Smile” has the strain launch of a race official’s starter pistol. And if there’s such a factor as a winter bop then “Soda,” with its addictive mix of cosy soca syncopation and funky amapiano stabs, is it.
Pa flirts with recognizable kinds which have, in recent times, suffused the UK’s pop charts and made international stars of the likes of Burna Boy and Asake. However he always tweaks the formulation. His overtures on the title observe—“African the alien, transferring like he’s nomadic…introduced rhythms ’trigger the spirit mentioned it”—recommend a fixation on the horizon whereas carrying the dear cargo of his previous with him. Songs like “Dece (Heavy)” and “Common” thread a line from his grandmother’s automotive stereo in The Gambia, the place Pa grew up, to the tracks trending on YouTube immediately.
The tape’s coronary heart, although, lies in its most simple second. There’s nothing startling in regards to the stable, sax-and-strings head bop of “YGF,” or something coded within the refrain the music’s initials come from: “Younger, nice, and free.” But it surely gives, with gospel choir backing, the deep, therapeutic exhale that Pa has been able to launch.
