Christmas has come early with the release of Asake's third studio album in three years, Lungu Boy.
Asake, pronounced, ‘ah-sha-keh,’ is a Nigerian Afro-fusion artist, who has taken the music charts by storm.
Following his sudden rise to fame in 2022, Asake has released hit after hit, collaborating with some of the biggest names in the music industry.
He has blessed our ears with his first two studio albums, Mr Money With The Vibe, and Work of Art, and has continued to do so with Lungu Boy.
Lungu Boy, a slang term meaning ‘boy in the hood’, has fifteen songs with 5 features, including Wizkid, Travis Scott, Stormzy, Central Cee, and LUDMILLA.
Naturally, the album begins with a song titled ‘Start’.
We are introduced to the album by a woman singing in Yoruba, with lyrics roughly translating to, “it’s daybreak, it’s daybreak for me in this land, I see goodness”. The woman singing was a sample of Nigerian singer Asa’s song ‘Eye Adaba’.
Asake, a Nigerian Yoruba man, sings many of his lyrics in the Yoruba language, and he draws inspiration from this and a variety of artists.
‘Start’, like many on the album, features a variety of languages, including Yoruba, English, and Pidgin English. Asake’s ability to seamlessly switch between languages shows his versatility and creativity. This creativity is seen on Track 3 ‘Mood’, where Asake is singing in Spanish.
In his song ‘Joha’, from his first studio album, ‘Mr Money With the Vibe’, Asake sang in four different languages, including French, Spanish, English and Yoruba, all within the first 30 seconds.
Can your favourite artist do that? Asake really is in a league of his own.
But the Nigerian artist has faced criticism online, with some accusing him of having too many Yoruba lyrics in his songs. Asake addressed these criticisms through Instagram Live saying that he is “more comfortable singing [his] song[s] in Yoruba”.
“I’m a real Yoruba man. I cannot be what I’m not,” Asake said.
‘Wave’, featuring British rapper Central Cee, was the leading single on this album and has so far accumulated 41million streams on Spotify.
I cannot lie, the first time I saw ‘Asake ft Central Cee,’ I screamed. There was no way the guy who sang “how can I be homophobic, my bitch is gay,” was hopping on an Afrobeat x Amapiano beat.
I was really prepared to hate it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Central Cee slid on the beat so well, and you already know it couldn’t have been one of his verses without Cench's legendary catchphrase, “alright”.
There were many different themes included on this album, but a reoccurring theme I noticed was the spirituality, and references to God.
On many songs, Asake refers to “Oluwa,” meaning God in Yoruba. Particularly, in the song ‘Suru’, featuring Stormzy.
‘Suru’, short for the Yoruba phrase and town Surulere, translates to patience is rewarding. In this song, Asake highlights the importance of being patient, and suggests that his patience rewarded him, and resulted in him becoming a global sensation.
The main hook of the song, “ise Oluwa ko seni to ye,” translates to “God’s work, no one understands”.
Stormzy echoes this idea in his verse saying, “mysterious ways that He works in, but He’s still working certain”.
The English translations just don’t do the lyrics justice. This song is one of my favourites on the album. From the lyrics to the instrumentation, it is truly beautiful.
Spiritual references were also seen on the song ‘MMS,’ featuring fellow Afro-fusion artist Wizkid.
Asake references a bible verse from 1 Timothy 6:7, saying, “ki la mu w’aye? Ko soun ta mu w’aye, ko si nnkan ta ma mu lọ”.
This roughly translates to, “What did we bring into this world? We brought nothing into this world, and there is nothing we are taking out of it.”
In this song, Asake is reminding us of how fleeting life can be and encourages us to take life easy.
Towards the end of the album, Asake surprised listeners by switching up the vibes on the last two tracks.
‘Whine’, featuring Brazilian singer, LUDMILLA, could make even the stiffest of hips move.
Honestly, I don’t have the words to describe how cool this song is. It is completely different to anything I’ve heard Asake put out, but I love it.
The song was sampled from Mary J Blige’s, ‘Real Love’. Though I could not understand what LUDMILLA was saying, I still felt so connected to the song.
Asake said it perfectly, describing music as a “feeling.”
“Sometimes you don’t even have to understand it,” he said.
‘Whine’ gives major tropical summer vibes, and I cannot wait to blast it on a beach somewhere.
They say save the best for last, and Asake really did.
The album finished with a song titled ‘Fuji vibe’, and as the title suggests, this one is a real vibe.
Five minutes of straight heat and produced by the legendary ‘Compozers,’ and Asake himself, meant we were really spoiled with this song.
Fuji is one of the many musical genres that originated in Nigeria. Fuji music was derived from Were music. Were music was played during seasons of Ramadan for Muslims.
In the 1960s, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister innovated Were music, rebranded it, and called it Fuji music.
Fuji music is described as being lively and energetic. The genre uses many traditional percussion instruments like the talking drum, the shekere, the bata drum, the gangan and bongo drums, to create complex rhythms.
Fuji music was a point of inspiration for Asake, as a lot of the songs on this album were sampled from Fuji artists, including the track ‘Active’ featuring Travis Scott.
This song was inspired by the Fuji song ‘Raise da roof’ by Jazzman Olofin and Adewale Ayuba.
The percussion on ‘Fuji vibe’ is prevalent, making the beat danceable. One of my favourite parts of this song is the beat change around 2:38 where the percussion beats are taken to a whole new level, and a soundtrack of a live audience comes in.
There are two samples in this song, including ‘Ijo Fuji’ by Adewale Ayuba, and ‘Mr Money’ by Asake himself. ‘Fuji vibe’ was perfectly executed and had all the elements needed for it to be considered evergreen.
This song has proven that Asake has single handedly ensured that fuji music will never go out of style.
Lungu Boy was fantastic.
Asake was able to show us his talent and versatility yet again by experimenting with different sounds, and genres, all while putting his own spin on them.
This album was a reminder of why Asake is nicknamed ‘Mr Money with the Vibe’, because he gets money and brings all the vibes.