It's Yemi Alade

Across globally revered Afropop star Yemi Alade’s seventh studio album, It’s Yemi Alade, the guitar operates as a travelling memory—continually shaped and reshaped by the genres, languages and collaborators she encounters. “Coco na Yam” is a celebration of Congolese rumba and its dance descendants, on which Alade joins forces with singer and producer Ferre Gola. Gola’s silky yet muscular delivery in French and Lingala shifts the track’s tempo and physical weight, while a sweet, high-register two-note guitar ostinato blossoms on the hook, Alade promising to dissolve worry through rhythm and physical grace. On “Ala Bekee”, cinematic orchestral sweeps give majestic scale to a romance framed by wealth and ceremony. “Buy you Ferrari, buy you the Lambo,” guest Don Jazzy sings matter-of-factly, before a keyboard-led breakdown turns the track into a joyous wedding-band medley centred on steadfast devotion. Even on the record’s clearest R&B offering, “Titanium”, the guitar keeps its highlife inflection intact. “You’re so fly,” Alade confesses, stretching the syllable until it practically levitates above the mix. The energy scales up on “Earth Song”, where a four-on-the-floor kick fuels expansive, cinematic Afro-house ambitions. “I am going back to where the river is flowing,” she sings. The pan-African journey deepens on “Paradise”, where Alade and French Congolese singer Singuila turn a steady midtempo groove into a polyglot sanctuary: “You speak in all my love languages.” Wordless vocal runs and languid piano chords make paradise feel less like a physical destination than an emotional frequency where two distinct timbres recognise home. On “Overtake”, amid the clatter of an ekwe—the traditional Igbo slit drum—the guitar roams freely as an expressive lead before snapping back into crisp highlife chops. “If wahala dey front, we dey back,” Alade sings, trading calls with a chorus whose long runs contrast the compressed syllables of Jeriq’s rap. Like the guitar, Alade is