Kween is the queen of starts and stops. Circa 2002 she dropped ‘Oluronmbi’ featuring Pasuma. After making a strong impression on music list...
Kween is the queen of starts and stops. Circa 2002 she dropped ‘Oluronmbi’ featuring Pasuma. After making a strong impression on music listeners she abruptly travelled to England. Five years later she came back into the country and released ‘Come wiv me‘ and ‘Jebele‘.
The singles brought Kween back into the thick of things. An album would have established her as Nigeria’s leading female artiste. Well I guess you know how the story went. Kween didn’t drop any album and relocated once again to England.
Three years later Kween drops one of the most anticipated albums, Kweendoncome, our own Chinese Democracy (Chinese Democracy by Guns –N–Roses took 10 years to make). You might think the album will sound dated but it’s surprisingly fresh, different and confident. Kween takes a different path by ignoring the pop formulas her contemporaries are using and sticking to her rich Afro-centric sound. She kicks off her album with the Yoruba song ‘Kadara’ originally sung by Ade Love. With her sights on being the next Onyeka Owenu rather than the next Beyonce she covers the elegant stallion’s classic ‘Iyogogo’ beautifully.
‘U no go know’ is one of the album’s strongest songs. Produced by Mekoyo, the song made up of live instrumentation which touches on betrayal and the day of reckoning, should be picked as the next single. It is different from what we hear our female singers render these days. Ready a song about love is another Afro-centric hit that Kween belts out with a confident and relaxed mien, just what you will expect from a queen.
Predictably she does a song that extols the virtue of the African woman. Titled African Woman (no surprises there) she puts her own spin on Beyonce’s ‘run the world’ mantra from her irritating single ‘Run the world’. Kween switches things up on the Puffy T produced ‘I love my life; On this track she goes contemporary and ends up with something good. ‘Playa’ the single which ushered in the album is more of an up-tempo track while on ‘Gold digger’ which has an Afro-beat influence she tells you clearly that she is not one of the girls that Kanye West rapped about on his 2005 smash hit (featuring Jamie Foxx).
There are 10 main tracks on Kweendoncome. The shortness of the LP doesn’t take away from its beauty or depth. With four extra cuts (two versions of Jebele which still sound fresh by the way, Jowobiko and Jowobiko remix featuring Djinee) Kween has dropped an album that is needed in today’s musical climate. Shunning cookie-cutter production, she has been able to put an album made up of solid songs with lush and rich production devoid of heavy Western music influence.
