Singer never really changes, she reinvents her music wheel with every new project

It’s been 10 years since Asa first dropped her debut album. Three projects in, each album still holds fresh, standing strong as musical masterpieces to offer a holistic music experience.

The best part about Asa’s music and her talent is how it never ages. It simply just matures as each album reinvents the singer while chasing a different route. And so far, there has been 3 albums, each throwing us a different route.

It’s a unique evolution, one which has proven to still provide the highest quality of music, while also purring at the listener, and dragging out their spirits and emotions to a different place at each turn.

The music came from a very unique place at an early age.

The Paris-born, Lagos, Nigeria-raised songwriter didn’t have the best social conditions growing up. She was a weird kid, lonely and stereotypical in her solitude. You know those children who would rather keep to themselves and dig within to find escape from reality in an imaginative activity. For me and many others, it was reading and writing.

But for Asa, it was music. It was her alternative world, one in which she could run to, express herself in the most vivid and colourful ways, while finding happiness and a deep sense of fulfilment in it. She sang her way through weekday choirs as real-practice, hugging her guitar with a sense of family. That guitar was both friend, family and work tool.

She eventually moved back to Paris, to chase the music professionally. And from the vitalizing and bubbling French culture of expressional, sensory and sensual music, she grew. This upwards motion led to the climax that her debut self-titled album became.

Released in 2007, “Asa”, the album was an instant hit. Everyone was hooked with the sultry singing, the skill in acoustic and live production, and the imagery, which always served the purpose of drawing people into her imaginary worlds.

Listening to Asa is not just an exercise in appreciation of music. It’s a journey to another world, where you are both the music and the listener. In that world, your senses are stimulated by the aural slush of the sounds, rhythm and soul. It’s uplifting. It is overpowering. A feeling like no other.

But not all is sensual. There’s a long throw to acknowledge and interact with the world around, as the politically-driven fire ‘Fire On The Mountain’, and the mundane ‘No one knows tomorrow’ shows.

Second album “Beautiful Imperfections” is a warm, immersive blend, with Asa's husky, lightly swinging vocals its focal point. She makes mellow pop about life and its troubles, while also showing strength in the hot Parisian jazz-influence. With songs like ‘Bimpe’, and ‘Be my man’.

“Bed Of Stone” album was more conceptual. Asa wrote most of the music in Nashville, bringing on more Jazzy and reggae undertones. It has her concentrating on a woman’s emotional and physical journey through life situations. She finds love, loses it, engages nostalgia, and tastes anguish. This is masterful.

In all of these projects, there is a constant that clearly makes it all come together: her music making process, which is helmed by her voice, a guitar, and the desire to excite the human mind. And although the concepts can evolve, the voice and genre are eternal, and have never changed.

Thank God for that. It’s the secret to her evolution.