Why is “Mama Africa” dropping another album without a national hit song?

Why is Mama Africa set to release another project when none of her recent singles has been national hit?

Yemi Alade is exactly the type of artist that can be described with the word ‘polarizing’. Whenever and wherever she gets love, it comes in barrels, but when she gets hate and criticism, it feels like she has never received love in the first place. It’s a divided mix of local criticism, international love, sold-out concerts, screaming crowds,  grudging acceptance of her talents, and the frustration that can be felt by critics when she finally releases a project that fails to meet up to their standards.

Yemi Alade’s most recent single is titled ‘Knack am’. It is a love song produced by DJ Coublon, which fuses elements of Reggaeton and Highlife percussion, to provide listeners with another record extolling the virtues of her lover and the effects of his romantic magic on her life.

We have heard her utilise this theme in millions of ways. She has always been very prolific with love at the centre of her creative process. Songs such as ‘Johnny’, ‘Tangerine’, ‘Tum bum’, ‘Kissing’ and much more have explored different phases and situations of the human emotion and its intricacies. And we keep getting more of it.

Only rarely does she move away from love, and when she does, the result is even more contested. Check out ‘Koffi Anan’, and the reaction it brought in listeners. Very heated.

One highlight of Yemi Alade’s 2017 has been the decision to continue pushing regardless of whatever the world throws at her. While she maintains a public persona of the-inspiring-woman-and-creative-who-continues-to-brave-all-odds-to-succeed, she is only human, and criticism always takes its toll on the human mind.

“I don tire for all these self-acclaimed critics in this Nigeria,” she said in a Snapchat video which she recorded in 2016 but served as bashing material for critics in January 2017. “They don’t do any form of research, they don’t listen to the artistes’ songs. “I‘m upset about this kind of thing, I just really think that people don’t know when they’re actually being biased gender wise. They don’t know when they’re trying to pick on females. Enough is enough, y’all just shut up!"

But that’s just about the only time she has ever shown a crack in her otherwise impervious skin. Yemi Alade has since kept her music flowing, and unlooked the conversations surrounding the quality of her music and her preferred method of creating it.

And now she has announced a third album titled “Black Magic.”

It has been almost two years since Yemi Alade dropped her sophomore studio album ‘Mama Africa’. The project was roundly criticised within Nigeria, for its lack of substance, and its unidirectional nature. But the singer has continued to unwaveringly promote the project, shoot videos from it, toured the globe with it, and released an EP as an offshoot of the record.

“Black Magic” makes it a third time for the Nigerian singer, who won the Best Female African Act at the 2016 MTV Music Africa Music Awards (MAMA).

What is surprising about Yemi Alade’s decision to release another album is that she has had no national hit record. Yemi Alade’s past singles ‘Sugar n Spice’, ‘Gucci Ferragamo’, and ‘Charliee’ have not exactly resonated within the country to become popular. But she has continued with the music, releasing it, marketing via every possible channel, and leading up to this album.

But without a local hit in her home country Nigeria, why is she bothering with an album?

“It just feels like a time to move on to another phase of her life where she is right now,” Taye Aliyu, who has managed Yemi Alade for over 5 years tells Pulse via a telephone conversation. “The old album is nearly two years old. We started from ‘Na gode’, and now we are here. I think it’s time that she moves on to another chapter of her life.”

Yemi Alade’s “Black Magic” album will be out in October 2017. And ‘Knack am’ is the first single off the project. Taye Aliyu says the singer isn’t changing anything in the way she makes her music but will continue to record music that is filled with “Identity,” although fused with other influences that she has picked while touring.

“Identity is all that we have. If you want to do music like Beyonce, you are really wasting your time, because there’s no way you can be better than them in what they do. But we can only mix and match our stuff with all the stuff that we go through when we travel out of Nigeria. That’s what she is trying to do; just give people an insight into what Nigeria and Africa are,” Taye says.

Talk to any pop music executive, and you will get a basic structure to how projects are released. The general music industry standard procedure to release pop albums is to prepare the public by releasing hit records, before deploying the success of these records as drivers to lead the marketing of the album. Yemi Alade sees it differently. Having toured different markets and analysed her strengths as a performing and recording act with a reach that is beyond Lagos, she is making music for a wider audience.

“The thing about Nigeria is that the industry is growing, and everybody thinks that they know everything about music. I don’t think it’s about hit songs,” Taye said, disagreeing with the industry narrative. “It’s about making good music, and I think everything else will follow. People think in Nigeria that “Mama Africa” album did not do well. But we know it did exceptionally well, even better than her debut “King of Queens.”

One of the highlights of Yemi Alade’s 2017 has been her performances in her tour. In April 2017, she kicked off the first leg of her Mama Africa World Tour in France. The Effyzzie Music singer sold-out the iconic Le Trianon, Paris; days before the concert.

Armed with her Ova Sabi Band and dancers, she delivered an electrifying 90 minutes set; performing songs from her arsenal of hits, and further wowed fans by bringing out international saxophonist Jean Baptiste Moundele for ‘Na Gode’, afro R&B singer Dil to sing the romantic duet ‘Temperature’ and Marvin for the French version of “Kissing”. The concert also saw a breath-taking performance from French diva Djany; who opened for Miss Alade.

“Lagos is 5-6 million people,” Taye explains, “and if you subtract that from 200 million people what do you have? There’s a lot of love outside Lagos, but people believe that if you don’t make music that Lagosians can dance to and play at all the radio stations then you are not making money.

“But the case is the opposite. A song like ‘Tumbum’, people can insult you and say ‘why are you making that type of music?’ But in Europe and America and other parts of the world, ‘Tumbum’ is on heavy rotation. People are downloading the record, using it for workouts, in their playlists and more. But in Nigeria, people are so critical of it. But if you focus so hard on Nigeria alone and try to please them, you will find out that you are even losing out on the energy and love you are getting from so many other places.”

But irrespective of this, the music on “Black Magic” will be created and curated based on the reach of the singer. It will be divided into two parts, with one solely focused on her local fan base. Yemi Alade believes that the home market and her fan base spread across numerous parts of the country is the core driving force of her career.

Her recent EP, “Mama Afrique,” contains a window into a key strategy of Yemi Alade’s penetration into foreign markets. On that project, Alade re-recorded her popular hits into other languages including Portuguese, Swahili and French.

“We go with the flow. We look at the points where people are interacting with her music, and we flow. People appreciate the fact that they are spoon-fed in their local language” Taye says. “Nigerians and the whole world need to engage more people.”

The key for Yemi Alade here is to continue to make music which can connect on a global level and impact on the lives of fans and listeners. Hits are cool, but good music is better and lasts longer as part of her touring material. Yemi Alade believes in the power of albums, after seeing her gains via streaming and distribution in global markets.

“Artistry is very different,” Taye concludes. “Some people are album artists, and some are not. One of Yemi’s strength is the fact that she is an album artist, and she can deliver on stage and represent what she is singing. So she entertains and gives a live show for the music she has created. When these come together, it is a hit, more powerful than just popular songs.”

Yemi Alade’s “Black Magic” album is slated to be released in October 2017, via her record label Effyzie Music Group.