Nigeria’s Asake remains authentic on his new album ‘Work of Art’: Review

Clocking in at thirty-six minutes and fifty-one seconds, ‘Work of Art’ is Ahmed Ololade—Nigeria’s shining star—Asake’s fourteen-song offering with a lone feature. Slowly cooling off from an impressive run last year with the release of ‘Mr Money With The Vibe’, an exhilarating body of music, the recording artist is doing great things for international music with high praise and support from North American media (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, ABC News Live Prime with Lindsey Davis, Good Morning America), mostly. Signed to fellow Nigerian musical star, Olamide—someone he frequently collaborates with—Asake has done what others could only imagine—like dominate the Nigerian Apple music charts with multiple singles and remain there for what felt like aeons. When I visited Lagos last year, Asake’s singles played throughout my rides to Lagos Mainland and Victoria Island, where I lived for a few weeks.

Experimenting with various instruments and singing in Yoruba with some English words here and there, helping to popularise other African music sounds like Nigerian Fiji and South African Amapiano, the new age artist is successfully packaging and selling Motherland music to the world.

If you’re yearning to hear something new and different or innovative from this LP, I don’t think you’d find it. You’d discover more Afro-Fusion songs made by a young man looking to cement and popularise a fusion sound. How else can it be done without concentrating on what he’s created?