Handpicked by Lucas Keen
Fokn Bois – Coz of Moni [Pidgen Music; 2010]
With typical braggadocio, mischievous twosome M3nsa and Wanlov The Kubolor dropped the “world’s 1st pidgin musical” on us in 2010. Starring and rhyming their way through the comedic caper, unfolding over one day in Accra. Highlights of this movie soundtrack sung in Ghanaian pidgin include ‘Go Browse’ which constructs a beat around vintage Windows sounds, and title track ‘Coz of Moni’ which features the unlikely heroes trading bars over a classic highlife. Make you go listen!
Beyonce – The Lion King: The Gift [Parkwood Entertainment; 2019]
Not exactly a soundtrack, more of a companion to the blockbuster remake of Disney’s Lion King – The Gift was produced and curated by your girl Beyoncé Knowles Carter and features a who’s who of West African emcees currently doing bits across the afrobeats movement. Beyonce takes the lead on a handful of cuts including ‘Mood 4 Eva’ which features a sampled hook by Malian songbird Oumou Sangaré, Childish Gambino and Jay Z both drop a verse or two. Generally the floor is finessed by the West Africans including Wizkid, Mr Eazi and Yemi Alade. The film was fine, but the album is fyre!
Zara McFarlane – Arise [Brownswood Recordings; 2017]
Mobo award-winning jazz vocalist Zara Mcfarlane is an alumnus of Gary Crosby (OBE) and Janine Irons (MBE) musical hothouse Tomorrow’s Warriors – the extended musical family that has become deservedly visible on the UK scene over the last five years. Best listened to on vinyl (no really!) Arise draws upon both jazz and Jamaican music and features the fluid playing of Peter Edwards, Moses Boyd and Shirley Tetteh behind the superlative voice of Mcfarlane.
Cheikh Lo – Jamm [Nonesuch Records; 2010]
After a five-year absence, Senegalese troubadour Cheikh Lo returned with an afropolitan album he neatly summed up as like a “picnic basket”. On songs like ‘Il N’Est Jamais Trop Tard’ and ‘Jamm’ the always dapper Lo serves up salsa, sufi devotional music of the Baye Fall Muslim brotherhood to which he belongs, and of course mbalax. Multi-tasking on spoken- sung vocals, lilting guitar and some slinky drums, Cheikh is joined on sax by seasoned session man Pee Wee Ellis for this delicious picnic of an album.
Baloji – 137 Avenue Kaniama [Bella Union; 2018]
An Afrofuturist opus of an album with the narrative arc of a novel, 137 Avenue Kaniama has everything, poetry, soukous, glitschy hip-hop and even a little opera. An artist not limited to one form or easily classified, Francophone Baloji goes in search of the last known address of his estranged mother (the Avenue Kaniama for which the album is named) and along the way raps about everything from colonialism to selfies. As energetic and various as the Congolese mega-city Kinshasa and the man himself.