Beyonce dropped her new album in the early hours of today titled ‘The Lion King: The Gift’ with twenty-seven (27) songs as well as featuring a number of African artistes. The album is already trending worldwide with music lovers making predictions of Grammy nominations and wins.
The album which features Nigerian artistes Wizkid, Tiwa Savage, Burna Boy, Mr Eazi, Yemi Alade and Tekno and actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor on 7 of the songs is the number trending topic in Nigeria. You can listen to the album here.
Contrary to popular opinions, the Nigerian artists are not on the official movie soundtrack as this album is an independent project produced by Beyonce. Sadly, Beyonce’s vocals are not on all the songs but the plus side is that there are interludes of movie excerpts on the album.
Beyonce featured on the song “Brown Skin Girl” with Wizkid, St. John and her daughter, Blue Ivy and it shows Star boy at his best. She has some solo songs on the album too but she did feature on some of the music with other acclaimed American musicians such as her husband Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, and Pharrell. She was on another song with another African giant, Shatta Wale from Ghana who was joined by Major Lazer on the song ‘Already’.
Tekno, Yemi Alade and Mr Eazi teamed up on the album to record ‘Don’t Jealous Me’. Mr Eazi also teamed up with Tiwa Savage on ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ making him and Yemi Alade the only Nigerian artistes to be on two songs on the album. Burna Boy had a song on the album all by himself titled ‘Ja Ara E’.
On first listen, the ‘The Lion King: The Gift’ album was beautifully put together and in any case it does win a Grammy, then 5 of the biggest stars in Nigeria will have Grammys to their name. It would be Wizkid’s second collaborative Grammy nomination though. Right now, we are just going to accept this win and say Nigeria to the World!
