Miriam Makeba, of blessed memory, grew into the Mama Africa title over decades of providing brilliant music and lending her golden voice to great causes, Yemi Alade on the other hand is submitting her application for the role after just one album.
Miriam Makeba
The singer’s bold album titles (King of Queens, Mama Africa – The Diary of an African Woman) continue to ruffle feathers and we can’t wait to see what she’ll title the third. For today however, we’ll give you a run down of all the folks credited with helping Ms. Alade on her ambitious sophomore project.
From the East to the West
Mama Africa or Mama African Equator? In our review of Yemi Alade’s album, we highlighted that most of the music on the album would probably appeal to Africans along the equator more than it would to those elsewhere. That’s because rather than going truly continental, the album focuses mainly on 2 regions – East and West Africa. From East Africa, she brought in Kenyan super group Sauti Sol to collaborate. From the west, there’s DJ Arafat from Cote d’Ivoire, Sarkodie from Ghana and P Square, Selebobo and Rotimi Keys from___, you know where. That said, the deluxe version of the album has music from more regions. One more thing, with “Tonight” on the album, does Yemi have the last official P Square record to come out before their “break up”? Maybe that’s something worth investigating.
The Usual Suspects
Yemi’s bosses at Effyzie Records – Karibo Harrison and Taiye Aliyu must be delighted to executive produce another Yemi Alade album less than 2 years after the first. Mama Africa has 8 producers, half of them were on King of Queens too so that explains why both albums are alike sonically, save for the disappearance of R&B ballads. MMMG’s Selebobo delivered “Johnny” to Yemi and Yemi entrusts him with 5 songs on this project. The other producers that show up again are GospelOnTheBeats, PhilKeyz and Mr. Chidoo. PhilKeyz is a frequent collaborator of May D’s as well, most recently on his popular single “All Over You”. Mr. Chidoo is a performing artist himself, he was signed to Beseline Records at a point, not sure if he’s still signed.
Mr. Chidoo, PhilKeys (L-R)
Another reason why the album retains a lot of KoQ’s identity is the reappearance of audio engineer(s) Teepiano Green Productions who handled a lot of the mixing and mastering on both albums.
New Backroom Staff
The album also has audio engineers that didn’t work on KoQ, namely Suka Sounds and Mix Monster. On the production tip, DJ Coublon is on everyone’s project these days, you can hear his touch all over one of the album’s most popular singles “Ferrari”. Another producer that has become a staple these days is Flavour’s right hand man Masterkraft, he brings his heavily sought-after sounds to Mama Africa. The album gives credit to some promising producers too, you might be more accustomed to hearing Rotimi Keys on gospel tunes but his sound goes nicely with Afro-pop as well. BeatsbyEmzo also has a spot on the album.
Red Flags
One disappointment though is that the photographer Emmanuel Oyeleke and album art folks Onazi Ogaba (Unravel GFX) weren’t credited. Which is a shame because the photogs and album cover creators were credited on KoQ, perhaps it’s an oversight.
*Most people forget that an album is a project and a lot more people work on a project than just the recording artist. This series tries to give credit where credit is due*