Bella Alubo is proof that a lot can happen, and change, in just two years. Around this time in 2016, Bella was dropping high-pitched, brag filled raps on “Resurrection,” a posse cut off Boogey’s Incognito which featured an all-female cast, save for the primary artist. Today, “rapper is not the artistic identifier for Bella; she now sings, and it’s pretty cool if you ask me.
In Early 2017, Bella was announced as a signing under the auspices of Tinny Entertainment, the same record label that brought wavy rap acolyte Ycee to ubiquity. Similar to her far more prominent label mate who was incorporating singing into his arsenal, it was expected that a similar artistic move was bound to happen with Bella. “Radio,” her sleek, radio-ready first single with Tinny, brought to fruition those projections. The direction was made even clearer earlier this year via Late Night Vibrations, a brief collection of sticky, nocturnal R&B records with Ycee. Upon release, the EP was lauded—making FilterFree’s mid-year list for the best 10 EPs—with Bella clearly pulling her own weight and making her case as a potentially interesting R&B/Pop artist.
Beyond the contrived reason of working within a more mainstream setting, under a label at that, the roots for Bella’s musical pivot can be traced to her eponymous 2016 EP, where she flirted with other genres that weren’t hip-hop, a little tamely if I might add. At the moment, Bella is no longer with Tinny, but she’s still charting the T-Pain course. re-Bella, her newly released EP—with a fantastic cover—is a consolidation based effort of her chosen musical identity, a breezy set that’s very enjoyable, but still shows clear signs of the growing pains of Bella’s current trajectory.
To start with, Bella is restricted as a singer. She does have a nice ring to her voice, even if fragile and dependent on vocal enhancement tools, and while her instincts as a pop singer is undoubtedly on the rise, there’s a couple of caveats still in play, including difficulties in coming up with more complex melodies, slightly warbled pitch, and the scarceness of spontaneous harmonies far skilled singers often use as embellishments. These restrictions are more pronounced when Bella is placed in comparisons with guest singers—all of whom elevate re-Bella in their own way—like Victoria Kimani being effortlessly snappy on “Your G,” and Efya spinning out songbird harmonies underneath Bella’s vocals on “Chale Wote.”
To her credit, though, Bella does a lot with her present ability level, using her strengths in ways that gratify her and re-Bella. With a straitjacket voice that probably counts on a thorough rehearsal of every song before it’s laid on wax, Bella excellently uses her trusted form as a means to evoke a mood. With a fantastic ear for beats, tagging frequent collaborator Syn X and a couple of talented producers for a musically varied but even project, Bella occupies the consistently remarkable production uniquely, leaning on the ethereal quality of her voice to bring a surrealist bent to re-Bella.
The songs on re-Bella don’t come across as full-bodied jolts, instead, they are attempts at massaging the pleasure centre of the brain until the listener gives in, and the method works within a few listens. Some of the songs even hit on first listen, an easy example is “Animals.” While Remy Baggins brings his signature ability to cobble together a fleshy groove and a sumptuous bounce to bear—this time it’s plinking guitar riffs and the colourful clash of congas and synths—“Animals” also features an applause-worthy performance from Bella, where she sings a hook, containing the lyric line “tryna be your vice, your poison/make you drink the sweetest portion,” with a mystic so befitting it’s as though she’s trying to hypnotize every listener. On “Honey,” another instantly memorable effort, Bella fluidly slips and slides across the neon keys and steely bass of the minimalist House music beat, and the airy, psychedelic texture of her voice is given a superb springboard by Sho Madjozi’s robust backing vocals.
Like on LNV, Bella’s rapper past still surfaces in her songwriting, and it’s still a bonus because she’s able to spell out her feelings in notable ways while also matching the integral, melodic requirements of a pop song. Lead single “Aiya,” is a pure moment of pop joy, where Bella describes the grinding feel of liking someone who’s gone on to date someone else over a percussive mid-tempo beat, leading to the cutting admission: “always thought I’d be that one girl (aiya)/now I gotta act like I don’t care.”
Rap those quoted lines and the metre stacks up quite nicely. Also, over Tempoe’s chirpy beat for “Chale Wote,” Bella’s final verse is a quick aggregation of non-sequiturs, and if not for her falsetto accentuating the slight melody, she might just have been rapping in melodic form.
The only male guest vocalist on re-Bella is from Alté veteran BOJ on the opener “Ask Bolaji.” Although his contribution is self-glorifying in nature, it mostly functions as a co-sign by association. Bella does set the tone with her equal parts sassy and cocksure performance, a striking quotable is “you go soon know me,” she sings assuredly. With a clear devotion to the refining of her craft, that line sounds like a promise.