Afrobeats Superstar Davido Releases New Album Timeless
Afrobeats Superstar Davido Releases New Album Timeless
April 16, 2023 12:16
Nigerian superstar Davido recently dropped a new album, “Timeless.” This album is great — it represents a complex blending of languages, aesthetics and artists that creates a deep and influential soundscape and exposes Davido’s massive potential.
Davido’s music is hard to pin down to a single genre or mood, but if one label applies to him, it’s Afrobeats. Afrobeats is less of a genre and more of an evolving stylistic trend — a blending of Yoruba rhythms and sounds with contemporary Black American sounds, from jazz to soul to R&B to hip-hop. There is tremendous diversity within Afrobeats since there are so many styles it pulls from, and the genre is evolving at an ever-increasing pace thanks to social media, taking influence from artists around the world. Afrobeats could be described as a fusion between genres as diverse as house, hip-hop, Yoruba music and highlife.
The album’s opening track, “OVER DEM,” introduces listeners to Davido with a quick saxophone solo and a strong percussion section, leading into a laid-back semi-ethereal beat with light, floaty, bubbly synths and Davido’s voice. Within the first 30 seconds of the song, the listener is exposed to a signature element of Afrobeats and Davido’s music: the blending of languages. Davido sings in three languages — English, Yoruba and Igbo — and he intermingles them throughout, creating an exceptionally smooth flow and enabling him to express himself more thoroughly than he could in a single language. Davido lyrically sets himself up as the David in a world full of Goliaths — a move that reads as a reference to the death of his son in a tragic accident a few years ago.
