Asa Draws Strength from Fifth Album

 Ferdinand Ekechukwu

Just two nights ago, Asa performed to the delight of her fans at the Royal Albert Hall, London. The France based Nigerian music diva, Bukola Elemide, popularly known as Asa, had nights before then delivered her highly anticipated fifth studio album, ‘V’. This comes after months of teasing with awe-inspiring singles such as “Mayana” and “Ocean”. The award-winning pop-jazz singer released the 10-track body of work as earlier announced.

‘V’, which was produced by Priimebeatz, includes collaborative tracks with Wizkid, Amarae, and The Cavemen. The song ‘IDG’ with Wizkid appears to be the most streamed off the new album. From Asa’s 2019 album “Lucid” to the point before releasing “Mayana”, with her 2022 debut single “Ocean”, prior the release of ‘V’, Asa has been engaged with a plethora of music tours which in turn foster the promotion of her records as well as bond her fans strongly to the music.

On the album, the ‘Jailer’ crooner dwelt more on love which sounds like the phase she is currently in. Asa has had a range of experiences that cuts across her life recently; it is where the strength of ‘V’, her fifth album is drawn. Before the release of her self-titled debut album in 2007, Asa was little known in Nigeria. In the months to come, she emerge among the year’s breakout stars.

The strength of her album elevated her immediately into the pantheon of modern African pop greats. The journey since then has been quite well documented. Her debut single, ‘Eyé Adaba’ was beginning to get airplay. Aṣa soon signed to Naïve Records. The release of her debut album saw Aṣa charting radios across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

She went on to win the prestigious French Constantin Award in 2008 when she was voted best fresh talent of 10 singers or groups by a jury of 19 music-industry specialists in Paris. Her second album, ‘Beautiful Imperfection’, in collaboration with Nicolas Mollard, was released in October 2010. Asa’s third studio album, ‘Bed of Stone’, was thereafter put out in August 2014 as she went on a world tour from 2015 to 2017.

In 2019, she released ‘Lucid’, her fourth album. Explaining why she took this long to come up with another album, the singer, songwriter said, “I did not want to do another ‘Jailer’; neither did I want to do another ‘Bibanke’. I wanted to be inspired, and I wanted it to be real. I have lived that already and I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I am just going where life takes me. I probably will never wait that long (between albums) any more.

“I don’t want to wait that long anymore because I also wanted to live normally. I wanted to live like everybody else. My life is on the road, on the stage, and when one stops, bam! The tour is over, then one starts to act like a zombie; one does not know where one’s passport is, because on the tour, there is a schedule, and there is the need for time to recover. But this time, it is different.”