Last week, singer Lydia Jasmine released her first album, One and Only. The album is named after the phrase, one and only, which she usually uses in her songs as an adlib either at the intro or end of songs. Released on July 25, One and Only is Lydia Jasmine’s first attempt at compiling a relatively focused body of work; with collaborators such as Skales, Blu*3, Bwiza, Lava Lava and Jose Chameleone. She put out a balanced tracklist with songs which can easily succeed in Uganda and Africa at large. Lydia Jasmine, has over the years built a catalogue of powerful songs such as Masuka, Nkubanja penned by Moze Radio and Same Way alongside Geo Steady But she has remained a moderately rated artiste considering the fact that she has not produced viral hits like her contemporaries such as Spice Diana, Winnie Nwagi and Irene Ntale, among others. Yet, with strong performances such as the Club Beatz at Home during the lockdown, most people got a chance to appreciate her as a vocalist and a formidable singer.
Then there were her live collaborations with Lillian Mbabazi and Irene Ntale, where she proved that with the right songs and production, she is more than her Instagram pictures. It is not surprising that on her first effort for an album, Jasmine tried to capture some of that magic, which she explains is also her inspiration from the time she first held a microphone. She says she has always admired Blu*3 and alongside friends at school, they had mimicked the band by creating a version of it. “I used to sing all the Blu*3 songs when I was in school, so, I reached out to them individually to have this collaboration done,” she says. Stutter, her collaboration with Blu*3, is one of the fastest moving songs online, since the album was released. Not the most powerful song by either entities, the song, however, has a way with the audience, thanks to both Lilian and Jackie’s vocal prowess to Cindy’s raspy verse. With Jose Chameleone, Sure, is still an ordinary Chameleone collaboration, enjoyable and sellable, but it might not be a song so outstanding that it will stay with us for generations.
Like the Blu*3 collaboration, this too is beloved and may easily become a club banger. One of the outstanding collaborations is with Rwandese artiste Bwiza. True Love is an Afrofusion ballad where the artistes talk about the hardships of finding true love. But what makes the song work beyond the vocals are elements of Rwandese pop, which has been spreading in the past few years. Jasmine works with a slew of writers on the album such as Shina Skies, Ronald Matovu, Abdul Juma Idd, Josephine Namagembe, as well as Jasmine herself. On One Life, where she collaborates with Esther Nabasa, the singer channels soft rock, a genre that has been going out of vogue the past few years. Nabasa has a way around such songs, yet she manages to weave words which still hit to the core when you listen to it. The song channels another song, Bebe Cool’s Love You Everyday, written by the same writer back in 2014. It sounds like an outstanding song on the album but very few people have given it any attention or mentions.
Jasmine held a listening party on Sunday night at Noni Vie in Kampala; a lengthy affair which was more of her birthday celebration than an album listening party. However, while talking to her fans, she said she subconsciously started using the adlibs, Lydia Jasmin Again, and One and Only. While working on this album, she decided to call it One and Only because it is a phrase many of her fans relate with her. Besides the night taking more than four hours to start, most of her fans appreciated the album for its quality production, selection of collaborators and also noted that it is a multigenre collection bold enough to walk even the difficult genres such as reggae and reggaeton. The local music industry has a tendency of catching bugs; the MTV bug which sent many into shooting over-priced music videos, into the era of chasing a BET Awards nomination and later, chasing all kinds of international awards.
For some reason, Bebe Cool’s name has been in the mix in all these bugs, and at times he has started the trends; talk about the time he released his three videos, Go Mama, Everywhere I Go and Love You Everyday, directed by Kenyan director, VJ One and Nigerian videographer, Clarence Peters. Then Joshua Baraka happened of late, with music played in other markets such as Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria and the UK, among others. His rise, which has seen him strategically collaborate with other rising artistes across the continent and streaming platforms such as Spotify, has got many industry players rethinking their working models. Suddenly, both radios and TV shows were discussing Joshua Baraka and his strategy. Meanwhile, before all this, Bebe Cool was planning to release his next album, Break the Chains, initially meant for a 2024 release but was delayed, only to get released early this year.
The album, mainly Afrobeats features Nigerian singer, Yemi Alade, UK-based Kenyan producer DJ Edu and, of course, Joshua Baraka; Break the Chains, is an album Bebe Cool says is supposed to change the way Ugandans look at music. Sections of Bebe Cool’s fans praise him for popularising the idea of artistes releasing albums, even though albums have been a thing for more than 20 years. With Lydia Jasmine’s One and Only, and a new wave of artistes’ interest in releasing music for streaming platforms, we can only wait and see what the album holds for Uganda and Jasmine.
