Nigerian born musician Joeboy has released the accompanying music video for his single Lonely, streaming on YouTube today. Along with the official video he has announced his debut album Somewhere Between Beauty and Magic will be released February 4th 2021. His track Lonely was released in the first few days of this year and is the first single off a full-length album the artist has ever released.
The African-pop singer broke onto the music scene recently with his first hit single Baby only released in 2019. Baby received over 20 million streams in the UK and 30 million views on YouTube, as well as receiving vast critical acclaim. That year Joeboy released his first EP Love and Light which earned him awards from Soundcity MVP Awards Festival and Best Artiste at the 2019 All Africa Music Awards.
Joeboy released a statement about the coming album today, saying that “working on this project was life changing — I met a version of myself I never knew before. The plan was to come up with a title that best describes love, without actually using the word love. Hence Somewhere Between Beauty & Magic. Because love is a perfect blend of beauty and magic.”
African fusion music is currently in the middle of a takeover on UK spotify and apple music, the genre of West African pop and R&B is being referred to as afrobeats. Including Joeboy, artists such as Burna Boy and Amaarae have skyrocketed in streams in the UK and have even inspired stars like Drake, Beyonce and Diplo to integrate the genre into some of their new music.
An expert in the genre Mankaprr Conteh described the influence of African music in the UK right now, saying that the “lore of the term Afrobeats is that around 2010 there are African immigrant communities in the UK that are just turning up to a lot of music from Nigeria and Ghana and other parts of West Africa in the clubs and at parties. DJs and promoters then need a way to package and sell these events that are going to feature this popular West African music. And so the term Afrobeats is coined as a catchall for the sound.”
