Africa She Likes

Mr Eazi's "Africa She Likes" carries the relaxed confidence of an artist entirely at home in his own aesthetic — the production floats on a bed of mid-tempo Afropop guitar that has the looseness of live performance even when it's clearly crafted, supported by percussion with a warm, organic thud and bass that hums rather than drives. The arrangement has a sunset quality, something unhurried and golden that makes the temporal world feel negotiable. Eazi's vocal style is central to what makes the song work: his delivery is conversational and slightly sleepy in the best sense, as if the melody is something he discovered while speaking rather than something he rehearsed. He inhabits the gap between singing and talking with the ease of someone like early Drake or a Continental West African Fela descendant. The lyrical premise is playful and specific — cataloguing the qualities of a woman who carries her African identity with pride and beauty — and the specificity is what saves it from cliché. This is the sound that Mr Eazi was refining during his Banku Music period, fusing Ghanaian and Nigerian sensibilities with a kind of easygoing romanticism. It suits a slow late afternoon, a road trip through somewhere warm, or any moment where the right mood is appreciation rather than urgency.