RADR ESSENTIALS VOL.19: BUJU, DAVOLEE, GABZY AND MORE

As the month of May is barrelling to a close artistes are releasing more good projects for listeners everywhere to enjoy. This week the Radr Team is bringing you the hottest new tracks and some books set in Africa for your enjoyment.

Outside- Buju

Buju did not come to play with his new release. The talented afro-pop star is unapologetic about his talent because he knows he can’t be replaced by just finding anybody outside.

The artiste’s crisp vocals, harmonizing talent and writing prowess come together to make this song a piece of sonic art.

Love- Davolee

Davolee, with a ton of upbeat energy, delivers this track about sharing love and encourages others to be gentle with each other. The beat is faced paced and the tune is catchy, it’s bound to get every listener dancing.

Down Low- Krosszn

This beautiful love song is soft and pleasant. Krosszn’s clear vocals combined with the sharp snares help paint a picture of tenacious love in the listeners’ minds. The artist keeps chasing his love interest but it’s proving a challenge for him. All in all the song is an enjoyable listen.

Pull up- Gabzy

Gabzy introduces this vibe with low vibrations but a snappy pace. The artist sings about an independent girl who he has fallen for. He wants her to pull up on him whenever she wants to keep him company. Its a fast-paced yet ambient tune that listeners are sure to fall in love with.

Books

The Grass Is Singing- Doris Lessing

This book is an angry yet intense post-colonial melodrama set in the empty expanse of the Southern Rhodesian (current-day Zimbabwe) countryside. It tells the story of Mary Turner, a violently unhappy wife of a British Rhodesian farmer who enters into a psycho-sexual relationship with their black servant, Moses. Her bitterness, racism, and desperation are a larger picture of relations between white colonizers and the indigenous population at the time. The vivid imagery of the book makes this a literary experience.

The Sheltering Sky -Paul Bowles

For the wanderer’s ambiguous soul, this is a must for your bookshelf. Bowles gives us Port and Kit, an unhappily married New York couple who attempt to fix their marriage on a trip to Morocco, accompanied by their strange friend Tunner. Not so much a straightforward, linear conveyance of story, this is a famously cloudy, saddening existential tale of the inability to fit into the world. Bowles takes us around Morocco as if in a dream: the cafés, the banging clanging marketplaces, the relationships with Moroccans, the loneliness and beauty of the Sahara — a visionary reading experience where readers are transported to Morocco and its hypnotizing beauty.