Title: “Maisha”
Category: Single
Runtime: 3 min 16s
Genre: R&B
Release Date: 05.September.2024
Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ – 6.9/10
Boy mandem of course! There’s all the familiar Mike Mungu-isms here, & Andyah is an inspired support choice. Let’s take it from there.
Mike’s blessed with some soothing pipes in his arsenal. And they do a great deal of carrying the piece, on his part. His warm thick timbre lends an appropriate stickiness to the track’s feel, given the whole closure, heartbreak angle from the go.
There’s a lyrical aptness to certain sections of the song, even more so taken in parts than as a sum. By nature, heartbreak tunes are whiny, which wouldn’t be a problem in itself since almost every subject can be harnessed successfully for inspiration. The biggie is in balancing the sustained self-occupied melancholy to curb it from getting tiring. A bit more in that regard could have been done on here.
Framed out in a “he said, she said” type of format, of the direct retelling variety, Mike and Andyah trade recollections of an ended (would-be) relationship’s trajectory. Andyah’s vocally stunning as usual. Her signature artistic moderation is on display. She knows just what & how much to give to make her contribution work. And yet she too is low-key constrained by the format. When a piece is couched in conversational pingpong, it makes it an uphill task for it to feel more like a journey and less of a conceptual loop. Yet the former tends to make for more fulfilling results. There’s that, plus it could all be a bit more melodically dynamic.
Even then, it’s a decently enjoyable number. The chemistry isn’t forced, and there’s clear complementarity within the pairing; Mike’s dense delivery meeting Andyah’s floaty vocal work halfway. And sheesh, let’s talk about that bridge. It’s one of the piece’s high points. Reminds you of the magic boy mandem can be when he’s in the zone. Setting aside a stringent evaluative lens, we’re of the view this entry could prove to be pivotal in growing Mike’s fanbase, purely from an audience infiltration standpoint. We’d love that for him, and look forward to diving into the next part of his adventurous catalog.
