IMAGE OF COVER ART
Category: Album – 14 tracks, runtime – 40 min
Genre: Hip hop
Release Date: 30.May.2025
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ – 9.1/10
Angell’s mastered her craft. In other news, planet earth is spherical. In all seriousness, point is, she can crack out a good tune as certain as she inhales & exhales. We know that, so that’s no longer the question while assessing her output. The concern then shifts to; can she make these independently solid tunes gel into a coherent whole without seeming either too safe or patchy. To examine that, it’d be fitting to have a go at this in a clustered fashion:
First we’ll interest ourselves in the playful synth-poppy lot of the project:
From game-button effects to percussive jolts, this category consisted of numbers like the opener with its dancey aura and bobby main refrain, & its followup “Try Me”, a dare tune with industrial synths that balances braggy gusto with an alluring feminine grace. And by all means, there’s no omitting “Done Did It”, an electro pop-laced lyrical celebration of crossing over the chasm from a surviving creative to a thriving star.
The album packed some Afrobeat-esque rap templates too. Numbers like “Kanguruke” stunned, and we must say support roster maestro Bushali didn’t come to play. Bro was a major vibe. In the same vein, “Kare” was an inspired inclusion, having been previously dropped as a single seven months prior.
Then you had quintessential Angell type tracks like “Flow” & “Isi” creating an interesting contrast with more artistically daring outliers like “Healing” which sets off with a melodically spasmic intro & transitions into an Easternesque combo of worldly percussion & swelly cello and sitar sounds, making quite the sound carpet for Angell’s bars and suave harmonies. Another pleasantly unforeseen combo of elements was “Higher”. And speaking of it, we have to put it out there that Boukuru takes the slot of our fav support roster artist on the project. What a force she was with those powerful vocal accentuations. They buoyed up Angell’s already-ambitious burst of styles on the joint. There you have a grand piano that initially has hints of an infantile vibe, but morphs pretty fast into a baroque pop number with sax sprinklings, blaring synth intrusions and chanty ooh’s fortified by anthemic drums. And then drop the bars in an unpredictably natural succession to the previous more earthy section. Easily our fav track on the project!
When you have joint knit with such captivating sonic acumen, you cross your fingers for an apt closer, nothing like a rough ending for a last minute bummer! Well thank goodness, she fished out a familiar banger, “Bounce”, her club rouser collab with Kivumbi King. Way to end on a peak while not letting up on the coherence she’s woven to this point! On the point of coherence, what brought Angell closest to risking it was her decision to have this many tracks. It’s not like 14 is a huge number, though it kinda is when you’re merging so many sensibilities and styles. There’s regions where you feel the coherence stretching thin. But the project’s features justify the restlessness with a fresh external charm.
Quite the debut this is, Angell, keep it up “in your corner doing you”!
