Big Ben’s new album, 102, is out today. The album is a collection of songs that shows the kind of conflict that Big Ben is going through as he tries to redefine a sound for himself.
The artist is wrestling with balance between his spirituality, old, new and electronic sound, daring a crossover from the youthful to the mature sound. The albums takes you via a soundscape from southern, east, west and central Africa as it borrows from various distinct genres and styles from the continent. Award nominated hit singles that kept the musician a contender for the last two years ‘Numba Numba’ and ‘Efudula’ are on the album. If their success on radio and music awards is anything to go by, the album will be a definite must have.
The name 102 (One Oh Two) is, according to Big Ben, a continuation from his award winning album, Back to the Basics, which was, in his own words “An introduction to The Basics 101” followed by “The Basics 102”.The rarest occurrence on the album is the collaboration with two distinct musicians on two different songs. Etjo Kangumine from the Ethnix fame appears on a song Mbaurua, which is about a person stuck between doing the right thing and fighting for own interests. Big Ben also invited Namibia rapper, Skrypt, on the song, Kan Nie Dood, meaning the ‘immortal’ in Afrikaans.
The album launches as part of Big Ben’s usual New Year opening concert on February 2, 2019 at the Zoo Park in Windhoek. Initially, the album is exclusively available online at Big Ben’s website online store at www.okinikini.com to promote his newly launched online music store and on about 24 major online music stores worldwide. The CD’s will be at traditional music outlets at the end of this month.
New album… Big Ben as he features on the upper sleeve of his latest album releasing tonight.Photo: Contributed