ESSENCE.com’s “New and Next” column spotlights the brightest new talents we think you should know. This week we meet jazz and soul singer, Somi.
Somi infuses her East African roots and jazzy soul for her latest album, The Lagos Music Salon, which she recorded in Lagos, Nigeria. Why does an Illinois-bred Harlem-based singer with Rwandan and Ugandan roots choose to record an album in Nigeria? “Lagos feels like an African version of New York City,” says Somi. “The cosmopolitanism, the energy, the intellectual community, the cultural scene.”
Somi decided to call this, her fourth album, The Lagos Music Salon because “it’s sort of this room full of ideas and conversations I was having with the city, with fellow artists.”
“I wanted to celebrate that diversity and celebrate all those different influences,” she adds.
Watch Somi perform the song “Ginger Me Slowly” and let us know what you think of this amazing talent.