It was 2019 when a stylistically fluid Nigerian producer, songwriter, and vocalist named Ckay first began making waves across the spectrum of a burgeoning West African Cultural Renaissance. His debut EP, Ckay The First was a hit. The world felt like a much simpler place, and his bubbly take on a modern Afrobeats-rooted sound felt anthemic. It was pre-Covid and everything that came in tow. It was pre-all-sorts-of-bullshit that hasn’t made the world a better place in the time since. So, tracks like breakout hit, love nwantiti then breathed of a lovestruck, laid-back vibe that, alongside the sound, style, and vision of artists from Nigeria, Ghana, and beyond, helped launch the scene into a position of global influence. Three years later, that influence and creative powerhouse hasn’t slowed. Neither has Ckay, though he has certainly grown and evolved. With a refined signature, he returns with debut full-length album, Sad Romance.

 

Inescapably bathing in the limelight, Ckay – who even if you haven’t yet heard of him is an absolute superstar in Nigeria – has continued to grow as a force of pop-adjacent West African experimentalism that isn’t quite Highlife, Alté, or Afrobeats, hip-hop, R&B, or Dancehall, but something more all-encompassing of the region, the moment, and its connection to a rise of artists putting forth the sounds and vision of West Africa and folding them into a modern artsy globalism. It’s a grey area, with too much culture to absorb and roll into thirty-seven-minute debut. And yet Ckay encapsulates that something special that drew the world’s eyes to West Africa’s cultural reinvigoration a few years back – that drew ears toward love nwantiti at remarkable streaming numbers – redirecting the gaze and creative intrigue of a world starved for something positively new.

 

Breathing of its title, Sad Romance takes the sound that first brought Ckay onto the scene, and projects it through a new, more emotionally nuanced kaleidoscope. Not every song on the album is crafted to soundtrack a beach vacation or the honeymoon stage of a relationship, as felt the case with his earliest work. Instead, every song on the album acts as a piece in a larger thematic conversation surrounding love, lust, loss, and ultimate heartbreak. As well-travelled as the romantic lane is in music, Ckay does it differently. Vastly maneuvering through the stylistic spectrum of his many musical influences, the album is one that boasts the kind of depth that takes a debut album and turns it into a defining blueprint for an artist’s future. Sad Romance thrives because of it, unapologetically bringing the positive vibes of Ckay’s Afrobeats roots to the broader strokes of his indefinable reach.

 

Alongside artists like Highlife revivalist, Adekunle Gold, Alté experimentalist, Santi (Cruel Santino), British-Ghanaian wordsmith, Kojey Radical, and Beninese soulstress, Ayra Starr, Ckay is fusing the sounds of West Africa steeped in tradition with auditory aesthetics from anywhere and everywhere else to craft something new, yet oh so familiar. Sad Romance is that familiarity meeting experimentalism for a worldwide audience, reigniting the cultural flame that draws us all in.

Depth is really the starring adjective. Ckay’s prior work has always abounded with quality vocals and expected production born from the Afrobeats lineage. But Sad Romance dives deeper into his own ability as a producer, a vocalist, and more than anything, as a songwriter who can craft more than a hit, but an album-length storyline personal to him, and relatable to all of us. From the top of the project, where tracks like You, Mmadu, and Come Close – which folds in the encapsulating register of Ayra Starr – the loving energy meets an equal warmth in all the album’s beats. As such, the beginning of the album, brimming with lovestruck positivity, feels reminiscent to the Ckay we’ve always known. But, as Sad Romance pushes forward, so too does the relationship at the heart of its ongoing storyline, and Ckay’s growth as an artist in every respect.

 

Compelling relational ennui, Leave Me Alone serves as the album’s first glimpse of what Ckay self-describes as Emo-Afrobeats. It may sound silly, but its energy embodies the description; embodies, too, a certain sad-boy aesthetic that was drawn into understated mastery via Santi’s 2019 Mandy & The Jungle. Along the downside of the album’s emotional toiling, you cheated, i cheated too is a little more on the nose. Its theme, sad. Its energy, dark. Its resolution, escape. The track is ultimately much more powerful and unassuming than its obvious name might presume, detailing Ckay’s ability to songwrite with gravitas. And musically, Ckay’s vulnerability shines bright, melodically sharing the stage with his own dejected feelings.

 

That ability to convey emotion through lyricism and melody makes Ckay a wide-ranging explosion of musical prowess through the rest of the album. There are particular standouts, like the soft, saxophone-assisted duet with Ayra Starr, come close, which melds a mellow Altè beat into the essence of R&B. WATAWI – which folds in the costarring pan-African ambience of Davido, Focalistic and Abidoza – pulls Ckay’s signature into a continental club banger that will reach far beyond the one where it originates. And then there’s emiliana – Sad Romance’s leading single that is already a widespread streaming hit – and which holds truest through the album as a modern reinvention of Ckay’s pop-adjacent Afrobeats sphere.

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Sad Romance is a grand triumph not of Afrobeats, Altè, or Highlife sheen, nor of pan-African musicality, but rather as the reinvigorated global exclamation point that will return a grandiose focus to a West African Cultural Renaissance never stumbling in its rise to far-reaching influence. Ckay, who has been a central figure of the scene for years, has proven himself with the kind of debut album that redefines our understanding of musical fluidity, while simultaneously defining his own stamp.