Bella Alubo’s music is a searing depiction of a heart besieged in love.
Bella Alubo’s reputation as a soulful musician has never been in doubt. For close to a decade, she’s created music at the intersection of Afrobeats and deeper lying genres such as R&B and soul. On her latest album, Love Is War, the Nigerian singer-songwriter gives unprecedented focus to these stirrings, crafting a body of work that stands among the most focused LPs of the year.
According to Alubo, it was the independent urges of inspiration that took her down the album path. “Initially, I was working on singles,” she says in conversation with OkayAfrica, “...and down the line, we decided to work on a project. Intentionally, we… said we were working on a project earlier this year.”
The artist had put out an EP titled Love Is… last year. Knowing she’d want to create a sequel to the narrative suggestion in that title, Alubo and her team tinkered with numerous versions before settling on Love Is War. “People like when I make love songs,” Alubo explains. “We started working on the album in London just before the summer started.”
There’s a subtle intentionality that flows across the 15 songs on Love Is War. Alubo’s understanding of emotional nuances is evident in her songwriting. From the exhilarating opener “Oxygen,” where she bemoans the inevitable failure of an affair, to the even more pessimistic “Hear Me Out,” we’re brought into the battlefield of love with cool precision. Records like “Loving You Is A War” further vivify the focal point of the album, while songs like “Fancy Lady” uphold Alubo’s own individuality, recognizing the self as the source of all magic.
Early on the album when she sings “you’re like a wave that I should not ride / still you’re crashing into me,” there’s no doubt that Love Is War will explore the heated arena of conflicting desires. But as we surge further into the album, we hear a sophisticated woman who’s able to be so much more than just a yearner for unceasing devotion. The features provide a counter-perspective to Alubo’s musings as the trio of Ycee, 1Da Banton, and Rotimi expand on the subject of war-like love.
“Yeah, love is worth it, but there’s a lot of fighting, a lot of tension,” Alubo says. “I believe in destiny, and I believe in true love. And I believe that everybody has their true love, and anyone who’s not with their true love is going to feel like an obstacle to the path of love. So I feel like the theme of Love is War… any human being… would be able to relate to. Because that means, apart from your person, every other love is going to go wrong”.
Sonic-wise, Alubo wanted to stay true to her primal instincts while keeping in touch with modern sounds. There’s a touch of log drums on several songs from the project, like “Rush” and “Don’t You Worry,” grounding their dreamy-eyed songwriting with the percussive heft of Afro elements.
“I love when people question the evolution of genres because it’s something that really interests me,” she says. “One time, I went to look at the origin of genres, and there’s this diagram that kind of looks like a family tree. The thing about music is that we continue to reflect each other, and it didn’t just start now; it started way before. Even like with slavery, Black people being moved from Africa to elsewhere, and then fusing their music with that country’s sound. If you listen to something like reggae, with the storytelling and the chords, you’ll see that there’s a similarity with country music. And that spirit is found in highlife, which is in Ghana, and Ghana has that reggae-ish sound. And then highlife to Afrobeat is just so simple… I feel like when we strip down music to just instrumentation, most genres are connected.”
Bella Alubo showcases a poignant sense of self and relationships on ‘Love Is War’
Photo by Bella Alubo/Benin City
Alubo grew up in the artistic city of Jos, with parents who were revered academics. Spurred into creation by the laidback nature of the north-central Nigerian city, Alubo began writing short stories at six, and went on from there.
“It’s that kind of town that is very small, very chill, there’s a lot of nature, there isn’t much city stuff going on, so I feel like it put me in that state of mind to be creative,” she says. “Because all my siblings were in boarding school and I’m the last child, I was always daydreaming and imagining, so I think that’s why I started with stories and poetry, because I just would go in my head and think about scenarios or dial into my feelings and expand on them.”
Alubo’s father was also a notable influence. He schooled partly in Missouri, in the United States, and would play a lot of American classics on his vinyl record player. From jazz to country and South African music, Alubo would hear a lot of Brenda Fassie; the rhythms of her early life glowed with variety. Her mother liked humming, and her unique Idoma intonation (her family is originally from Benue State) gave a striking poignance to her melodies. “I was exposed to every single kind of music you can imagine,” she says.
That variety of inspirations can be seen in the art of Bella Alubo. From getting signed to the hip-hop adjacent Tinny Entertainment label in 2016 and putting out the Re-Bella project, she’s occupied a distinct position as one of the most mainstream-leaning artists that could otherwise be considered alté. During the alté movement’s peak later that decade, Bella was readily grouped with artists like Lady Donli and Amaarae, although her artistic strengths were more present in the emotional landscapes she built on projects like Summer’s Over and Bella Buffet, her 2021 debut album, which featured heavy hitters such as Ice Prince and Niniola. And since then, she’s never looked back, confident in the trajectory of her life and career.
Alubo has been playing the long game. She’s not too anxious about reaching popstar acclaim because music has always been there. Asked about what success means to her, she’s typically illuminating in her response. “Success as a musician to me is something that I’m still defining, because as an artist, there’s that temptation to not be satisfied. You just want to keep going and keep going, so I would really like to see if there’s a point where I would feel accomplished,” she says.
“But where I’m at now is a place where I once dreamed about. There was one time I was wondering if I would even have up to one million streams, now I have probably over forty million streams. And so success to me as an artist is something that always redefines itself. Right now, I think it’s just for as many people to listen to my music as possible, and as many people connect to my art as possible.”
