"Tangerine" by Yemi Alade (feat. Selebobo)




“Tangerine”
Yemi Alade (feat. Selebobo)

I recently happened upon Yemi Alade's music (by way of losing too much time to YouTube), which instantly became the soundtrack to my summer. Yemi Alade’s music is a humid combination of Afro-Pop, Caribbean, R&B, and Dancehall, among other genres. But above all else, Yemi Alade’s music is about the beat. 

One of my favorite songs is “Tangerine” which features Selebobo (who is also responsible for producing the song). The song was released as a single on April 14, 2014 and was included on Yemi Alade’s debut album, King Of Queens, which was released October 2, 2014. (Source: wikipedia)

“Tangerine” stumbles in like Gene WIlder’s WIlly Wonka… seemingly wobbly and unstable, only to right itself into an impressive, complicated, and restless groove. The introduction itself mirrors Selebobo’s own stuttering “S-S-Selebobo on the beat” tagline. 

Synths energetically swarm around the buoyant beat like excitable hummingbirds searching for nectar. Selebobo deftly combines digital sound effects, chirps, and chimes with (what sounds like) multiple live drums. All of this instrumentation propels the song forward at an agitated pace… one must move to the fervent beat, lest you risk whiplash from the syncopated, multilayered production.

Yemi Alade is completely stunning and charming while Selebobo is disarmingly charismatic, if not a bit brazen at times. Their voices uniformly blend and harmonize flawlessly... neither one subdued by the other. Rather, Yemi and Selebobo assist each other, and the listener, to rise above the buzzy pulse of the polyrhythmic instrumentation.

To quickly sum things up, "Tangerine" is a sweet and rhapsodic 3 minute and 47 second long celebration whose main goal is to get the listener moving and dancing. I highly recommend doing so. 


-Daniel R. 


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