I didnt think ppl still making music like this thank you for proving me wrong

💙💙🔥☝️💯💋💏👫💯☝️🔥💙💙

Wow excellent keep doing what you doing! The detours are following you you’re creating the path

Piece of Me

Thank You

Joy & Pain

Detour Ahead

Detour Ahead (Reimagined)

Stream/Buy: https://lnk.to/waynesnow-figurine

Out September 24th via @rochemusique 

There’s nothing cold about the music of WAYNE SNOW. The Nigerian-born neo-soul artist has been channeling the sun-kissed, soulful vibes of his homeland ever since his first encounter with a synthesizer as a child. Now Berlin-based, Snow has been spreading warmth and his unique creative vision across the globe together with Roche Musique and highly acclaimed collaborations with FKJ, Folamour, Darius, Max Graef and Glenn Astro. And now he stands ready to release Figurine, his most ambitious solo project yet.  

Across it’s ten tracks, Snow deftly weaves neo-soul, alternative pop, R&B, soultronica, and hints of jazz into a mesmerizing stew. His music is studied and stylish, quiet passages of calm giving way to vivid bursts of energy and colour. Produced together with Crayon, Nu Guinea, Brandt Brauer Frick and featuring acclaimed future-jazz artist Oscar Jerome, Snow employs a delightful array of neat details and flourishes that highlight his compositional brilliance. 

Four years in the making, Figurine is a conceptual, personal work of depth and reflection, one that critically considers humanity’s obsession with masks and our creation of avatars. Inspired as much by nature and the work of social psychologist Erich Fromm, as the music of Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade, Figurine is not a full stop. Rather, it’s an invitation – to think, to probe, and to sink into Snow’s bright, storied music. 

It’s a record based around a simple question - “Who is the real you?” – and led Snow to explore rebirth, individuality, and our unhealthy obsession with social media. Love and our increasing sense of alienation are deconstructed, as is the reality of modern day relationships. And intertwined with all this is Snow’s Nigerian heritage, and the deep sense of pride and admiration he feels towards his country of birth. 

Figurine’s visual identity have been crafted by the album’s Art / Video Director Travys Owen, a collaboration in every sense with another truly visionary artist. The tightly knit creative team was lead by the award winning producer Allison Swank, recent winner of the IMDB Independent Shorts Awards, known for her work with the likes of The Roots, Flying Lotus, Erykah Badu, Mumford & Sons and Burnaboy. Shot across  Tankwa Karoo National Park, Johannesburg and Cape Town, the accompanying videos pay homage to Afrofuturism and the vibrancy and beauty of his homeland. Contemporarily styled, figurines dance through otherworldly, colourful landscapes, exploring relationships, both to each other and to nature. The sense of life -of vitality – is palpable; his music, and the message it conveys, is equally as alive. 

Following a string of singles which received critical acclaim from NPR Music, The Evening Standard, Vogue, BBC Radio 1 + 6 Music, Le Monde, Clash, The Vinyl Factory, Notion, Afropunk and L’Obs amongst many others, Wayne recently stepped up to the COLORS stage to deliver a breath taking live performance of the album title track.

Magnetic feat. Oscar Jerome (Roche Musique)

We Can

RISE

Knockin

Knockin (feat. George Porter Jr., Ian Neville & Ivan Neville)

Elevating

Collage 2

Moonlight (Live at The Pool)

Stay Away (From Me)

Stay Away (From Me) (Live)

Terrace Martin - Oblivion (feat. Malaya)

Although Charles may be new to some, she has held a long spanning relationship with music that goes back to girlhood. She was raised by a Haitian mother in Brooklyn where the sound waves in their home was filled with artists like Johnny Hodges, Frank Sinatra, Chaka Khan, and Nat King Cole. She attended the famed arts high school, LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts where she studied flute and vocals. Her early life was full of stage performances; as a kid she participated in musical theater, pageants, and talent shows in New York City. Eventually, she landed at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School for college where she met artists like alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and others. Perhaps better known as a singer, Charles has earned her title as a bonefide flutist. Her playing adds vibrant swaths of color and emotional texture to her music.

The album opens with a breathtaking rendition of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.” This song, and the album overall, flexes Charles’ impressive arrangement skills. The song features a powerful group of musicians—Benjamin Julia on electric guitar, Dezron Douglas on upright bass, Anwar Marshall on drums, Shedrick Mitchell on organ, and Tayzaro on cello. On flute and vocals, Charles floats above the soulful current of the band, singing the song over a dramatic blanket of electronic sound. The lyrics ring with equal power as the music. When Charles sings the lines “Yes, the strong get more/While the weak ones fade,” the connection to black women’s struggle is palpable. “My experience moving in the world as a black girl has always been, I have to be strong. I have to keep it together; I have to sort of live up to the standard,” says Charles.

At its core, Y’all Don’t (Really) Care is a clarion call for a more intersectional vision of the world in which black women can live more freely. The interlude “Pay Black Women” offers the most explicit instruction on some of the ways that care can be expressed. It contains a sample from a film project produced by Charles in 2021 entitled Love Letter to Black Jazz Girls.  Through the voices of three black women, the track draws attention to the racial gender wage gap but also to the treatment of black women artistic producers more broadly.

Detour Ahead (Reimagined)

Melanie Charles is D'flower

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