Album Review: Lady Donli’s ‘Pan African Rockstar’
Lady Donli is a maverick in every ramification of the word. The Nigerian singer-songwriter blends a rich tapestry of highlife, indie rock, rhythm & blues, with Afrobeat sonics. In the past twelve years, Donli has worked incredibly hard to build her catalog, deriving a cult following along the road.
However, in these twelve years, she has unwaveringly struggled to resonate with the mainstream audience. Despite her fervent efforts to break through as an independent recording artist, Donli somehow falls short of the industry’s standard of a “hit-maker.” Instead, she caters to the taste buds of an alternative demographic of listeners who appreciate the quality of music she makes.
Pan African Rockstar: Lady Donli’s Sophomore Triumph
“Pan African Rockstar” is Lady Donli’s sophomore body of work, and it is arguably her most empowering and most vulnerable oeuvre. The album provides Lady Donli with an avenue to explicitly talk about personal struggles using thematic expressions such as Love, Insecurity, Anxiety, and Fear (the latter mostly triggered by the uncertainty of a prosperous future in music).
Although “Pan African Rockstar” is designed to reflect Donli’s empowering braggadocio, which it does, it also reveals an underlying angst channeled through a series of cuss words, hisses, and feisty pro-feminist indie anthems—anthems that splatter through the body of work like acrylic paintings on a plain surface.
On the twelve-track record, Donli seems to have had her fill with certain narcissistic gatekeepers and self-proclaimed music gurus who revel in having all the right answers and templates for a successful music career. She is a rebel with a cause and would rather navigate the narrow road using her map, displaying the inherent qualities of a quintessential rockstar.
The Sonic Revolution: Lady Donli’s Arsenal
Through the strongest of weapons – Music, Lady Donli fastens her armory, and virtually no one is safe from her lethal sonic missiles as she fires on with energetic dogma while throwing concentric jabs at anyone whom she deems deserving, sparing no one, including her country’s President (‘Nothing 2 Something,’ featuring Obongjayar).
Donli calls out the utter bad governance in Nigeria and even goes as far as using herself as a case study of the ripple effect. Lady Donli is as raw as it gets, and her sheer honesty on the project is an indication that she takes her art seriously. Donli doesn’t try to paint a façade to suit a misconstrued narrative of a superstar. Perhaps, it is her self-awareness that allows her to deploy a non-tolerance to conformity, as she seems to have found posterity in knowing who she is and makes this known through bops like ‘The Bad Ones’ – a sonic hybrid of metal rock and Afro rhythms that celebrates self-acceptance.
Clearly, Lady Donli is a Pan-African badass who has refused to accept the cards life brings. She steers on amid a whirlwind of uncertainties and frustrations that should naturally break her willpower; instead, it ignites.
In summary, Lady Donli’s Pan-African Rockstar is one of the year’s most sonically daring oeuvre by an African recording artist. A riveting and complete body of work from start to finish. Take a bow, Lady Donli.
