I don’t know if it was the foggy morning or the overwhelming week I just had but I needed some sun in my life when I turned on my laptop last Friday. And Dan Onkar provided just the right dose of afrobeats to make me smile, “shake my tickum” and keep going.
Based in North London, the singer, songwriter and producer grew up between the British capital and Lagos, in Nigeria. Both cultural influences can strongly be felt in his third studio EP A Night Like This which features 6 tracks carefully crafted with the help of his frequent collaborators Nosa Apollo (Craig David, Ella Mai, Odunsi The Engine), FloTheProducer (Kida Kudz, Tamaraebi) and the guitarist Sonzi (Not3s, Bree Runway, Juls). Built like a late night tale inspired by love, the ’80s West African music and r&b, the project is “a lover’s experience through courtship, highlighting the longing for a person and the desire to want to stick it out with that person, the storyteller explains. I wanted to paint a full musical experience that didn’t take you to different moods or locations but centered you in that specific spot. The EP starts (‘If I Lie’) and ends (‘Want It With You’) the same way, proclaiming a love for this person, and then the body of the project, like ‘In The Morning’ and ‘Spring Water’, is where all the fun happens”.
Playful and solar, In The Morning is indeed by far my favorite track on the EP, easing you joyfully into the weekend. “It’s the song that happens after the night before, breakfast in bed, all the good stuff. This is the song I think we really went deep into the highlife inspiration”, Dan Onkar reveals to Urban Soul.
And for the record, I quite agree with him: as long as I have some love around me & great tunes like In The Morning, life is pretty good I would say! Check it out below & don’t hesitate to give a listen to his entire EP A Night Like This too!
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