In the midst of the rising era of the Reggae-Pop culture, when many high-profile artists Katy Perry, Sia, Justin Bieber are infusing their work with a little tinge of the genre, here is one such artist who takes the genre to its traditional roots, echoing the likes of Etta James, Sade, and Ziggy Marley.
Popular for her Afro-pop style music collection like ‘Love Song in Yoruba’ and ‘Sexy Nana’, Janelia Soul now has one more album to add to the collection – Love-Hate.
In the album, Janelia translates the deep emotions that she feels towards an inanimate object found in a relationship between a man and a woman. Every relationship has its two side affair – the good and the bad. The artist portrays this throughout her music.
While the lyrics ‘Your love is filled with so much beauty, it makes me want to cry’ represents the good side, ‘On the contrary, your love is filled with so much pain it makes me want to cry’.
We continue to see the love-hate affair throughout the lyrics –
Your love is filled with so much beauty
It makes me want to cry
On the contrary, your love is filled with so much pain
It make me want to cry
Most amazingly when I see someone fall in love
It make me want to fall even deeper
On the contrary, love will make you go crazy and do some foolish things
You made me do some foolish things
You made me do some foolish thingsOn the contrary
I love you, I hate you
I love you, I hate you
Love-hate you
All is fair in love and war
But leaving the human relationship aside, the song has much more to say than just a man-woman relationship.
The song was inspired after Janelia’s spiritual journey of self-discovery to her homeland in Nijeria, West Africa. She explains how during the excursion, she had learnt to come to peace with the love-hate relationship in her life.
According to Janelia, the woman in the song represents her while the man represents Africa.“I grew up in Nigeria and was exposed to a lot of traditional African music with heavy percussion drums. It was the singing and dancing with the elders at the many festivals during my childhood that made me fall in love with music and decided I wanted to become an artist.”
Her approach to Reggae music and Pop culture very much speaks of dynamic background which she belongs to. The video opens with a very colorful visual, which pulls the curtain open to the other diverse elements.
Janelia vividly portrays all those little things that we tend to experience in a relationship whether it is our love for the homeland or the love for someone. But despite the love and the hate, all seems to fair in an affair, because it’s the feeling that talks in the end. The emotion that takes us back to our roots.
Janelia’s choice of Reggae music with Pop, emphasizes her portrayal of the human relation intensely.
What Sets Janelia’s Love-Hate Album from the Rest?
The Call of the roots. Compared to the other artists, her song will reveal that the artist is a staple of the African interdependent scene.
For more information, you can visit her website or follow her on the following social media platforms –
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