Who: Lami Phillips, soul singer hogging your TV screens with the videos for ‘Nuttin Do You’, and ‘You Know’, a duet with M.I.; both taken off her debut album ‘Intuition’.
Sounds Like: A neo-soul mash-up of Sade Adu, Floetry, and Jill Scott, with a little more naija jump. “ I’m very Barbara Streisnad meets India Arie, my friends say I’m too deep, but I can’t help it, I’m not going out of my way to be deep its just how God made me and neo-soul always keys into the inner core of things.”
First Shots: Lami released her debut album ‘Intuition’, which was, for most parts, an insular burp, in but her new videos have shined the spotlights on the LP, showing it as the work of art it actually is. ‘Intuition’ boasts six tracks that flit between neo, soul, hip-hop and R and B, to create a very listenable album, shame on you if you haven’t listened to it.
She Gets Around: Her debut album testifies to her genre-jumping tendencies; ‘Intuition’ is a pot-pourri of sounds: a mish-mash of R and B, Pop, Soul, Neo, Naija, and a dash of hip-hop; a veritable heady mix. This is a result of her many influences. “My musical influences are global, I don’t listen to a certain type or genre or artiste, from Jay Z to MusiqSoulchild to Tracy Chapman; so when I’m writing all those sounds and influences are fused together and it comes out however it does”
No More No Vernacular: When I was recording, I had a lot of pressure to do with language; some people said ‘if the song doesn’t have pidgin in it, it wont sell, if its not done in vernacular, it wont sell; but I just made feel-good music and left it at that, letting the situation dictate the feel of the songs. so there are some songs with no Nigerian influence, but I’m Nigerian and I’m proud to be one.
Come As You Are: By her own admission, she doesn’t have any laid out formula for deciding what to write, record or put out. A lot of the time, she works by ear, and likes to wing it, letting the creative juices flow as they may. “My music doesn’t have any calculation or formula to what I’m doing, I do, or more appropriately, I sing what I feel. Like the song ‘Know’, off the first album, MI asked me what I would say in Yoruba to my husband or lover and I said, “erm…my mum always says olowo ori m”i and that’s how that part of the song came about, but I won’t have sat done there thinking or calculating what to put in, it has to flow at its own pace.”
Greatest Album Never Heard (yet): Lami plans to release a live album sometime in the future, which according to her will best showcase her talents; she plans to release the live effort because, as we know, its one thing to release, its another thing entirely for the market to receive it. “I actually wanted to do my whole album live but it occurred to me that in Nigeria, one might need a whole year to put it together. It is possible to do the live album, but too many things have to come into play for that to work, like the musicians I worked with before, they don’t live here in Nigeria, so when its live, you need people who can read your mind, musically, and know where you’re going. I was trained to perform live but the people I trained with are all outside the country, so when I do my live album, I’ll have to do it outside the country, or I have to bring them here ‘cos they read my mind and u need that to kick it off.”
Lami’s debut album, ‘Intuition’ , is in stores now.
