Rating: NNNN
With his 22nd album, Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour does it all. From the Fela-influenced first song, I thought he might have made an Afrobeat album. But the next has a country riff, the following hearkens back to the Muslim classicism of his Egypt album and so on.
For an artist who adopts a new style on each subsequent release but sticks with it for the entirety of that album, this within-record pan-African progression is something new. But Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take) still coheres, if only for how brightly N’Dour’s earnest voice shines and how characteristically uplifting the whole album is, down to the final shock: Wake Up (It’s Africa Calling), a sugary reunion between N’Dour and Neneh Cherry (rapping!), 13 years after they gave the world 7 Seconds.
