30. Cameroon — ‘Africa Represented’ by Salatiel

Salatiel is quite a superstar in his country, Cameroon. He has, for example, collaborated with Beyonce on a track for the soundtrack of The Lion King. That sort of star.

This album is, in general, quite good. The production is very professional, the writing very decent, and it is indeed very ‘African’ as the title implies. It is good to see something that is happy being what it is, rather than trying to be, well, what it is not. Sung mostly in English, but also in other languages, the album has a generally upbeat mood to it, and Salatiel’s voice is always the main vehicle here. There are really good, catchy tracks, like album opener ‘Ayagayo’, and then there’s some average stuff, like ‘Kilimanjaro’, which gets downgraded from a decent song to something you just want to skip thanks to an awkward rap from Pascal.

It isn’t something that maybe I will be listening to often, but it is good and a couple of tracks will stay in my head for a long time. Oh, and of course, it ends with a remix of that Beyonce collaboration.