Lady Donli has had a long time to savor the fame her acclaimed debut album, Enjoy Your Life, afforded her. Coasting on her relevance as an experimental Afrobeats star, she returns this month with a two-part single, Rockstar Parole, a slinky two-piece primed with formidable feelings influenced by her fascination with early millennium Afrobeat sounds.
The opener, Rockstar, produced by longtime collaborator and band member, Kingsley Okorie of The Cavemen, plays like a dream considering its easiness and the nostalgia it brings about with its bounciness, but its logic is sound, story, and sass, all of which Lady Donli provides in abundance.
Parole fits like a perfect appendage. It follows the confidence brimming in Lady Donli on Rockstar. She’s a fierce lover but said fierceness isn’t restricted to the weight of her feelings but her attitude. JMS’s throwback percussions that sounds very much like early P-Square, are the perfect backdrop for Donli to articulate her otherwordly characteristics.
Rockstar Parole is welcome for its familiarity but much more for Lady Donli’s comeback tainted in evolution.