After working on his debut EP titled Rare Gem for three years, Ninety is finally ready for the world to hear his first body of work. Released under the banner of Freeme Music, the 7-track project deftly weaves distinct, vibrant sounds and genres together and makes them into New Wave Music, a term that best describes Ninety’s fresh, avant-garde sound.
Rare Gem opens with Hold My Side; a beautiful groovy plea to his lady. Ninety smoothly blends his sweet vocals with jazzy tones on the next song called Buttercup and rides the exhilarating Amapiano drum beat in Kiss and Tell. He continues to show his unmistakable talent and versatility on Maintaining Beauty; reminiscent of Bollywood music, and his lead single Diamonds, which is almost orchestral with strings. The EP closes with Wants & Needs which cements his place in the music scene.
Talking to Culture Custodian about Rare Gem, he says,
They talk about 7 different female characters in Nigeria. I tried my best to narrow them down to 7. It talks about the hustlers, the clingy ones, the one who wants to get married, the one who wants to look beautiful and it’s like the 8th character is a rare gem. People hear it and think I am calling myself a rare gem. That is how it started because when people hear my song they say, “Oh, it’s unique, you are rare.” That’s the most feedback I get from people. It’s just something that came up. Honestly, I didn’t like the name for that reason because I felt there was no way to explain why I’m calling my project Rare Gem without sounding cocky or proud so I decided to make songs with the first narrative I mentioned (7 different characters to summarise the whole character traits Nigerian women have) but then the 8th one is like the most scarce. It’s like a combination of everything together.