A year after dishing out a brilliant debut project in his EP Nungua diaries, Ghanaian artist J.Derobie follows it with his debut album. J gained a lot of admiration and followers after his breakout year with his song Poverty. Since then, he has faced constant scrutiny from music lovers. After a break from music, he makes a comeback with his project “Grains From Love and Reality”.
The road to his album kicked off with the release of his song Ato Me So in April of this year. The song tells a story of the overwhelming beauty and love of a woman. He would follow this up with a dancehall song, Bruk Off, and Adwoa featuring Joeboy, before the album itself. The 12-track album features Mr. Eazi, Joeboy, and Kranium. It also has production credits from Kel P, Killertunes, MOG Beatz, Uglyonit, BeatsbyKO, and Yung D3mz.
J Derobie’s New Album Tracklist
The album’s themes dangle between his perspectives on love and lust. As talented as J.Derobie is, this writer feels the artiste is still finding his feet in this industry by trying to figure out the direction he wants to take with his music. He has said on different platforms that he is first an afrobeat artiste before the dancehall. It just happened that his first breakthrough song happened to be a dancehall song.
As such, it is my opinion that this album gave him the platform to show more of his singing abilities without totally relegating his dancehall side, which won him a lot of love and affection. As far as writing goes, J.Derobie wrote his truth and reality of this thing called love. The pain, joy, and pleasures that come with being in love.
The album kicks off on a painful note with the song Dawgment. For a star in his rights, one would assume finding love would be easy. However, that does not seem to be the case in J’s situation. He talks about how he struggles to get the attention of a girl he sees his future with but has failed on countless occasions.
When he does get the opportunity to tell her how he feels, she brushes him off. “She nor dey do person wey nor get motor and money.” Even after facing rejection in track one, he still continues to talk about being overwhelmed by this girl’s appearance and her antics, which always leave him speechless.
The next songs are Ato Me So, Adwoa, Let Me, and Continous Love. Here, he takes on this fairy tale affair that carries us through the stages of finding love. Moving from being unnoticed to giving a guide on falling in love is a very funny transition, but I agree that this is how most of us go about finding love. Actions and love going unnoticed make for good character development, which J.Derobie goes through in this album.
His taste in women moves from calm and collected to wanting women with different attitudes. At one point, he goes from being a love-filled person to wanting a baddie by his side to wanting an island girl.
In All Night, Island Girl, Continous Love, and Badda, we see the bad boy Derobie. He taps into his inner baddie, which draws out the lust in him. Love and lust always go hand in hand. If you cannot find love, you can always find lust.
Unfortunately, that is the story of a lot of people around. They chase after love and when they end up not getting it, they settle for lust. Even when they do find love, it comes with the pleasures of sex and intimacy like a care package.
In Shokor with Mr. Eazi, J asks for a timeout. It seems like both lover boy and bad boy are getting drained on all fronts (sexually, emotionally, and financially). You cannot even blame him because we all reach our breaking points at certain points.
At this point, I believe he might be a little bit confused. One moment, he was asking for a break, but now he says he won’t give up and goes as far as requiring a quick response when he calls. It comes off as a bit manipulative and indecisive, but that comes with being human. It’s the reason why people go back to the very people who hurt them. Moreover, it’s better to stay with the love you understand than go for something entirely different and uncertain.
The latter parts of the album see J.Derobie revert to dancehall with songs like Badda, Island Girls, Bruk Off, Continous Love, and One Love. I applaud the texture of his voice when he switches to dancehall. Whether it is a rough ragga style like on Bruk Off or the intimate, laid-back lover boy in Island Girl, J is always bossing it. Despite the pleasures and excitement that come with both love and lust, there are times that you want to take a break from it all because, believe it or not, both love and lust can become a bit too much.
The album’s execution is brilliant on a lot of fronts (production, vocals, mixing, and theme). However, some songs share the same content as well as the recurring similarity in the vocals of J.Derobie, and Mr. Eazi. A good number of songs on the album can be attributed to Mr. Eazi which I find very troubling.
