Maya Amolo has Left the Pregame and is Exploring Love in Debut Album, "Asali"
Are you ready to party? Because the pregame is over and we’re hitting the streets. Maya Amolo’s debut album “Asali”, is a departure from what her fans have come to know her for. The sad ballads have been replaced with happy and hopeful representations of her life. In this album Maya takes the listener through her story of true love and contentment. Catchy melodies and captivating productions fully weave us into the honest retelling of the young artist’s new feelings.
Maya Amolo captured by Mumbi Muturi
Maya has created a body of work that does well to demonstrate her growth as an artist. Her vocal performance while light and airy commands attention with its enchanting ability to float and bend around her melodies. Her storytelling demands recognition too. Using catchy, memorable lyrics she allows her audience to be fully engulfed in her story creating a sense of familiarity between her and the listener, as though she is simply gabbing with her girlfriends.
“Asali '' was mainly produced by Kenyan producer/rapper/mix-master engineer Lukorito, and Nigerian producer and artist SirBastien. Throughout this album you will find yourself lost in Lukorito’s classic delayed bass, and warm melodies, and SirBastien's complex instrumentals, with every song pulling its listener deeper into Maya’s world.
I sat down with Maya to talk about her journey and process of creating “Asali” over the last two years, and what this debut album really means to her.
Who is Maya Amolo? How do you define yourself as an artist?
I don't know how I would define myself as an artist. I feel like it's very hard for me to express myself and just say, “This is who I am.”
So I try through different ways, what I wear, how I perform, to kind of give people an idea. But lately as an artist, [I’d define myself as] definitely happier, curious, more experimental, and more confident in my feelings. And I try to reflect that in my music. I think if you wanna have an idea of who I am, just listen to the music.
Why do you find it difficult to define yourself in words?
Oh my goodness. It's like therapy. I don't know that myself or people around me have really established a culture of talking about themselves and their achievements and their accomplishments. I think that's why it's so hard to write a CV or write an artist bio, or talk about yourself in a job interview just because you haven't established a culture of being like, “I'm her, I'm that bitch, or this is who I'm about.”
Also because it's always evolving. Even if I did establish [who I am] two years ago when I released my first project, the answer is different now.
In an interview you mentioned previously feeling restricted to writing your best music when you were sad, but later recognised it was simply you being honest with yourself. This is something often felt by many creatives. Why do you think that is?
I think I just thought it was very cool to be very angsty. It seemed to be what people were relating to.
It's like scrolling through Twitter. There's so many negative tweets, people talking negatively about themselves or what they're feeling, that gets so much interaction. It's a collective sadness or wallowing, people want to hear that more and want to relate to that more.
But after some time I realised that that isn't necessarily true. It's more so honesty. And once I realised that, and as soon as I changed my mindset, I started to see all the positive tweets. I started to see like all the hot girls, all the happy girls online talking about how great life is.
So I realised it wasn't the sadness that connected with people. It was the honesty that came through and now I'm honestly happy and I'm honestly in love. And people are going to hear that and connect with it.
Where did that shift come from? In creating this album, you mentioned that it was you leaving the pregame. What do you think shifted and helped you realise that you were ready to party?
The turning point now that I think about it was a feature I did for a producer that worked on the album and also a good friend of mine, SirBastien. The song is called “Cosmic Girl'' from his project, “Mango Island”. It was such a pretty song. It was so beautiful and so “spacey” and mystical. And then I started working with him a bit more and he sent me all these beats that were just so full of joy. So just by the strength of his music I was kind of forced to be in a happier space. I couldn’t write sad lyrics to the music that he was sending me. And more recently when I got back into album mode, I had just graduated, and my community changed.
I ran into a really amazing group of people. And my relationship was bringing me a lot of joy. I just found myself being happier and happier. So I left that space where I felt like I needed to stay at the pregame. Enough is enough. We're outside. We're at the club. We're in the streets.
Maya Amolo captured by Mumbi Muturi
What was your creative process bringing this album together like? Where did you start and where did you finish? Did you know it was going to be a full album when you started?
No, I didn't. I think the first song that I recorded was “Fuego”. I remember I was listening to a lot of Bossa Nova and I was telling Sebastian, I wanna do an R&B, Afro-R&B, Bossa Nova type beat. And so he sent that beat to me. Then he also sent me the music for “Asali” and later the music for “Like That”. But then at that point, like two years ago, I wasn't really in album mode. So I recorded demos and just shelved them.
And then when I started wanting to get back into writing, I was working with a producer who I will not name because he does not need to be on this platform. He was pushing me into a box that was not my thing. I became very discouraged and wondered when was i was going to be able to realise the full album? “Should I just release the demos on SoundCloud? What should I do?” Then when I met Lukorito, who produced the rest of the songs on the album, with the exception of “About Time”, we recorded “Foundry”. That was the first song I recorded with Lukorito.
The last song that I recorded was “Hse. No 6 - Freestyle”. In it I talk about love for another person. In many of the songs I talk about self love, and I wanted to have one song where I talk about love for my community and the space that I was in. So that's where the freestyle “Hse. No. 6”, came from.
So I didn't know there was gonna be an album until the last quarter of last year. But then everything just kind of came together in a really cool way.
What is it like bringing together this whole album? You've said it's been two years, what is happening in that time and are you working on it every day, once a week?
Well there was a lot happening. I released my first project in 2020, but it was very hectic because that was also the height of Covid. So, as an artist, I released my first project and I couldn’t perform it, and I was like, “Do I even make a new album? Do I just wait until everything cools down and perform my EP?” I was also in school, I came home from New York and then I took classes online. And the time zone just beat my ass. Like I was up at 2:00 AM taking classes so there wasn't really much room for me to think about doing music. So I think what changed was I graduated, that was in March of 2021. And now I was in a space to go to the studio every single day. I was able to sleep at the studio and be around artists all the time and have my whole head space be about releasing this project. So it was on and off.
In the process of creating this album, what inspired you in terms of your writing and composition of melodies? What had you been listening to that led to the songs you’ve put out?
My most listened to album in 2021 was “The Angel You Don’t Know”, by Amaarae, which inspired me a lot. I was also inspired by the first song by Tems I heard, which was “Damages”. I really like the way she writes, she has a very melodic but also rhythmic writing style that I really appreciate. And I was listening to quite a bit of melodies inspired by old R&B, and neo soul.
Did you start off as a writer or first as a singer?
First as a singer! My writing back then was not good. So definitely first as a singer. When I first started writing my own lyrics, and this is probably why my first album was so sad, I was listening to a lot of PartyNextDoor and Jhene Aiko. Like that was the space that I was in. Before then, I would just sing covers. Like I was not a good writer back in days.
How have you been able to improve your writing over time? We're here with a whole album, which we can all appreciate. So there's definitely been Growth!
So initially I would just sing covers of songs. But then I started doing this thing where I'd sing the original verse of the song and then I thought “Let me try right verse two.”.
I already kind of have the subject matter chosen for me. And I know what the hook is and I know what verse one is, so I just have to fill in this verse two. So I did that very often. I think that was the first thing I put out on SoundCloud. Do not go and listen to it. It was a remix of “Come and See Me” by PartyNextDoor and Drake.
Eventually I realised I've done this enough times. Let me now, Google a “type beat” on YouTube and like to write my own song from beginning to end. It started very slowly, just bits and pieces.
Maya Amolo captured by Mumbi Muturi
What's a top five favourite song of yours that you've created and why? And if it’s not from Asali how does it contrast with the music you’ve created now?
“Foundry” is one of my favourite pieces of work I have ever created. Lately I've been listening to “Hse No.6” quite a bit. I had lots of fun writing that, it was just free styling. Right now those are among my top five. If I say top 10, that's just the whole album.
Speaking of “Foundry”, what was the process of making that song? It’s one of my favourites off the album as well.
Well, I had been pestering Lukorito, like I was roasting him. I was like “You’ve never made a Maya Amolo type beat.” So the song, funnily enough, was about to be sad. The hook stayed the same, but the verse was about to be sad, and I was like, “No, no, no, no, no!”..
The music just carried me. I was talking about resisting feelings, but then also giving into feelings. It came about so organically, I can't even tell you what that process was like. I think I wrote it within an hour, and we recorded it within an hour. Kalibwani put his verse down and then in four hours the song was complete.
This album’s production was brought about by Lukorito and SirBastien, what about each of their work compelled you to work with them?
For SirBastien, he's just brilliant. If you go to his page, you see him create, he does these collaborations with artists where he creates a song in like a minute, I don't know how. Anyway, it's really cool. He has a lot of fun with instruments, and I like the way his mind works.
With Lukorito, what I really love about Luko is he’s a genius. People are always like, we feel so much depth and the music is so rich, but there's not so much going on. Like with “Foundry”, they're like, I love this song. There are very few elements, but the song is perfect.
And he does this brilliant delayed bass and the way he likes to use drums. They're both just geniuses.I'm very grateful to work with them.
Many of the songs off “Asali” have you listed as a producer under the credits - are you in the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) adding in beats? What does production look like for you?
For me it's more so sequencing. So the beat will already have all these elements and I'll be like, “I wanna take this melody and not have it in the chorus, have it in the outro or take this and put it over here.” So it's like they do most of the work and then I will come at the end and be bossy and tell them how I want it to be arranged.
Maya Amolo captured by Mumbi Muturi
Do you think you would ever want to go into producing your own music?
I do want to go into producing my own music, but there's also so many incredible producers that I still want to work with. So I think for a while I'll be working with a producer, maybe co-producing, like my last project.
I do play some instruments, so I think once I've worked with all the producers I want to work with, I'll see if I want to produce my own things. Part of why I like making music so much is also the opportunity to collaborate. That's how I met all these incredible people. If I was producing my own music, there would be less of that opportunity to collaborate.
You've been doing music in the public space for about 6 years now, what keeps you going?
I love to sing. I love to write. I mean, initially it was hard. I think more recently I like the community that being an artist in East Africa has given me. Before that really wasn't the case. You work really hard and you can't really tell if it's getting anywhere, and then someone is like, “Oh my gosh, I was up at 3:00 AM cleaning my room, listening to your music”. It's a really cool way of building connections, while being honest. And I just have so much fun.
So you’ve just finished an album, but I wanted to know what you have been working on lately? Do you take a break, or you onto the next thing?
Now, all the projects I'm working on are related to the album, so I wanna put out a couple more visuals. I wanna do a couple live shows, and then I want to go on vacation for a while. And then there's always something new that I'm working on. Before I finished I was like,”I'm gonna make this album and then I'm done and then I’ll take a month break.” But that never happens. I'm too inspired by the music that people send me and all the people around me.
