Nyinée, a Nigerian singer on the rise, just released her new song called “Tolotolo.” A song about a sweet, loving, and clearly romantic kind of love. The song comes off as a tune of a love relationship, with soft touches, longing looks, and lighthearted teasing. The joyful and culturally rich word "Tolotolo" fits the mood of the song perfectly. In many social situations in Nigeria, people...

Sophia Mengrosso’s new album, “Unforgiven”, doesn’t so much start as it does detonate, a thirteen-song treatise on survival. Her voice, a thing clearly trained for gilded halls and velvet curtains, instead wails from within a foundry’s clang and fire. The result is a bizarre and beautiful collision, the sonic equivalent of discovering a lost Caravaggio painting lit by a flickering fluorescent tube in a...