FYC: Best Global Music Album

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“AT THE END OF THE DOOR” opens ‘ALKEBULAN III: The Water Remembers’ at a moment of profound separation. It draws inspiration from the journey toward the Door of No Return, imagining the fear, anguish, and uncertainty experienced by Africans being taken from their homeland during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The Kabusa Oriental Choir represents the voices of Matt B’s ancestors, establishing an ancestral presence that guides the story throughout the album. The song serves as the album’s emotional starting point: a door intended to mark permanent separation from home, culture, and identity.

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“NOTHING DEY PA,” featuring Skales, is a celebration of resilience, confidence, and finding joy despite life’s challenges. Inspired by the “no wahala” spirit Matt B encountered throughout his travels in West Africa, the song reflects the idea that hardship does not have to dictate how you live. Rooted in faith and self-belief, it shifts the album from reflection into movement and celebration, showing that resilience is not only about surviving. It is also about continuing to live fully, laugh, dance, and move forward.

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“IRI JI,” featuring Boy Spyce, is inspired by the Igbo New Yam Festival, an annual tradition celebrating the harvest and the beginning of a new season. Rooted in themes of gratitude, abundance, and community, the song celebrates the traditions that have been preserved and passed down through generations of Igbo people.

Within ALKEBULAN III, “IRI JI” represents a return to the culture and customs that existed long before displacement, reconnecting Matt B with traditions that are part of his own ancestral heritage.

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“OVERBOARD,” featuring Kabusa Oriental Choir, explores the resistance of Africans during the Middle Passage, including accounts of those who chose to jump overboard from slave ships rather than submit to a life of enslavement.

The song reframes those moments not simply as stories of death, but as acts of agency and defiance. Even when nearly every freedom had been taken from them, there remained a part of themselves they refused to surrender. “OVERBOARD” honors that resistance and the determination of those who refused to be completely conquered.

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“MY MOTHER’S SONG,” featuring Fatoumata Diawara, is inspired by the remarkable story of an enslaved young girl taken from Sierra Leone in the 1700s who carried with her a song taught to her by her mother. Though she was forcibly separated from her homeland, the melody endured within her family for generations, preserving a connection to Africa long after other details of their ancestry had been lost. Centuries later, that same song ultimately helped one of her descendants trace their origins back to Sierra Leone and reconnect with the family and ancestral lineage from which they came.

The song embodies one of the central ideas behind ‘ALKEBULAN III: The Water Remembers’ – even when the mind has forgotten, something deeper can still remember.

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“THE PASSAGE,” featuring Camidoh, explores the survival of African culture and identity after generations of forced displacement. Though enslaved Africans were physically removed from their homelands, they carried pieces of home with them: seeds, music, spirituality, language, food, traditions, and memories. Some even braided seeds into their hair, preserving crops and agricultural knowledge that could take root wherever they were taken.

The song reflects on how those pieces of home survived in foreign lands and were passed down through generations. “THE PASSAGE” is ultimately a story of endurance: while people could be taken from Africa, Africa could not be completely taken from them. Their descendants became living vessels for the culture, memory, and traditions their ancestors fought to preserve.

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“FERTILE GROUND,” featuring Kabusa Oriental Choir, reflects the sense of community and spirit enslaved Africans preserved while working the fields. Though displaced from their homeland and forced to labor for the benefit of others, they still found ways to remain connected to one another and to pieces of the cultures they carried with them.

Through communal singing, shared language, rhythm, movement, and the collective act of striking and tilling the earth, work became a space for unity and spiritual expression. “FERTILE GROUND” captures the joy and resilience that could still exist within hardship—the ability to sing, laugh, find strength in one another, and maintain a connection to home even while living far from it.

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“IGIRIGI,” featuring Goya Menor, takes its name from an Igbo word meaning “pillar”—a symbol of strength, stability, and something that remains standing even under immense pressure. The song uses that imagery to explore resilience, perseverance, and the strength required to keep moving forward through adversity.

Within ‘ALKEBULAN III: The Water Remembers’, “IGIRIGI” reflects the strength inherited from those who came before and the ability to endure despite generations of hardship. Goya Menor brings a commanding energy to the record, reinforcing its message of standing firm in who you are and refusing to be moved by the challenges placed in your path.

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“CHILDREN OF THE SUN,” featuring The Cavemen., reflects on perseverance, faith, and the realization that life itself is a blessing. The song acknowledges the struggles encountered along the journey: the people who fought, those who were lost, those who remained true, and those who continued pushing forward despite the odds.

At its core, the song is about recognizing the strength and divine light that already exist within you. The song connects spirituality with the natural world, reinforcing the idea that even after hardship, there is still purpose, joy, and reason to keep moving forward. “CHILDREN OF THE SUN” ultimately arrives at a place of gratitude: after everything it took to get here, simply being alive is something worth cherishing.

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“THE WATER REMEMBERS,” featuring Kabusa Oriental Choir, is told through the voice of God, looking across time at a people He created. Matt B and Kabusa Oriental Choir answer in Igbo as the voices of the ancestors, creating a dialogue between the divine and those whose history, names, and connection to home were disrupted through enslavement and displacement.

As the closing song of ‘ALKEBULAN III’, “THE WATER REMEMBERS” serves as the resolution to the album’s journey of searching for identity, recovering memory, and rediscovering what centuries of displacement and cultural erasure attempted to take away. After an entire album of humanity looking backward for answers, the perspective shifts. God becomes the narrator, affirming that while people may have lost pieces of their history, they were never lost to Him.

The song ultimately transforms remembrance into a message of hope and restoration. After generations of separation, oppression, and searching, the answer is not that identity has disappeared, but that it has always remained known. God remembers who they are, where they come from, and who He created them to be. It is the album’s final affirmation that what was lost can be reclaimed, what was forgotten can be rediscovered, and a people separated from their history can still find their way back to themselves.

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