Korede Bello’s EP, Beauty and Bliss,is a vibrant tapestry of emotions and experiences, showcasing the artiste’s evolution and commitment to crafting music that resonates with listeners on a profound level.
In this interview with thelagosreview he speaks on how through diverse collaborations and a rich sonic landscape, this project aims to spread joy and positivity, reminding us of our inherent beauty and the bliss that life can offer. 
Beauty and Bliss marks an exciting new chapter in your musical journey.
Could you share with us the inspiration behind the EP’s title and the emotions you aimed to capture through this collection of songs?
The EP title Beauty and Bliss encapsulates the core inspiration of creating a musical experience that instils a sense of joy and positivity. The aim was to remind listeners of their inherent beautiful energy, evoking emotions of bliss.
Each song was meticulously crafted with love and consideration for the
listener’s feelings. The title reflects my life’s mission to spread healing and joy, making the EP a virtual smile and a sonic hug that resonates with people on a deep, emotional level.
With tracks like “Maria” showcasing an infectious blend of melodies
and “Complete” offering a soulful ballad, Beauty and Bliss is a diverse
showcase of your artistry. How did you approach crafting such a well-rounded sonic experience?
It’s a good question. I think the experience of life itself is very
well-rounded. I wanted to capture a reflection of the human experience. As humans, we don’t only experience morning, we don’t only experience
afternoon, we experience night as well. So it’s not all the time that you listen to the type of songs Complete. The emotions in complete, or the emotions in “Maria”, or the emotions in yoga, these are different emotions and different expressions of a human experience. So I was really just trying to reflect the spectrum of my human experience and convey that in sonic form, in musical format.
I’ve always been a diverse type of artiste because when God created me, he didn’t say you’re only going to experience this, so, as an artist, when I’m creating art, why am I going to say I’m only going to create this type of
music? Because I’m experiencing different things, I’m going to make
different types of music. So complete and Maria is a reflection of, oh, I can be this type of person and complete is also Korede Bello. There’s no one that is more Korede than the other song. There are just different expressions and experiences that Korede Bello is having and “Yoga” is from the type of
experiences that “Do Like That” came from. “Waiting” is from the type of
experiences that “”Cold Outside” came from. Full time, maybe, I don’t
know, I don’t think I’ve done that type of track before. I don’t think people
have heard me do that before. Different songs like that, they’re all coming from different places, but the same person. So that’s what I just wanted to represent or reflect my human experience in the form of beauty and bliss.
Beauty and Bliss is a spectrum of emotions. When you get excited at the
sight of beauty and when you get what you want and you realise that, oh, what you actually wanted was this peace, it was bliss. So that’s the spectrum, the two ends of the spectrum. Excitement and resolve or release. Freedom.
You want to move as human beings. If you watch babies, they want to move,
they want to run, they want to play, they want to go out. And the more you
grow from a child to a mature human being, you get to a stage like, actually,
I want to choose where I want to go. It’s not everywhere there’s work going
- It’s not necessary to run. So that’s the spectrum. At some point, like, actually, I don’t want to go anywhere. Yeah, it’s just the human experience
between that spectrum from start to finish.
The EP features notable collaborations, including “For Me” with Yemi Alade and “Jejely” with Mr Eazi. Can you shed light on how these
partnerships came about and the significance of collaboration in shaping the EP?
So there are two collaborators that I have on the project, and that’s Mr.
Eazi and Yemi Alade. Yemi Alade is on the track “For Me”, and Mr. Eazi is on “Jejely”. These two friends of mine are artistes that also express the
theme of Bliss and Beauty in their personal lives, and they were very apt to be collaborators on the theme of the project.
For instance, on the track “For Me”, track four, I think, on Beauty and Bliss, when you listen to the song, it speaks of conflict, third-party opinions, and it speaks about reassurance in a relationship. It’s like, you’re the
only one that matters to me. I don’t care what other people say. That is
beauty and bliss already explained in that song alone. It’s like, how do I
express this? They’re talking, they’re talking, woni woni , woni won so o.
They’re talking, let them talk. That’s not what matters to me. I don’t care
about what they’re talking about. I only care about you. You’re the one for
me.
That is beauty and bliss. Assurance in a relationship is what contributes to the blissful nature of healthy relationships or successful relationships. So that’s
“For Me”. And for “Jejely”, his name is literally Mr. Eazi and you can tell from his way of life, too, he’s not about that stress life. And it was very apt to have him, it was an honour to have him as well on the track, “Jejely”, because if you hear his own verse, you hear how he speaks about, you know, just catching flights and not catching feelings. And you just never know, because life comes and life goes. So, those two collaborations were very, very, very helpful to contribute to the overall message and theme of beauty and bliss.
Yemi is Beauty. Mr. Eazi is Bliss.
Beauty and Bliss doesn’t just entertain; it contributes to the evolution of the Afrobeats genre. How did you balance exploring new sonic territories while staying true to your unique sound that fans have come to love?
So, for me, it’s always been about the interpretation of emotions.
If there’s any genre that I am making as an artiste, it’s the genre of emotions because everybody connects to emotions, no matter what language we speak. If I smile at someone that is Chinese, they understand that I’m smiling.
They understand that language. If you see a child crying, even if the child is
from Cambodia or Turkey, you know that language is the language of pain.
So the foundation of my music is emotions. Just expressing an emotional situation or telling an emotional story through music. So, sometimes an emotion works best in a certain type of genre. And some other emotions work best in maybe a fusion of different elements.
So, for me, it was, what does this song need to look like? So what does it need in its drums, in its sounds, in whatever it is? So I work from that
perspective. I only keep what is necessary. As long as the soul of the song is there, I don’t care about the genre of music. I like to work from an Afrobeats base, obviously, because that’s my foundation. But I really am speaking to the world. I make Afrobeats for the world. I make music for human experience. I make music to satisfy a human need or human emotional need.
So it was easy for me to make different types of songs on the project because I’ve done it in the past. Like “African Princess” to “Godwin”, to “Cold Outside”, to “Mungo Park”, to “Do Like That”, to “Romantic”. These are all different expressions of an emotional story or a human experience.
The song “Complete” stands out as a deeply romantic and emotive
ballad. Could you give us a glimpse into the story or personal experiences that inspired this track’s creation?
The song “Complete” is a very special track to me because I don’t even know
who it’s for up until the release of the song. I wasn’t sure, I thought I knew it but I realised that it like depends on how I’m feeling, it could be for God, it could be for something or someone else because it’s a divinely inspired song actually. So the producer Jaysynths came to the studio and said he wants to work with me. I was having a session with Ozedikus and he messaged Ozedikus that he’d like to work with me and Ozedikus said I’m in the studio right now that he can come over. He came over, we got to talk and first beat he played me was this beat and I could already tell that I recognised this song, like in another universe I know what this song is like it’s like a knowing so I think he played me some other beats but I wasn’t feeling them as much as this one. I told him to play that one again and I got on the mic and I started to chant over the instrumental. I started to just sing whatever comes through me. I just opened myself up and
just communicated what I was feeling and when you listen to the song you
can hear it in the intro. That’s exactly how I started it. That’s the first thing I
sang when I got on the mic. What you hear on the intro and the rest of the
things you hear as well were chants but I was able to put words to them
because you know I can’t release a song with just chants. We had to find
words to some of the other melodies and the second verse you can also hear the chants there, that’s how we kept that as well. So that’s the story of how it came about and it’s such a beautiful song because when I was recording it, I had someone in mind at some point when I was actually putting lyrics to it, I was picturing myself and my situation and you know, relationship and I was like trying to communicate from that perspective like “what was this thing trying to tell me?” And it just became a really special song because at some
point when Iisten to it I’ll see somebody another time when I listen, I don’t see nobody, it feels like God is singing this song to me or I’m singing this song as a devotion to this invincible presence or being that has always stood by me you know, from when I was a child or when I was in a womb or like just this presence that has been like a guide so it’s a very special song that’s what
inspired it and when you listen to it you can dedicate it to anybody. It could be a perfect wedding song, it could be just a gratitude song to God because in truth, I believe that no human being in particular can complete you in a sense
because you have to be complete, there has to be two complete halves to make a perfect circle or relationship like two complete parts make a perfect
relationship. But if you are not complete and meet somebody else they can’t complete you because you have to be complete in yourself and you compliment each other when you are both complete but I believe it’s only God that really completes us as humans. When you speak from a human to divine perspective it’s only the divine that can complete you because there is the human and there is the being. When you see yourself as human alone, nothing in this world can complete you but when there’s the being which is the eternal presence, the eternal being that we are, It completes, it now
becomes a human being, someone who’s just not human but is also a being that is everlasting. That being could be God. So it’s a complex and diverse meaning to the song. That’s why it’s very special to me because it’s not just a straight song, it has a different lens that you can see it through.
So, yeah, it’s just a perfect song to complete beauty and bliss because it’s the reflection of everything that I’m trying to say or everything I’m feeling about beauty and bliss. When I gaze upon this being, I smile. It brings me peace. It makes me feel complete.
I’m no longer in search of the beauties of the world. This is true beauty that I
found either in a person, my person, or God, or the divine.
Your growth as an artiste is evident in the EP, both in terms of your
storytelling and musical exploration. Can you walk us through your creative process and how it has evolved since your earlier works?
What I wanted to make sure I did with this project was reflect where I’m at
on my journey. I wanted to make a project that can make people feel the
energies of beauty and the energies of bliss. The first half of the song talks
about beauty and, like all things that you know about relationships and the
second half of the song talks about, you know, just peace of mind. The second half of the song reflects my journeys. I’m talking about “Way Life Goes” and “Jejely”, this is me talking directly about myself or about the way I like to move.
So, it’s just that it was a very intentional project. I wanted to make sure that I said what I actually wanted to say. You know, I wanted to reflect my truth in my art. I wanted my arts to be an expression of my experience. So that’s why it feels this way. It feels like a rich body of work because I’m not just looking for a hit song. I’m not trying to make a song that would work. I’m just trying to tell a story, my story. So, I think that’s why it looks the way it looks and feels the way it feels. It’s because I’m talking about the beautiful things and blissful things about my life.
The list of producers you collaborated with on Beauty and Bliss is quite
impressive. How did these partnerships influence the EP’s overall sound and contribute to its sonic diversity?
I think the diversity of the collaborators that I work with reflects on the
diversity of the sound as well. The first track was produced by Ozedikus and
Altims. Second track by Timmy, third track by Ozedikus as well, fourth track by Big Foot In Your Face, the fifth track by Danny Drey and Altims, the sixth track was produced by Semzy. The seventh track was produced by Danny Drake and the last track was produced by Jaysynths. Some of them I’ve worked with in the past and some I was working with for the first time. I just wanted to have a diverse taste. I wanted the project to have a reflection of diversity. It was interesting working with them because everybody contributed their own artistic perspective to my vision, which is just creating something people can enjoy.
Afrobeats is a genre known for its infectious rhythms and cultural
significance. How do you see Beauty and Bliss contributing to the genre’s global recognition and evolution?
I make music for emotional needs. I make music for human beings. I make
music for real human experiences, so if people can connect with the
emotional expressions in another continent it’s like my goal is accomplished because I’m not making music just for a certain geography. I’m telling this human story. I’m not really concerned about what is contributing to the Afrobeats story because that’s not my place. What I concern myself with is making sure I do my best to put the art in its best form.
But yeah, in a sense, I also say I don’t make Afrobeats to the world, I make Afrobeats for the world.
So, I’m making something that I believe that human beings all around the world can enjoy, regardless of geographical boundaries.
Now that Beauty and Bliss is out for the world to experience, what
message do you hope listeners take away from this musical journey and what do you envision for your artistic trajectory moving forward?
My utmost hope is that listeners embark on a journey of self-discovery,
Positivity and joy. Through this musical voyage, I aspire for them to recognise
their own beauty and energy while finding solace in the harmonies and
stories woven within each track. The EP encapsulates my evolution as an
artiste, reflecting the growth and passion that went into crafting every note.
Looking ahead, I envision a trajectory of continued artistic exploration and
innovation. I am committed to creating music that resonates deeply, crosses
boundaries, and touches hearts worldwide. As I progress, I aim to contribute to the evolution of not only Afrobeats but also the broader musical landscape, collaborating with diverse talents and pushing creative boundaries.
Beauty and Bliss is a stepping stone, and my artistic journey is an ongoing
dedication to sharing healing, joy and a celebration of life through the power of music.
