Five artists. Five divergent paths. One shared allegiance to authenticity. This week, The Upper Quintet spotlights Vani RBG, Maraza, Ose, Roner, and Amarachy — each embodying a facet of contemporary African music’s restless soul.
Here’s a deeper dive into their backgrounds, creative ethos, and why they matter now:
Vani RBG:
There’s protest in his poetry and defiance in his delivery. Vani RBG, a Ghanaian rapper and producer, isn’t just recording music — he’s documenting a state of emergency. Raised in the charged atmosphere of Kwahu’s creative underground, Vani crafts bars like Molotov cocktails — sharp, unfiltered, and socially rooted. His work feels like a war diary dressed in Afrobeats and hip-hop, flaring with rebellion and vulnerability.
While others rap to climb, Vani raps to breathe. His flow is confrontational, but never empty. You’ll hear Kwame Nkrumah in the subtext and unfiltered Lagos grit in the punchlines. In the age of algorithm-pleasing pop, Vani insists on the kind of discomfort that moves culture forward.
Maraza:
Maraza has lived many musical lives — from television host to battle-rap royalty, but it’s his current incarnation that cuts deepest. In his newer work, the South African storyteller trades swagger for scars. You can hear the weight of adulthood in his delivery. The rent, the grief, the ego death. He doesn’t just rhyme; he reveals.
His 2025 project, a seventeen track LP coined ‘Village In The Trap’ isn’t a flex tape , it’s a therapy session. Laced with Zulu philosophy, hip-hop edge, and bare-knuckle honesty, the album peels back layers of self in ways that feel almost intrusive. But that’s his power: he lets you in, even when there’s blood on the welcome mat.
In a time when vulnerability is often commodified, Maraza’s music feels costly, because it is. Every bar sounds paid for with something real.
Ose:
Ose doesn’t just represent the Nigerian-Canadian bridge, she sings from inside it. Her vocals flutter between fragility and fury, stitching soul, R&B, and the faint pulse of Afro-diasporic memory into something delightingly beautiful.
What’s striking isn’t just her tone, but her control of emotional space. Whether she’s recounting heartbreak on ‘Runaway‘ or singing emotively over groovy beats like she does in the Ozedikus produced sleeper hit, ‘Makaveli‘, Ose never overstates. She knows the power of subtlety. .
Roner:
Roner is a silhouette in the fog. The talented singer is elusive, shape-shifting, and unbothered by the mainstream’s gaze. Roner seems like the artist who doesn’t make music for virality. He makes it like someone sculpting silence into shape. Sparse in his releases but dense in mood, Roner’s style is less about hooks and more about atmosphere.
Roner offers a meditative loop that feels more like a late-night voice note. He’s, for the good part of his discography, raw, ambient, and resolutely personal — like he’s making music to be overheard, not consumed. He reminds us that Afrofusion doesn’t have to mean maximalism. Sometimes, it’s the restraint that draws you in.
Amarachy:
Amarachy is what happens when devotion meets desire and both make it to the booth. Her sound glows with gospel undertones but never preaches. In songs like More Love and Baby Boy, you’ll find purity, yes, but also longing. She sings with a gentleness that doesn’t beg for your attention but lingers long after you’ve listened.
There’s something timeless in her cadence, a reminder that spirituality and sensuality have never been enemies. Amarachy isn’t afraid to be tender, which might be her most radical trait in an era addicted to irony. Her music is soft, but not naive. It’s emotionally literate. And in that softness lies her armor.
If R&B ever needed a spiritual renewal, Amarachy might just be its quiet priestess.
