In African pop’s ever-expanding universe, the most thrilling discoveries rarely come from the glittering mainstream. They emerge instead from the corners, the margins, and the raw edges, where hunger still outpaces hype and sound is still weapon and lifeline. That’s the space Upper Quintet exists to spotlight: five artists at a time who aren’t simply chasing recognition, but bending culture into new shapes with every bar, hook, or stage dive.
This week’s line-up is a borderless sonic experiment. From South Africa’s Eastern Cape comes Fekema, a voice equal parts scar tissue and healing balm, while Liboi carves a space in Kenya where heritage and futurism collide. Sewa, from Nigeria, threads together vulnerability and grit in a way that feels like an unvarnished diary, while Kiki Celine’s delicate yet defiant entries prove that sometimes the softest tones make the sharpest incisions. Hovering in the mix like a comet on steroids is Jeleel!, the Nigerian-American high-octane performer whose rap-rock theatrics feel designed to detonate mosh pits across continents.
Together, they represent five different answers to the same question: what does it mean to sound like now? To listen to them is to map the present tense of African and diasporic creativity, a present that is restless, unafraid, and impatient with boundaries. These are not just names you should know; they’re the architects of tomorrow’s reference points. Welcome to this week’s Upper Quintet.
Liboi: The Voice That Anchors the Borderless Somali Soul:
Liboi is a Kenyan Somali musician who uses her craft as a vehicle for cultural preservation and advocacy. Rooted deeply in Somali heritage, her work blends traditional influences with contemporary sounds, creating music that feels both ancestral and immediate. She is particularly committed to spotlighting the struggles and resilience of marginalized communities, often weaving themes of identity, heritage, and belonging into her storytelling. Her artistry is not just about entertainment—it is a form of cultural archiving and a tool for community empowerment.
Sewa: The Soft Power of Nigerian Womanhood:
If Lagos nightlife is built on Afrobeats thunder, then Sewa arrives like rainfall cutting through the noise, gentle, insistent, and impossible to ignore. In a male-dominated ecosystem obsessed with braggadocio, Sewa’s music thrives on vulnerability and truth-telling. She writes like a diarist, weaving the complexities of womanhood, selfhood, and intimacy into melodies that blur the line between Afropop, soul, and R&B. Yet, there is nothing fragile about her voice. It carries the quiet power of someone reshaping the terms of her existence. Sewa is not just another name in Nigeria’s endless conveyor belt of talent; she is part of the vanguard of women recalibrating Afropop’s emotional register and daring the genre to sit with its own softness.
Jeleel!: Afropunk’s Wild Child:
Jeleel! does not perform so much as detonate. A Nigerian-American comet streaking across rap and Afro-pop’s chaotic firmament, his shows feel engineered for chaos: mosh pits, scream-alongs, backflips mid-verse. His music, an explosive hybrid of rap, rock, pop and raw hardcore energy, is less about genre purity and more about cultural combustion. But beneath the theatrics lies a philosophy: freedom without apology. Jeleel! embodies the anxiety and electricity of a generation refusing to be boxed in, his athleticism on stage matched only by the wild confidence of his sound. For anyone tired of Afropop’s smooth edges or hip-hop’s predictability, Jeleel! is proof that African creativity abroad can be loud, sweaty, and gloriously uncontainable.
Fekema: Soul in the Key of Becoming:
Fekema is a South African artist originating from Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape. He is a rapper, singer, and songwriter whose music lays bare the textures of everyday life through vivid storytelling. His sound weaves dynamic rap flows with soulful melodies, bringing emotional depth and raw authenticity to themes rooted in township experience, resilience, labor, and neighborhood survival.
In early 2025, his self titled project ‘FEKEMA‘ arrived on the scene with collaborations from creatives like Tae Africa, Kid Kapa, Drogba Beatz, and Txrynivarna, introducing him as a compelling new voice in South Africa’s hip-hop landscape. His August 8 single “Inzame” (“effort” in Xhosa) further solidified his artistic identity, combining introspective lyrics sung in his mother tongue with atmospheric production from long-time collaborator Drogba Beatz, delivering a quiet yet powerful meditation on perseverance and dream-chasing.
Kiki Celine: Ghana’s Emerging R&B Princess
Kiki Celine is steadily carving out her lane as one of Ghana’s most intriguing voices, blending alt-R&B with Afro-pop to create soundscapes that feel both soulful and deeply personal. Her music thrives on intimacy, warm, tender vocals carrying lyrics that linger on love, memory, and vulnerability. She first turned heads in 2023 with Fragile, a striking debut that tackled mental health through Afro Soul-Pop textures.
By 2024, she was already shaping a distinct identity with Old Love, a throwback-style R&B ballad, and Memory Lane, a moving tribute to her late mother that showcased her gift for emotional storytelling. This year, she pushed further with Fool, a collaboration with Smoove Network and producer Sosawavegod, where she wove R&B’s smoothness with Afro-inspired rhythms to reflect on trust and love’s fragile dynamics. With inspirations like Gyakie, Tems, and MzVee guiding her spirit, Kiki Celine is building a catalogue rooted in honesty, vulnerability, and resonance, marking her as one of the alté-R&B names to keep on close watch.
