Earlier today, dancehall titan Konshens released his new EP, Boom Bang and to celebrate he’s dropping off the visuals for the title track, which features Afrobeats megastar Davido, and paves the way for Konshens’ new album, Red Reign (due for release later this year).
Tapping into the long-standing cultural exchange the two sounds have enjoyed, “Boom Bang” blurs the lines between the sounds, weaving together their bubbly melodies and pendulous rhythms, and backing it all up with a meaty bass line. Speaking on how it came together, Konshens told us: “It’s a summer banger. It’s Afrobeats meets dancehall music. and it’s for the ladies globally. We reached out to Davido and he loved it and he killed it, then we flew to Atlanta and got the video done.”
Just as the two vocalists have converged from opposite sides of the Atlantic, it was a similar meeting of minds on the production side. The instrumental, funnily enough, came from Ricky Blaze and Jonny Blaze who, we’re assured, are not related. The former is a veteran dancehall producer (responsible for Gyptian’s “Hold Yuh”, among others) and the latter is based in Miami with Konshens where he works as the singer’s in-house producer.
For the video, Konshens adds, they had wanted to film in either of their home countries, but for various reasons ended up settling on Atlanta. “We couldn’t do Jamaica, we couldn’t do Nigeria, so we met at the crossroads, which is Atlanta,” he explains. “There is not a storyline to the video, it’s just a fun vibe and that’s what we want going into the summer. The past year has been way too serious, so we’re trying to loosen things up now. Demarco, who is another big, big dancehall artist himself, directed the video, and we had a good time. It was refreshingly fun. We wanted to hit the clubs after but everybody was too tired and too drunk.”
Hit play on the visuals at the top and then add “Boom Bang” to all your playlists.
