It’s not very often that you find an artist who comes into the game pretty much full formed vocally, with the range and the emotional reach to take a song and push it from a rote performance to an exercise in projected empathy. It is even rarer to find an artist who has distilled their sound sufficiently that they already are distinct by the time you hear their first song. When we find one, our excitement is palpable because, we can literally see all the potential possibilities laid out before us. And as far as potential goes, newbie Cecilia Olong might be up there with the best of them.

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A post shared by @ceciliaolong on Oct 1, 2016 at 7:15am PDT

So we’re not quite sure, but we think Canadian-Nigerian singer Cecilia Olong is Native fave Joyce Olong’s direct relative, and if we’re right then, we might have on our hands our very own uber talented sibling duo. Cecilia Olong’s Soundcloud just became active recently and she’s already put out two vastly different singles, each equally brilliant and each distinctly her. Her debut, “Toxic” (produced by RRAREBEAR) will draw instant parallels to nu soul singers like Jhene Aiko, Nao and FKA Twigs, who have taken conventional genres and twisted them to suit their own personalities and perspectives. For Cecelia, that morphing consists of pairing smooth whisper-sung melodies with stripped down synth melodies and R&B percussion. This kind of experimenting usually takes a while to perfect, which is why Olong’s attempts are so promising; there’s a the kind of control and restraint you’d normally only see in far more experienced artists.

Cecilia Olong will soon be on your ‘to-watch’ lists. So get a head start and give ‘Toxic’ a spin.

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We are finally getting a debut Album, “Simisola” from Simi