Here at the Native Mag we know first hand that great music starts from a great instrumental and that great instrumentals don’t necessarily need vocal work to make their mark. So we are all for celebrating artists who strike out and focus entirely on the instrumental genre and make magic.

Ghanaian American multi-genre produce Kwame Obimpe otherwise known as DBM (Dope by Mania) is on to somehting amazing with his debut LP, ‘Strangers Have the Best Candy’. Following the path forged by alternative Chillwave producers like Ta-Ku and Sango who meld a world of influences and elements into something wholly original. DBM is untethered to any instrument, style or genre, sometimes switching up the entire sound two or three times in the same song. Vocal samples as percussion, subtle tempo changes for thematic effect, minors to ramp up emotion, Obimpe does it all. The kind of thought that must have gone into this album is such that we rarely see from African artists in this pop-heavy numbers driven race for streaming relevance.

Trying to condense the complexity of ‘Strangers Have The Best Candy’ seems like doing the album a disservice, there are no fillers, no missteps, just twelve concept driven songs with hard to forget titles. We won’t prosyletize anymore, we’ll just let you make your own conclusions.

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