I recently had an encounter with ‘looking for something and finding something completely different, but equally wonderful”.

I think what I was looking for was something to knock my shoes off (Bif would be proud).  And I figured they would be knocked off in the same manner I was used to.  To give you an example, the albums on my Shuffle as of Sunday were Fleet Foxes, Ra Ra Riot, Passion Pit, and Okkervil River.  So naturally I was expecting to find some music along the same indie rock mind blowing vein.

But then I went and tuned into Morning Becomes Eclectic last Friday.  Jason Bentley’s guest for the first half of the show was Asa (pronounced Asha).  I picked up from the interview that Asa is from Nigeria and is a huge fan of Nina Simone.

From the first moment when Asa talked on the show I felt much like John Cusak when he first meets Lisa Bonet in High Fidelity.  She comes off as this super cool singer / songwriter with a smooth, mellow voice that couldn’t help but sing songs.  She also mentioned that the native tongue in her native Nigeria is English – which was surprising to me.  And because of this, you may add her to the same category as Adele, a very heart warming low-key singer with a very distinct accent.  Unless of course you are reading this from the UK or Nigeria, and then I would imagine you’re thinking to yourself, “Adele has an accent?”

I also found myself listening to some Marley on Saturday – which I directly relate to my taste of Asa on Friday morning.  So if you like Adele or Bob Marley you will like Asa (and if you don’t like Bob Marley then clearly you haven’t seen his stand-up).

I encourage you to listen to the Morning Becomes Eclectic set as it is mostly acoustic and gives a different flavor to Asa’s songs.  But as cool as “Jailer” sounds within this mellow setting, you need to hear the album cut for the drum loop – you’ll be bouncing around wherever you are in no time.

Asa – Jailer

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Asa – Subway

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Oh, I think I have to post this video for Jailer. Talk about the definition of cool.