Eric Bellinger: US singer, songwriter links up with Africa’s top artistes in latest album
Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Eric Bellinger, whose new album 'It’ll All Make Sense Later' features top African artists including Burna Boy, Oxlade, Reekado Banks and Gyakie.
“If you don’t move with the times then you get left behind. I have been making R&B music at top tier but if you want to see different results, you have to try some different actions,” says US singer-songwriter Eric Bellinger.
That different action that the Grammy Award winner has taken is recording an entire project in Africa with a lineup of the continent’s top talent.
Bellinger’s latest album It’ll All Make Sense Later which officially drops on streaming platforms on November 22,2024 was written and produced in Cape Town, South Africa and includes collaborations with Nigerian stars Burna Boy, Reekado Banks, Oxlade, and Taves and Ghanian singer Gyakie.
“It just made sense to tap into the artistes in the territory that I was targeting,” he tells the BDLife from his home in Los Angeles, California. “For me to have this album and just get Usher, or Chris Brown, would be the same thing we do here in the States. But I went out there to make the album, not only with the producers and the writers in the studios, but with the featured artistes from there as well. It had to be as authentic as it gets.”
Bellinger won his first Grammy Award for songwriting on the Chris Brown album F.A.M.E in 2011. Since then he has written songs for the likes of Usher, Justin Bieber Brandy, Trey Songz, Teyana Taylor, Tyrese and The Game.
He has also enjoyed success as a singer in his own right since the release of his debut album The Rebirth in 2014 and Usher hailed him “one of the most incredible voices of this time.”
In April 2024, Bellinger travelled to South Africa to hold a song writing camp in Cape Town with up to 15 producers and songwriters.
After selecting the final songs, Bellinger recorded scratch demos and polished the recordings once he got back to the US.
“This album is a faith walk, me stepping into the unknown and being confident that what’s to come is greater than what is in front of me. It is literally art imitating life because my whole life is based on faith,” says the 40-year-old. “I didn’t have any expectations when I flew 20 hours across the world to make the album, but I knew that it would all make sense later.”
“I think this Afro sound was the truest to who I still am. When you hear a song like Special you still hear Eric Bellinger’s trademark R&B but you also hear the fusion in the rhythmic drums. It is just me adjusting but not compromising character,” he explains.
Special featuring Jamaican star Konshens, the only non- African guest artist on the album, is a smooth blend of R&B, dancehall and Afrobeats, about how some relationships come together at the perfect moment.
Bellinger describes the other album pre-release track, Feelings Never Die: “You are in love with a girl that is playing hard to get, but as you are trying to find her you find yourself. To be the best for someone else you must be the best for yourself.”
The upcoming single from the album is the silky-smooth Shooting Star featuring Oxlade, the Nigerian best known for the 2022 global hit Kulosa. “That is the most open song I have ever done, it’s a groove and there are eight bars where there are no words, which reminds me of a challenge to songwriters to make songs with less than 40 words. It just speaks to letting the music be the universal language,” says Bellinger.
The album’s opening track Pure, a catchy amapiano groove was incidentally the first song that his team worked on in the Cape Town studio. “When I walked in the beat was already playing, they had melodies going, it was so pure and it made sense for you to experience the same feelings that I had when you start listening to the album.”
Other highlights are Burna Boy featured on For the Evening, Reekado Banks on Precision, Taves on Backtrack and Ms. Africa with Gyakie.
“Having all these artistes took the album to another place. When it was demos, I had the album playing on repeat. Once the features started coming in, man, it made it so much more authentic and so much more real to me,” says Bellinger.
Bellinger will conduct a master class called Bridge the Gap for artistes in selected African cities next March sharing his professional experience in music production, independent distribution, marketing, branding, and artiste development while illustrating the lessons through the songs.
He has embraced Artificial Intelligence by joining Hooky, a music start-up allowing creators to experiment with their songs using AI voice model. “AI is here, whether we like it or not. It is foolish to ignore it. Artists need to get out in front of the technology and use it, but don't abuse it.”
