Artist, activist, singer-songwriter, scholar, survivor: Nneka Egbuna has always sought to consolidate all aspects of her identity within her compositions. Listen to any of her solo albums and you can hear this combination of conviction and courage in action, a bold creative approach that has attracted countless admirers.

Nneka's songs may begin with personal experiences and home-grown sentiments, but global appeal imbues her music and its messages. She transcends boundaries, both geographic and aesthetic. Regardless of the listener's mother tongue, there is an immediacy to Nneka's singing that anyone can appreciate.

"I'm always having little battles in my mind," she says, apropos of the struggles that shape her work. Everybody has their existential quandaries, but most people are content to wake up, go to work, and play some video games in the evening, and watch the world go by. Not Nneka. "I'm the kind of person who always questions things. It has a lot to do with the way I brought up, and my surroundings."

Born and raised in Warri, in the Delta region of Nigeria, Nneka Egbuna watched as the city and its citizens wrestled with the impact of new-found affluence. Three decades later, electrical blackouts are still a part of daily life in Nigeria, an oil-rich nation plagued by petrol shortages, where tribalism and disparity of wealth and political power further entrench divisions of class. "All that has a lot to do with why I am the way I am, despite the fact that I have now been able to travel a great deal, and see the world from a different angle."

Nneka’s hopes and fears are vividly and compellingly rendered on her powerful sixth album ‘Love Supreme’, which sees the Nigerian star charting her personal growth through the prisms of electronic pop, neo-soul, hip hop, afrobeat, reggae and jazz.

Though Nneka never stopped writing between albums, it was the pandemic -and specifically the enforced solitude of lockdown -that gave her the mental clarity to create this collection. “It became about self-reflection, and seeing how connected our innerworld is to the outer world.”

By exploring the very darkest reaches of her psyche, Nneka finally found the light. Love Supreme is a bright new beginning. And for us listeners, it’s a timely lesson in the redemptive power of self-love.

Everyone who witnessed Nneka’s performance at Sauti za Busara 2012 agrees hers was one of the most powerful shows ever seen at the festival.