The Sunday News
Sunday Life Reporter
SOUTH Africa-based Zimbabwean songbird, Berita Khumalo, has said that her upcoming album, Songs in the Key of Life, is her best work yet as she expects it to top all her previous releases.
After the release of the single Jikizinto, Berita announced that fans could expect a full-length album at the end of the month. The effort has been described by the songbird, who has worked with Oliver Mtukudzi, Hugh Masekela and Yvonne Chaka Chaka among others, as her most collaborative album yet. Artistes that are set to feature on her latest effort include compatriot Bekezela, South African superstar Amanda Black and Mi Casa trumpeter Moshe Kgasoane.
In an interview with a South African radio station, Berita said the album was her best yet. The album would also be the first time she is playing boss, as it is set to be released under her own record label.
“What I’m excited about is the fact that I have compiled what I believe to be my best work yet. I also run my own record label and this is actually going to my first release through the record label so at the moment we are doing all the backend work to make sure that the album arrives on time and everything goes on without a glitch,” she said.
Berita said although she had told fans she was working on an album, she had announced it only a few weeks before its release because she had not known when it would be finished.
“It is dropping at the end of the month. Very soon on my social media I’ll announce when it drops and when the pre-order drops. I’m very excited to take my fans on a journey with me. They know when the year started that I went to studio. I was in Cape Town for two weeks working on the album. It’s always difficult as an artiste to say I’m working on this, because you don’t know when it will be done,” she said.
Berita also said the album would not stray away from the one topic that people knew her music for — love.
“It’s a love album. I can confirm that. I am a loving person. My home name is Gugu and I remember my mum saying if there’s one thing about uGugu is that she is loveable and she loves people. This time I really tapped into love and what love brings out of people. That’s what the music is about,” she said.
The singer, who named the late Oliver Mtukudzi and crooner Ed Sheeran as her favourite artistes, said she was hopeful of collaborating with American R’n’B superstar Alicia Keys in the near future.
“I am in a space where I can work with anyone. I cannot say I’m trying to work with a particular person but I want someone like Alicia Keys. I know I’m definitely going to work with her. It might not be something I might do now but I know sometime in the next 24 months it will happen,” she said.
