Apple Music's Africa Now Radio With Nandi Madida To Feature Nviiri The Storyteller

Kenyan singer-songwriter and guitarist Nviiri The Storyteller joins Nandi Madida via FaceTime on Apple Music 1 to talk about his latest track, the Bensoul collab, ‘Blessings’. He also discusses his new album, ‘Inside Out,’ tackling a range of emotions through his music, and his current exploration with new sounds.

Nviiri The Storyteller on his new album, ‘Inside Out’

"You know The Storyteller gets a bit emotional with his music, whether it’s club or not, and I’m always passing a message. There’s a lot of questions out here on my current status, I’ve mentioned it all in that music. You’ll know whether I’m in love, whether I’m dating, whether I’m still fighting, everything is there. That’s why we’re calling it ‘Inside Out’, I’m just letting it all out there, from deep within."

Nviiri The Storyteller on his first full-length project

"I feel like this was the right time to put out a body of work because now it’ll be able to get people to understand my new sound, sonic-wise. It’s also the same I did with ‘Kitenge’, because I was initially known as the man of the party, then after that I did ‘Kitenge’ which is more of an emotional EP, and of course I’m now considered principal of the school of heartbreak, I ended up opening a school of heartbreak here in Kenya! There’s a lot of burden to carry there so I just left it alone… and you basically on the album since we’re tackling all these sides - we have the party side, the conscious side where I’m just advising people, then the sad part and we have the love songs in there - and the fact that we have almost like four songs of every genre [on the album], it puts us in a good place to pass that message across."

Nviiri The Storyteller on exploring new sounds

"It got to a point where I had to decide on my own that my sound is how I write and how I approach the music, not necessarily the genre because that would limit us from exploring other sounds. Currently we have R&B tracks, we have amapiano, I’ve actually done house—not in the album, but I’ve done house—we have afropop and we’ve experimented in all the sounds. By the time it’s even in the album it’s not the first of its sound - we’ve done tracks over and over to make sure we get it right you know. We travelled all the way out of the country - the album we wrote in Dar es Salaam, Uganda, and South Africa, just to get the feel of those specific places otherwise you’d be lying to yourself and your audience."

Tune in to Africa Now Radio with Nandi Madida this Friday, on Apple Music 1.