A south Londoner of Ghanaian extraction, Fuse ODG is one of the most prominent faces in the UK’s Afrobeats scene and T.I.N.A. is not the name of his robot girlfriend, but an acronym for This Is New Africa. Blending styles from two continents (three if you count hip-hop), Afrobeats is a modern, globalised music genre with distinctive African roots. T.I.N.A. is an attempt to launch that genre into the mainstream. Thanks to a plethora of international guest stars and a liberal dose of Guettatronics, it doesn’t sound as distinctive as one might hope, however. No track stands out quite as much as the song that charted last year: Azonto, a mixture of an irresistible Ghanaian rhythm, sugar-sweet melody, British street rap and, er, “heads, shoulders, knees and toes”. Much of the rest could easily appear on, say, a Sean Paul or a Wyclef Jean album. They are two of the guests here, and their collaborations, alongside Antenna (whose remix Wyclef also appears on), are among the strongest songs on the album. Overall, T.I.N.A. feels less like the launch of a bold new sound and more like a twist on the prevailing formula.
