ghanaian aussie singer genesis owusu joins “da team”

The story of 20 year-old Genesis Owusu is a story of the Diaspora’s breadth and the strange way that contemporary sound travels around the world nowadays. Genesis is the stage-name of Kofi Ansah, who was born in Ghana but whose family moved to Canberra, Australia when he was two. That’s where he and his older brother Koji grew up making music, sometimes together (as The Ansah Brothers), sometimes separately (Koji also records as Citizen Kay). Theirs is a healthy mix of hip-hop, jazz and soul with a strong-ass point of view at the core of the sound. (See Owusu’s last single “Amen, Awomen”, for proof.)

That’s still essentially where Owusu’s music continues to reside on “Wit’Da Team,” his newest single, produced by Callum Connor of Anderson .Paak‘s Free Nationals. Yet the groove and the intensity have been markedly raised, and the glowing-sunset of a G-funk vibe now creeps into the laid-back chorus, as Genesis delivers lines and rhymes with the confidence of a vocalist who can switch up between crooner and spitter whenever the moment is right.

“Wit’ Da Team” is a perfect roll-in for the summer time season that is beginning to kick off Down Under. It also marks Genesis as another remarkable talent quietly developing in an Australian music scene that is slowly but surely changing for the Blacker.