Best Of: annieSoul’s Acapella Cover Series

Boston based afro-soul sensation Annette “annieSoul” Oduor has concluded an impressive nine month long series of covers in which she pays tribute to 15 Kenyan songs (mostly classics) with her own acapella versions on her SoundCloud page. Even better news – before she embarks on a new project, she has made all the covers available for free download in their full uncompressed WAV format glory. There is no reason why DJs and remixers should not have a field day with this series, yo! The covers are only available until June 3rd so don’t take your time, cop all the tracks now.

All the 15 covers are awesome in their own right, but here is our Top 7 picks from the series:

UPDATE: The entire collection is now available at waabeh.com (Thank you, annieSoul for the info).

7. Dela – Ulivyo: If only for the very entertaining vocal arrangement of the “instrumental” voices.

6. Chris Adwar & The Villagers Band – They Dance: ‘Twas a nice benga-house experiment back in the day, wasn’t it?

5. Just A Band – Probably For Lovers: This song is a covers magnet – we’d vote it for best song to sing in the shower any day (Hint! Hint! Huddah  Monroe, can you read this?). Thankfully, all the covers that have been released thus far are heavenly.

4. Swahili Nation – Hakuna Matata (Mpenzi) : Defined the best of the Kenyan music scene in the late 90s. The quality of the video wowed many (kinda like the Safaricom ads) and made many doubt it was Kenyan despite the obvious name. Shout out to Dr. Alban and the rest of the crew.

3. Mercy Myra Medley: Listen out for Tie Dero, I’m Gonna Fly and African Tango towards the end.

2. Fena Gitu – Africa Massive: Absolutely love how annieSoul has flipped the lyrics, bonge la cover!!

1. Didge – Saa Zingine: One of the best Kenyan ballads of current times, one of those songs artists usually tread carefully with but annieSoul proves equal to the task.

Best Of: will be our regular hangout spot where we will basically compile random lists of all things awesome. Watch out for the next one soon.

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