E.M.E’s Debut Album Foreigner Dances Across the Diaspora

Foreigner album cover by Halley Prince and Kyler McGaughy

Almost anyone who likens their life to “a movie” comes off like they have a textbook case of main character syndrome. But when Nigeria-born, Denver-raised Afrobeats artist E.M.E raps “My life a movie” (on “Movie”) a few tracks into his debut album Foreigner, it’s an understatement. (No really, someone please secure those biopic rights ASAP.) The story of E.M.E’s life, an intercontinental epic journey narrated through Foreigner’s eighteen globally-inspired tracks, is the kind of story that demands to be told. If you want the whole saga, you’ll have to listen to the full album, but here’s a little context: Born in Kano, Nigeria, E.M.E fled the ongoing genocide in his home country as a seven year-old kid, settling in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood with his mom and his sister. Last year, he was able to return to Nigeria for the first time in fifteen years, and his complicated feelings during the trip laid the foundation for Foreigner.

“I went back home, and I had a lot of emotions. I had a lot of trauma I had to face,” E.M.E recalls. “Nigeria is beautiful, but you see that people are struggling and the government is doing nothing to help our people. People are getting kidnapped, the crime rate is through the roof and the cops are doing nothing because they’re corrupt as well. My last day there, I just cried.” On his final day in Nigeria, E.M.E wrote the song “War,” as a way to process some of the devastation he witnessed upon returning as an adult. “War” captures the moment where E.M.E’s traumatic past collided into his auspicious present, illuminating his future path forward as an artist. Foreigner, all conceptualized around that first track, embraces this synergy between past, present, and future, exploring how they interact to shape individual and collective cultural identities.  

E.M.E’s high-energy Afrofusion sound, bolstered by his unique tone of voice and spirited vocal delivery, is like nothing else coming out of Colorado right now–he has effectively blazed his own trail. Just ask Mic Coats, one half of the Hitsville dream team (the other half being lowkey genius F.L., who also engineered the project, plus help from up-and-coming producers WaaviMadeIt and Kelvin Bender) that produced Foreigner and longtime guardian/guru of Colorado music. Despite having worked with a plethora of artists representing many genres, Coats emphasizes that Foreigner is unlike anything he’s produced before in his twenty-five-year career. In the absence of a set blueprint, Coats went back to basics, beginning with the one throughline found in all his instrumentals: a steady drumbeat honoring his own Indigenous heritage. “The tribal heartbeat of the drum has always been embedded in all the stuff that I’ve done since I was young, even as I worked in different genres,” he explains. “They say the drum is the heartbeat of the Earth, it’s the pounding of the heart. So I think that basic intention, using it as the medicine, and letting that guide [my] path, made it really dope to connect with E.M.E. It really started with that essence of the medicine and that ancestry.” 

Drawing from a worldwide melting pot of genres including dancehall, hip-hop, drum & bass, R&B (thanks to silky smooth features from Denver R&B royalty Iyanla and Danae Simone), amapiano, Afrocaribbean, drill, grime, and Latin music, Foreigner is a sonic reflection of the globalization of dance music. Afrobeats is the glue holding this collage of eclectic influences together, but E.M.E and Coats weren’t beholden to any particular genre conventions: “We didn’t set out to create a specific thing. Like with Afrobeats and amapiano, there’s specific elements that are consistent with that genre, but we took pieces of all those things, and blended everything all together,” says Coats. From Latin-inspired guitar riffs on “Back To Sender” and “Fire” to the tropical vibes of “Give Me Your Love” and the thumping hip-hop drums on “Gawa” and “Don Dada,” Foreigner is a celebration of soulful, multicultural music, filtered through an Afrofusion lens. To E.M.E, it sounds “Like freedom”: “It’s just freedom. Freedom of expression. There’s no barrier to what you can do, and that’s exactly what you take away from this sound. This is somebody living their life freely,” he says. “It’s Afrobeats, it’s Afrofusion, it’s hip-hop. It’s just worldly.” 

Navigating themes of identity, faith, family, destiny, and what it means to call a place home, Foreigner delves into E.M.E’s ancestral past, his current position in the global diaspora, and his vision of a better future worldwide. Earworm beats notwithstanding, E.M.E has far loftier goals for his music than just making people move: “I can spread light back home, and make my heritage proud. Like, ‘Yo, this is what Emmanuel is doing in America! He’s pushing the culture.’” He aims not only to bring awareness to the struggles facing Nigerians, but also to uplift Afrobeats music and African culture on an international platform. Seen through the eyes of a semi-Americanized adult finally returning to his birthplace, E.M.E’s portrayals of Nigeria convey the complex mixture of pride and frustration he felt during his visit. “War,” the song that spurred this whole project, gives an unflinching look at the everyday reality of Nigerians through raw lyrics like, “Why the never see us struggle/How they never see us die/See blood that go tear in my eye/Many men they gone hide in disguise” and “Kill for survival/Kids killing kids and you tell me that it’s rightful/Tell why we killing each other/Hurting our mothers/Robbing our brothers.” 

Frequent references to E.M.E being a “Small boy from the motherland” (from “Foreigner,” among others) who made it out of “the mud,” are juxtaposed against triumphant scenes from his current success. Though this contrast places an emphasis on E.M.E’s growth and achievements since leaving Nigeria, his personal development is shown to be in spite of (rather than because of) America. As is the case for many immigrants, coming to the United States brought its own problems, like feeling unmoored and disoriented in the liminal space between homeland and adopted country. “I was too African, I was put in six different E.L.A. classes to learn to speak proper English, and from that point forward, you kind of lose confidence in yourself. I definitely grew up facing an identity crisis, because once you learned the language, now you’re too American to be African,” says E.M.E of his younger self. On “Foreigner,” the first track on the album after the intro, E.M.E captures this exact anxiety, singing, “I’m a foreigner in my own life/I’m a foreigner fighting my own kind/Til the kingdom come, till the day I die/I’m a foreigner, losing my own mind.” Foreigner is an ode to immigrants, but specifically the family members and the African immigrant community who have kept E.M.E connected to his heritage (After all, a group of his fellow African students at Colorado State University were the ones who originally encouraged his shift towards an Afrobeats sound). 

The final track, “Again,” is a sweet tribute to the resilience he learned from being raised by a single mother, who he praises and thanks in lines like “Did it on my own without a father/Mama, mama take away this pain I dey feel” and the refrain “When you see me fall/Help me stand tall.” Starting with an album intro proudly narrated by E.M.E’s mom and ending with “Again” builds a frame of familial love around the rest of the tracklist–almost like a hug from mom. E.M.E is not just a “Naija boy,” however, he’s a “Bellside” boy too, and draws parallels across continents to highlight how certain struggles are universal. His feelings towards Montbello mirror his feelings towards Nigeria: love for the people, and resentment towards the power structures that oppress them. “No love for the babies that been dying/Mothers that been crying/People that been trying,” he laments on “Fire,” a song that could be referring to Montbello, somewhere in Nigeria, or really any other city that feels like it’s “On fire.” E.M.E blends the cultural legacy of his ancestors with anecdotes from his Montbello upbringing, but always with one eye on the horizon. “We’re the next generation of kids that was supposed to go on and change the world, but we’re undermined and slept on, and left to rot and die in Montbello,” E.M.E says. “All these young kids right now are just looking for hope.” So even within the context of a somber song like “War,” E.M.E will drop a line like “Everything that happens in the dark/It will come to the light,” always offering a sense of hope. 

With E.M.E, the past, present, and future all merge into one holistic force propelling him forward. Mic Coats said collaborating with E.M.E was “Really, really refreshing,” and E.M.E is a breath of fresh air for me too (Side note, the relationship that Mic and E.M.E have is the sweetest, purest thing). His earnestness and sheer joy provide a much-needed antidote to “the industry” and all the slick bullshit that comes with it. Foreigner is excellent, but E.M.E is also just someone that you want to root for all-around. Given the violent xenophobia currently plaguing this godforsaken country, this album is also incredibly timely; art that examines, details, and communicates immigrant life in America is more relevant now than ever. Besides food, music has to be the most visceral and immediate way of connecting with other cultures. We hear so much about immigrants from politicians using them as pawns, and comparatively so little from actual immigrants, who are the experts on the matter. With people (and I use that term lightly) in power ferociously determined to vilify immigrant communities, E.M.E deconstructs this presiding narrative by presenting himself as the sympathetic hero (“I’m the hero” is literally one of the last lines on the album) of a very compelling story.

I’m a white girl from Connecticut, and this album kicked me in the chest, so I'm confident it will resonate far beyond any one demographic. In this turbulent time of division and hostility, E.M.E is bringing people and cultures together through his music–not just on the dance floor, but within the production of these songs themselves. Foreigner tells a poignant story of tenacity and grit, with a drum beat as persistent as E.M.E himself.

Foreigner by E.M.E is available now on all music platforms.