“Ten to fifteen years ago, Black British artists may not have been keen to come back home and make music. It wasn’t cool to be African at the time, or it wasn’t cool to be seen as African. Now, they all pack their bags, come home and embrace what they left behind or what they didn’t know they had. Headie One didn’t go in as crazy as how you’d go on a drill beat. We recorded the song on the same day as Eugy’s birthday when he was on his way to the club. Eugy goes in—no lie, 10 minutes, he’s done. Eugy is quite popular in Ghana; Headie, coming back home, we needed to receive him properly, to initiate him properly into the local [sauce]. People know him, but he needs to be known properly, known in Africa, especially Ghana, where he is from.”

A year after the release of his first album Building Bridges in 2021, Ghanaian music entrepreneur–turned–artist Smallgod returns with a follow-up that expands on his stated desire to lay out the latticework of collaborations and kinship that underpins the ever-evolving genre of Afro-pop.

While Building Bridges cast a wide net over the many artists Smallgod has worked with over the course of his fifteen-year career, Connecting the Dots, released in 2022, focuses on emerging artists whose success is dismantling old hierarchies thanks to democratic avenues for recording, releasing, and promoting music.

They require the platform as well. They, too, require encouragement. Smallgod tells Apple Music that the musicians he chose for his sophomore album also require applause. ‘I’m like a ship that they can utilize to reach wherever they want to go.’ We all have the same dream: to bring Africa to the rest of the world.’

The new approach also applies to the album’s up-and-coming producers, all of whom blend autonomy with collaboration: ‘Ninety percent of the time I play a beat for an artist I think they’ll like,’ Smallgod says with the assurance that only love and experience can provide.