Shenseea Says Upcoming Album Will Introduce Her New Sound
Shenseea’s sophomore album will arrive before September, according to the Jamaican songstress, but be prepared to hear a whole new sound.
Though she won’t be ditching her Dancehall roots entirely, Shenseea revealed that the upcoming collection will offer more ballads and R&B-style songs mixed with a bit of Dancehall.
“It’s different, like what I’m coming with, I’ve never even done it before,” she told host Nyla Symone on a recent We Need To Talk episode. “That’s why I gotta make sure that it’s really good before I put it out,” she continued.
Speaking on what inspired this “new sound” for the album, Shenseea explained: “It’s actually where I want to go. This is actually the music that I want to do. The type of music that I feel is real timeless.”
“Of course, my Dancehall songs are timeless too because there are songs that I dropped years ago that are still going crazy right now. But I’m a timeless music lover, period. So in anything that I’m doing, I make sure that it sounds so good.”
Added Shenseea: “I feel like the music that I have coming has more legs than the Dancehall timeless ones because not everyone can understand the dialect. So these ones [on the new album] are exactly like what I want to do with my career.”
Currently 80% complete, according to the 26-year-old, and despite her team’s push for a swifter release, the album has been postponed to late August or early September, as she remains keen on refining her work.
“There’s just certain things I wanted to tweak on it you know. It’s like I know I can do better with some lines, I know I can do better with some beats. So that’s just it but the tracklist is 80 percent done,” she said.
In particular, she said the project is currently missing a freestyle track, similar to her previously released, which came from her ‘core’ and were completely written by her. “I owe it to my Shenyengs to give them that on this album. I didn’t give them that on the last one, and I noticed that they loved it so much,” she said.
While her freestyles — including Bad Habit/Don’t Rush, and Locked Up — showcased her adaptability in the realm of Hip-Hop/Rap, Shenseea maintains a humble self-awareness about her unfamiliarity with the genre’s cultural history, halting any full-scale foray into it at this time.
For now, the Rebel singer is focused on improving her singing voice. “I’m so focused on mastering my vocals right now when it comes on to singing because I really want to be a ‘singer singer’ you know, and I haven’t given you guys any of that even yet,” she said.
Shenseea’s debut album Alpha, released in March 2022, peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart, with the highest first-week sales for Reggae/Dancehall albums since Popcaan’s FIXTAPE in 2020.
It was also 2022’s second highest-selling album by a Jamaican artist, registering 63,000 units in combined sales and streams in the United States, according to data provided to DancehallMag from Billboard’s sales tracker Luminate.
Watch more of Shenseea’s interview on We Need To Talk below: