Libianca can hardly be called an unknown artist – the 22-year-old Afrobeats sensation has 20 million monthly listeners on Spotify, after scoring a TikTok-fuelled global megahit last year with her mournful slow-jam People. The song struck a chord for the raw candour of its lyrics: it ranks as the fifth biggest Afrobeats track in Spotify’s history, and Libianca is the first Cameroonian to break the UK Top 10.
Born in Minnesota, to which she has now returned, Libianca Fonji honed her skills as a child in the city of Bamenda, Cameroon, where she grew up, singing in gospel choirs and studying guitar at boarding school. Back in the US and barely 20, she competed on The Voice USA in 2021, attributing her progress through the show to guidance from God. In a coup for the underdog, Libianca was then snapped up by 5K Records, a London label founded by brothers Kilo Jalloh and Moe Bah, who found success as teenage managers for their schoolfriend J Hus. Since then it’s been a steady climb: she has just toured the US, opening for Alicia Keys, and an EP is mooted for October.
In June, 5K dropped her follow-up single, Jah, a sultry blend of spiritual gratitude and romantic disappointment which confirms the versatility of her sound. “When you listen to my songs,” she told OkayAfrica this summer, “you’ll hear my Cameroonian accent, sometimes you’ll hear French, sometimes you’ll hear pidgin… and sometimes you’ll hear all of them in one song.”
