Nietzsche on Afrobeat – New Patrice album “9”
Singer Patrice’s new album is called “9”. photo
© Urban/Universal Music/dpa
Patrice goes on a journey of self-discovery and brings back nine emotional songs with profound lyrics that should also work well at festivals.
Patrice symbolically climbed mountains and hiked through valleys, went in search of herself and condensed a hundred songs from this time into a new album. “It was important to me to really do something that had something of a debut album – something like a rebirth,” says the musician in an interview with German press agency.
“9” is the name of the new record. “A number rich in symbolism,” says Patrice. Rebirth, numerical symbolism, self-discovery – the tone is set for a spiritual, philosophical album.
It begins with the first song “Become who you are” – a reference to Friedrich Nietzsche’s invitation: “Become who you are.” “I thought that was apt and incorporated it into a very afrobeat-like number,” says Patrice. “Which is very far-fetched: Nietzsche on Afrobeat.” But for him, things like that fit together. “That’s always been my thing: What’s the common denominator between all these worlds?”
The number “9” was deliberately chosen
“9” is a product of Patrice’s life over the past seven years. In 2016 the singer goes to Jamaica. The approach: “I go out and reinvent myself in an environment that is not my comfort zone at all,” he says. Far out in the provinces he builds a studio, a “self-sufficient space” with its own energy supply and water, and there he takes on “legends of reggae history”. “I left the world for a while and went up the mountain and into the valley,” he writes on Instagram, looking back on the time in which the music for the current album was created.
But it takes longer than expected for the search for self-knowledge to result in a new album. Because: “Then somehow the pandemic came,” says the musician. After a temporary return to Germany, the cosmopolitan Patrice finally recorded “a homogeneous album that describes me today” in Senegal.
To do this, he picks nine songs out of a hundred existing ones. The number has a special meaning for him, he says: nine months until birth, nine bodies in the solar system. “For me it represents birth and rebirth,” he says.
Danceable thoughtfulness
Spirituality plays an important role for him and in his music. He sees this as a dimension that exists and with which he works. “When I’m on stage or when I make music, I’m in the world of ideas. I believe that success – no matter how you define it – is highly spiritual,” explains Patrice. “If I manage to come to myself and it all makes sense,” if he approaches his music or concerts with this truth, then it will come through in a different way. “It then touches you on a different level.”
Despite all the introspection, the album also notices the external conditions of the world in which it was created. “In this time of tension” are the first sentences of the album. Patrice says his aim is to stand in this time as a human being and to reflect all the things that affect us as an artist.
Despite all the thoughtfulness and profound lyrics, the songs on “9” have also become groovy and danceable in typical Patrice style – and promise wonderful festival and concert evenings. This culminates in “Sun is Out,” a Positive Vibes hit that has already been released as a single.
“I am exactly where I’m supposed to be,” sings Patrice on the record. So has the musician “found himself”? “I don’t think so. I think that you can’t find each other. I don’t think that’s possible,” he says. “I think it’s more of a process. And it’s about the attitude with which you approach this process.”