NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

The mu­si­cal and cul­tur­al con­nec­tion be­tween Africa and T&T con­tin­ues to flour­ish as Ghana­ian su­per­star Black Sherif (Mo­hammed Is­mail Shar­rif) col­lab­o­rates with Full Blown on one of his lat­est tracks, Love Again. Ex­plor­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, heart­break and hope, the groovy tune is now avail­able across all dig­i­tal mu­sic stream­ing plat­forms.

A glob­al Ghana­ian star

Shar­rif is Ghana’s most-streamed artiste, boast­ing more than five bil­lion glob­al streams across dig­i­tal mu­sic plat­forms. His pre­vi­ous al­bum, Iron Boy, even sur­passed one bil­lion streams.

The singer is al­so a two-time BET Hip Hop Awards win­ner in the Best In­ter­na­tion­al Flow cat­e­go­ry and won Artiste of the Year at the 2023 and 2026 Ghana Mu­sic Awards.

Love Again was re­leased through Em­pire on Au­gust 4 as part of his new six-track EP, Sun Sherif. He told WE En­ter­tain­ment he be­gan work­ing on it ear­li­er this year and “was thrilled by every step in the lead up” to it.

Ex­plor­ing heart­break

As he re­flects on heart­break, he sings, “I’m los­ing it all. My mood is un­usu­al. My mood all day long is at an all-time low.”

He ad­mits to “drown­ing” him­self in mem­o­ries of him and his past lover and pleads, “Rain on me some lov­ing. Dou­ble the peace and come my way.”

He then pro­claims that he doesn’t just “need” to fall in love again, but “lives” to do so.

Full Blown broth­ers Kevon and Ko­ry Hart then bring some Caribbean en­er­gy with their verse, in which they let the woman know that no one else can “walk in (her) lane.”

“Oh, what a gyal! Hot like a burn­ing flame. Gyal you ah call out my name…”

The song was pro­duced by Ghana­ian pro­duc­er Jok­er Nhar­nah (Joshua Aime Ad­jei).

Ghana meets T&T

Shar­rif said he con­nect­ed with Full Blown vir­tu­al­ly through­out the cre­ation process of the track and on­ly met them face-to-face to record the mu­sic video, which will be re­leased in Oc­to­ber.

When the track­list for the EP was post­ed to In­sta­gram, he thanked Full Blown, among oth­ers, whom he said “showed up and showed out.”

The duo com­ment­ed, “Say less, bro! Ghana x Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Shar­rif said the song rep­re­sents a “healthy col­lab­o­ra­tion” be­tween the two coun­tries and that it was fun to ex­pe­ri­ence the di­rec­tion the song even­tu­al­ly moved to­wards.

“We feel the di­rec­tion, but we do not specif­i­cal­ly know for sure the di­rec­tion. It was when Full Blown got in­volved that made us re­alise the full iden­ti­ty of the song,” he said.

And as much as he loves the song, he said his moth­er is a “huge so­ca fan” and would be even more ex­cit­ed.

‘Mag­i­cal mo­ments’

As for the mu­sic video, he said he “can’t wait for (the pub­lic) to ex­pe­ri­ence the mag­i­cal mo­ments we made.”

In a sub­se­quent press re­lease, he said the video is re­al­i­ty TV-in­spired and cel­e­brates the “un­de­ni­able mu­si­cal chem­istry” be­tween West Africa and the Caribbean, “...Whose cul­tur­al ties con­tin­ue to in­spire some of the world’s most ex­cit­ing sounds.”

For Full Blown, the project felt “nat­ur­al” as they be­lieve it fits their vibe and style per­fect­ly.

They ex­pressed their con­tin­ued de­sire to car­ry their sound across the globe and to share that with artistes from dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al back­grounds.

“This project is an­oth­er step for­ward for Full Blown. We’re keep­ing our dream alive,” they added.