Working with B3AM, Jamie Black, The Phremen, and Valentino Rose, Activity Records delivers a sublime debut that’s deeply considered.
It is an absolute delight to exist in the same timeline as Valentino Rose. Something about the rising singer’s incandescent vocals seems perfectly attuned to capturing the range of feelings, experiences, and emotions that young people experience in the 21st century. To complement her talents, the singer possesses a rare kind of grit, pushing herself to experiment with a wide array of sonics and styles that have marked her out not just as a talent to watch, but one to actively root for.
In December last year, she released the two-song EP, ‘EQUILIBRUM,’ calling for a chill pace to a relationship on the playful “Go Easy” and displaying range with “Borderline,” a house-influenced track where she’s reiterating her lack of fear and willingness to fight for something or someone she believes in.
2025 has been an interesting year for the singer who continues to ascend to new heights. She teamed up with ODUMODUBLVCK again on “TOY GIRL,” a highlight off the rapper’s surprise mixtape, ‘THE MACHINE IS COMING.’ Still, it’s her contribution to the June-released “C’est La Vie,” a collaboration with B Wise, a Nigerian-Australian rapper that perhaps offered the clearest hint of her new direction: layering her soulful, smoky verse over delicate electro-influenced instrumentals.
It’s a direction she fully commits to on “Higher,” the debut single by Activity Records, the monthly ASC3NSION events under the Activity Fest umbrella. Working with B3AM, Jamie Black, The Phremen, and Valentino Rose, Activity Records delivers a sublime debut that’s as deeply considered as it is poignant. There is a lot to be said about the rise in popularity of a selection of house variants in Nigeria, with sub-genres like AfroTech, 3-Step, Afrohouse, and Dubstep surging in reputation thanks to a growing rave culture that has blossomed into a legitimate counterculture that’s broadening the scope of expression for several DJs and community members.
“Higher” taps into that bounce. Starting with a scintillating shaker pattern that transforms into a sturdy drumming section coated in electronic synthesizers, it pays homage to Lagos’s electronic music scene with Valentino Rose providing the song’s emotional anchorage. Built around the refrain “I tell Mama, don’t you worry, I will make you proud,” it’s a track steeped in the language of sacrifice and hustle despite its electronic obfuscations, with Valentino’s soulful voice leading the charge.
A generation of young Nigerians are all too aware of the sacrifices that their parents had to make to give them a better life, and together, B3AM, Jamie Black, The Phremen, and Valentino Rose provide a song that acknowledges the enormity of those sacrifices. With sacrifice very often comes the weight of expectations, and while it’s not explicitly inferred on “Higher,” the ghost of delivering a return on those sacrifices skulks around. It’s why Valentino Rose singing, “All the pain and worry/ All the sacrifice/ I go make am,” hits so hard.
With “Higher,” Activity Records is turning our innermost anxieties into a lifting pop banger that reaches a crescendo with the soaring hook, “Take me higher, my desire.” There’s nowhere to go but up, and we all know it.
Listen to “Higher” here.
