THE MUSIC OF MEMORY: Matt B’s Extraordinary Journey through ALKEBULAN III
A deep abiding curiosity about his own origins has taken Matt B farther than he ever imagined, and in 2020, he set out to find answers to two deeply personal questions: Who am I, and where do I come from? On ALKEBULAN III: The Water Remembers—the culmination of an extraordinary trilogy of his deeply personal African-inspired musical journey—he arrives at an answer that is at once intimate, ancestral and universal. What began with an AncestryDNA test and a longing to understand his roots ultimately carried the Chicago-born singer, songwriter and producer across an ocean, through three increasingly ambitious albums and back to Nigeria, where he was welcomed by members of the Igbo community connected to his ancestral line.
Now, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra woven into a richly textured tapestry of African percussion, indigenous languages, choral voices, R&B phrasing, Afrobeats, environmental sound and orchestral grandeur, Matt transforms that homecoming into music—a cinematic meditation on survival, identity, memory and the enduring pull of belonging.
“For me,” the multi-faceted artist says, “there has always been a longing to figure out who I am and where I come from. You have to know where you come from to know where you’re going.” The answer, as it turns out, is far larger than one man’s story. It reaches into the African American experience, the dispersal of millions through the Transatlantic Slave Trade and ultimately the human desire to understand our origins as part of fulfilling an ultimate destiny.
For Matt, that search began during the pandemic, when he finally had the space to pursue a question he had carried for years. His AncestryDNA test revealed predominantly Nigerian roots, but that was only the beginning. He and his wife and manager, Angela Benson, spent roughly a year and a half exploring African cultures before the first ALKEBULAN music emerged. The deeper they went, the more they encountered the continent’s extraordinary diversity—its nations, languages, tribes, traditions, fashion, food and histories.
The first ALKEBULAN scratched the surface of that homecoming, while ALKEBULAN II went deeper into generational struggle, pairing African musical elements with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and earning Matt B the 2025 GRAMMY for Best Global Music Album. By the time he embarked on III, the exploration had become intensely personal. A deeper examination of his lineage traced his roots to the Igbo people of Nigeria, eventually connecting him to a living family line in Owerri. He traveled there, met relatives and was welcomed by Igbo kings as a lost brother returning home. He was given an Igbo name, Ikay Tooku, associated with God’s power and strength, along with chieftain titles honoring remembrance and brotherhood.
For Matt, understanding that heritage is more than an abstract genealogical exercise. “My ancestors are singing through me,” he says, describing an unbroken chain connecting those who came before him to the music he creates today.
That legacy informs every corner of The Water Remembers, perhaps most profoundly through its use of language. Matt sings primarily in Igbo, alongside Nigerian Pidgin and English, and describes reaching a point when the language began entering his dreams—not necessarily as fully formed sentences, but as rhythmic patterns and phonetic shapes. He learned how Igbo’s tonal character affected melody, phrasing and even the way he shaped individual words. What initially demanded intense concentration gradually became instinctive enough to influence the music itself. “There came a point where language became more instinctive,” he says. “I started dreaming in the language.”
This revelation comes through immediately in “At the End of the Door,” which opens the album with an atmosphere suspended between worlds. Gentle orchestral ambience surrounds Matt’s cool, soulful lead vocal as plucked synth textures flicker around him. A female choir gradually enters, first as a distant wash and then as a communal presence, its chant intertwining with his increasingly urgent delivery. Tribal percussion gathers underneath as the production expands into African gospel territory, with Matt riding a hypnotic vocal figure above the ensemble. Then, almost startlingly, everything recedes into soft voice, rain-like sound and subtle rhythm before the orchestra rises again and a high plucked-string figure carries the track away.
The separation implied by that opening finds a more physical counterpart in “Nothing Dey Pa,” where dense, shuffling percussion and winding bass establish insistent propulsion. Matt moves between accented English, singing and rap-like phrasing, repeating a central phrase until it becomes almost incantatory. A large chorus answers with rhythmic vocal syllables while high synth tones, guitar textures and a guest female voice add further layers. The song is celebratory and assertive at once—a declaration that refuses to be diminished.
“Iri Ji” follows with a different kind of vitality. Snappy African electric guitar winds around a low, rolling bass figure while Matt enters with an easy, soulful delivery. Horn accents, jangling guitars, synth-flute calls and increasingly animated percussion create a bustling soundscape in which voices continually answer one another. A raspier female lead adds another dimension before the track opens into a moody orchestral interlude. Bird calls and storm-and-wind effects eventually close the piece, creating a natural bridge into what follows.
“Overboard” turns history into propulsion. Telling the story of an enslaved African who rebelled against his captors rather than accept bondage, the track captures desperation without becoming ponderous. Wind, airy flute, plucked strings and massive percussion usher in Matt’s chant, surrounded by male and female voices. The chorus grows increasingly forceful as he accelerates, the ensemble approaching near-gospel intensity before giving way to sweeping orchestral grandeur.
“My Mother’s Song” may be the project’s most haunting testament to musical memory. Inspired by the true story of a young girl taken from Sierra Leone in the 1700s who carried a song taught by her mother into enslavement, the piece imagines that melody surviving across generations until descendants could use it to trace their way back toward the village and tribe from which she was taken. So much was stripped away—language, family structures and traditions—yet a song endured.
Matt sees that survival as evidence of the resilience of his people and music’s extraordinary capacity to preserve what history tries to erase. “It’s a testament to our people and our strength and resilience,” he says, “and it shows how beautiful and powerful music is.”
Musically, the track feels like a living archive. Filtered chants and infectious percussion surround Matt’s soothing Igbo delivery, while bells, flute, steel-pan-like colors and multiple male voices create an expansive African soundscape. The vocal forces accumulate until a soaring choir and another male lead carry the song toward transcendence. Then, as on several tracks here, the grandeur dissolves into a gentle orchestral passage, with guitar and flute floating forward as though the story itself is being handed from one generation to another.
“The Passage” carries that momentum forward with rolling percussion, melodic synth figures and Matt’s accented English riding a groove with reggae-like inflections but unmistakably African character. A male choir responds around him as his singing gradually takes on rap-like rhythmic intensity. Its processional quality leads naturally into “Fertile Ground,” where birds, massive male and female vocal forces and deep tribal percussion create the sensation of a communal gathering. Matt engages in call and response with the ensemble as symphonic strings rise around the voices. A whimsical flute briefly clears the air before another orchestral passage propels the album onward.
“Irigi” brings a darker, more commanding energy. A heavy percussive shuffle supports a raspy male chant, followed by layers of voices and symphonic textures. Matt’s smoother phrasing becomes a fascinating counterweight to guttural responses and increasingly fierce vocal exchanges. Flutes and distant voices swirl around the rhythmic center before the track cools into delicate strings and a high-toned African-styled guitar figure.
Then comes “Children of the Sun,” one of the album’s most radiant moments. Dancing rhythm guitar and steady percussion support a children’s choir whose humming and soaring chants give the song a celestial innocence. Matt’s distinctive phrasing moves through the center while the children answer and surround him. Another male vocalist joins the celebration, and the English phrase “life is a blessing” becomes a simple, resonant refrain.
That conviction is essential to understanding the album. Matt deliberately refused to make a project defined solely by trauma. His exploration of his lineage revealed, in his words, a naturally joyful people—a quality he also recognizes through his own family history, including his grandmother’s connection to Thomas A. Dorsey and the roots of gospel music. For him, telling the story honestly means allowing tragedy and celebration to occupy the same tapestry. The enslaved had moments of jubilation; families found ways to sing, gather and celebrate despite horrific circumstances. To omit that joy would be another form of incompleteness.
“We are just naturally a very joyful people,” Matt says. “Our disposition is joy because of that—even through the pain, we still find joy and no one can take it away from us.”
The album closes with “The Water Remembers,” and here the entire concept crystallizes. The rush of water that opens the piece immediately invokes its central metaphor. A deep male voice begins speaking of being present when time was measured, while Matt and a large choir enter around him. The orchestral writing rises steadily, surrounding the narration with expansive vocal textures. Matt becomes another strand in the fabric—sometimes distinct, sometimes absorbed into the larger chorus—as the music gathers toward a dramatic climax. The final statement, followed by thunderous tribal drums and rain-like sound, feels less like a conclusion than a voice refusing to disappear.
The title carries special weight because Matt experienced water as both witness and pathway during the making of the album. In Ghana, he visited Elmina Castle and the Door of No Return, then traveled inland to Assin Manso, where enslaved Africans were taken to bathe before being marched to the coast and placed aboard ships. He describes standing at that river as an extraordinary inversion of history: his ancestors’ last bath before captivity becoming, symbolically, his first cleansing passage back toward Africa. From Ghana he traveled to Nigeria, where he was welcomed into Igbo land.
Those experiences also became part of the documentary created alongside the music.
What makes ALKEBULAN III so compelling, however, is that Matt B is not simply documenting what he found. He is demonstrating what happens when an artist stops worrying about whether his music fits neatly inside a category. Earlier in his career, his willingness to blend styles was sometimes presented as a liability. The very quality people suggested might hinder him—his inability to stay inside one genre—has become one of his greatest strengths.
“Something I was told by others would hinder me has become my greatest strength—the ability to genre bend and blend genres together,” he says.
His R&B background remains audible in the melodic architecture and directness of his singing. Afrobeats and African traditions provide rhythmic language and cultural grounding, while jazz, funk, hip-hop, pop, indigenous vocal forms and orchestral composition enter without sounding like items on a checklist. Matt says he had no blueprint for what the trilogy would ultimately become. That may be precisely why it feels so alive: it sounds like an artist following every musical instinct that brought him to this point.
Winning the GRAMMY for ALKEBULAN II could have made the next album a pressure-filled attempt to surpass its predecessor. Instead, Matt says that within the first 48 hours after the victory he told Angela he refused to let the award dictate what came next. The recognition ultimately gave him greater freedom. The constant need for external validation—the question of whether a song would be accepted or whether people would approve—began to loosen its grip. He describes the feeling as having the “golden shackles” uncuffed. “I finally found a level of creative freedom that was far greater than anything I had ever experienced. It was like the golden shackles were uncuffed.”
Ultimately, Matt B sees his role extending beyond his own career. His search for his roots has made him increasingly conscious of a responsibility to become a bridge between Africa and the diaspora, encouraging other artists and creatives to investigate their own lineage while creating conversations around identity and belonging. The more he learned, the more he understood how little any single album could possibly contain. “I am always willing to go outside my comfort zone and try something new,” he says. “I’m not afraid to fail and speak my truth, no matter how controversial it is. As one of my mentors once told me, the story is in the conversation.”
And that may be the most beautiful paradox of ALKEBULAN III. Matt set out to find where he came from and discovered that the search itself could become a lifelong purpose. The trilogy may be complete, but the questions it raises are not. The Water Remembers is ultimately about what survives: a melody carried through centuries, a language reclaimed, a people refusing erasure, a family line rediscovered, a child’s voice declaring that life is a blessing.
For anyone in the diaspora wondering where they fit within a story that began long before them, Matt B offers neither a tidy answer nor a museum piece. He offers a living soundtrack to the search. And when the final thunderous drum fades into the memory of water, the message remains: knowing where we come from can illuminate where we are going.
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