The Golden Boy

On The Golden Boy, Afropop wunderkind KiDi has avoided the fabled sophomore slump that could have followed 2019’s critically acclaimed Sugar by delivering a sure-footed album that displays refined Afropop sensibilities and his penchant for crafting hits to suit any occasion. “If you’re happy, there is a KiDi song for it. If you’re sad, there is a KiDi song for it,” he tells Apple Music. “If you’re horny, there is a KiDi song for it. If you’re getting married, there is a KiDi song for it.” A pianist and confident producer in his own right, KiDi helmed six songs on The Golden Boy and split that role on the remaining eight tracks. “It’s about sharing ideas,” says the Ghanaian singer-songwriter (real name Dennis Dwamena), “even if I’m not the one producing it. I want to be involved somehow—how the bassline sounds or how the strings sound.” The reverse is the case for the album’s songwriting: For the first time in his career, the artist accepted tracks penned by others, chiefly because they, as he puts it, “sounded very different from everything else on the album.” The result is rich and varied songcraft that further establishes KiDi’s Afropop dominance. Here, he takes us through The Golden Boy, track by track.
Golden Boy “The golden boy is always that special kid, and when you go to a football academy, there’s always one golden boy that the manager, the coach, the scouts—whenever they come, their eye is on that kid. They always look up to him as if he’s going to bring pride to them. I’m that special kid that is really going to do wonders and great things in this world, man. I believe that I am the golden boy of my generation.”
Birthday Riddim “Picture this: You’re in a club. You’re seven tequila shots down. The Henny is running through your bloodstream, and it’s your birthday, and the DJ just picks up the mic. He goes, ‘Yo, yo, yo. We have a birthday girl in the building. Make some noise. This special record is for you!’ The birthday rhythm drops, and I want you to bust it down. Get on the dance floor and show me your birthday attitude.”
Touch It “The blend of dancehall and Afropop, we call it the Afro-dancehall. If you come to Ghana, artists like Stonebwoy—one of the artists I look up to a lot—do Afro-dancehall. [American producer] Jack Knight sent me a classic record by Musical Youth, titled ‘Pass the Dutchie.’ He was like, ‘KiDi, we need to sample this song. We need to make it urban; we need to make it today’s music. We need to make a record that bad girls will hear and lose their home training and get on a dance floor.’”
Magic “This song was made by Pheelz, an amazing producer. All the records we made were banging records. We were just keeping some of them for the upcoming album as well as for this album. Pheelz is a legend, man.”
Cyclone “At two minutes long, ‘Cyclone’ is short and sweet. It is that record that I want you to keep listening and be done and be like, ‘Oh, wait, it’s done? Replay—go back and play it again, because it’s too sweet and too short.’ I was reading something on Twitter about ‘why are the nicest songs always so short.’ Because we want you to go back and play it again, and again.”
Dangerous “If you listen to it carefully, every word in [this song] is a Michael Jackson song. Every single word. So, I picked all the Michael Jackson titles, the popular songs he did, formed the story line with it to write a song. This whole record was inspired by MJ, the King of Pop.”
Send Me Nudes (feat. Joey B) “This song actually came to me two years ago. [Ghanaian producer] GuiltyBeatz and I were just playing around with the piano, just messing around, and I was freestyling—and for some wicked reason, I just started singing, ‘Send me nudes. Ohhh. Send me nudes.’ This is the song everybody can relate to. It was funny even to me when I was singing, that I was making such a thirsty song sound so romantic. This song is so thirsty. Like, I’m literally begging a girl to send me nudes. But it sounds so romantic.”
Daddy Issues “Every time I listen to roots reggae, there’s something that captures me spiritually. The beat, the message, the writing, the instrumentation—everything about it captures me in so many different ways. I feel connected to it. So, every time I listen to a reggae record, the feeling that I get was the feeling I got when I was singing ‘Daddy Issues.’ This song was written by Jack Knight, and I remember when he sent me that record, I was like, ‘Oh, I like the message. I like what it’s saying. I like the writing, the composition. And it’s very different. And it comes as an experiment, because I've never done anything like this.’”
Mon Bebe “This was one of the easiest records to write on the album, actually. I did an initial demo. It took me probably 30 minutes to finish the song. One tough part of music writing, for me, is always getting the first melodic line or first lyric. Once I get the first line in check, every other part of the song just falls into place.”
So Fine “I don’t overthink the process, but what helps me is that I write most of my songs on the piano. Every song I’ve ever written, no matter how fast, no matter how slow, I use my piano. If I play a chord, ‘Is this lyric good with this chord?’ Great. If it isn’t, does Twi sound good? Does French sound good? Whatever sounds good with the chords I’m playing, I do it. If it sounds good in my head, it’s good when it comes out. That’s the end goal for me: capturing your heart, capturing your soul.”
Spiritual (feat. Kuami Eugene & Patoranking) “It was just me and Kuami on the song, initially, and it sounded amazing already. But Patoranking is one artist that I idolized for years. And for some reason, when the song was done, I told my team, ‘I still hear parts of Patoranking on this song. I don’t know why, but I hear his vibrations on this record.’ I respect him.”
Like a Rockstar “If you see me coming through, you know that you will be attracted to me, like a magnet. It’s like me saying, ‘This is what I’m coming to [do]. The swag, the sauce.’ It pulls all of them already. I don’t have to say much. I don’t have to overdo anything.”
Ping Pong “This is a song about dangerous love. You’re with a girl and she’s doing all the wrong things to you. She’s hurting you. She’s leaving you breathless. She’s doing everything bad. And it’s supposed to make you go away, but for some reason, you cannot go away. You’re still stuck with her. Most of my songs are from my personal experiences; some of them are from friends’ stories. I’m always listening to my friends yap about what they’ve been through with men, what they’ve been through with women. When I come back to the desk to make music, all these stories ring in my head, and I listen to them because I don’t want to tell stories only from my perspective. And when I’m telling other people’s stories, it’s relatable.”
Bad Things “I was watching a movie and there was a sex scene, and it was so intense—and they were playing a song in the back. They always place sensual songs in the background. And I was like, ‘I don’t have a record like that, that can be played in a sex scene, written into a sensual scene like this.’ So, I went straight to the studio and I started playing the beat.”