Sauti Sol dropped on June 5, a 13-track-heavy new album dubbed “Midnight Train” and fans are going crazy over the Kenyan foursome’s polished work. The album features some great collaborations like “My Everything” with American soul singer India Ari and “Brighter Days” featuring Soweto Gospel Choir. According to YouTube views, besides the tracks that already have videos including “Suzanna”, “Brighter Days” and “Insecure”, the most popular songs from the album are “Midnight Train” which is also the album title and “Rhumba Japani” ft Kaskazini, Bensoul, Nviiri, Xenia, Okello Max & Nairobi Horns.

About “Rhumba Japani”, is it an intelligent mix of Congolese rumba and hip-hop, and sounds like the ultimate club banger. Modern rumba and trap hip hop fusion is not a new trend and the first artist to have mastered such experiment is no other than Congolese crooner Fally Ipupa on “La Vie est Belle” in 2012. In 2018, he successfully did it again with R Kelly on “Nidja”, out of his international album “Tookoos”.

Upon listening to “Rhumba Japani” fans were not only quick to draw the comparison between Sauti Sol and Fally, but they went onto demanding a remix with M. Ipupa himself. One comment reads on Youtube, "We demand a collabo with Fally Ipupa for Rhumba Japani". Another fan wrote "Fally ipupa would jump on this remix and bring the house down".

Fans have not forgotten the explosive banger Ipupa made out of one of Sauti Sol’s songs at the 2016 season of Coke Studio Africa, the Music show that brings together high profile artists from around the continent for a powerful musical exchange. On that show, Ipupa reworked the Kenyan group’s saucy song “Nishike” by adding his own swag, and made it one of the best Coke Studio covers of all time.

So as we are enjoying Sauti Sol’s new album, hopefully we’ll get the “Rhumba Japani Remix” featuring Fally Ipupa. Fingers crossed.