Listening to Asake live is a completely different experience from listening to the studio recordings.
Live music has always been an avenue for artists to showcase their raw musical talent and musicianship to their real-life fans. Sometimes they pull it off, and it works; sometimes it doesn’t. But Asake has given me a whole new perspective on the M$NEY album.
It’s been part of Asake’s identity for a while now, seeing him play across the globe, most notably the Red Bull Symphonic show before the latest album dropped, but being able to experience it on streaming with M$NEY Live in London courtesy of Spotify is a gift. I’ve been listening to how he performed with The Compozers, a live choir, and an orchestra, introducing four new songs: “Psycho,” “Ako,” “Ego,” and “Bad Boy.” It’s striking how much the arrangements transform songs you’ve already heard dozens of times. Tracks like “Forgiveness,” “Why Love,” “Asambe,” and “Gratitude,” mixed with the new songs, are expanded with richer layered harmonies, live percussion, strings, and brass, making everything come together beautifully.
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The songs breathe differently. They become grander, more emotional, and more theatrical. It’s essentially a reinterpretation of the same records, giving them more feeling and meaning. It only makes you wish more artists would take their projects stripped back and performed live seriously, because that experience is unmatched.
It also makes perfect sense when you remember that Asake is, at his core, a Fuji pop star. Fuji as a style has always been about more than the songs themselves; it’s about performance, live instrumentation, improvisation, bravado, and the chemistry between the band and the audience. The music is meant to stretch, respond to the crowd, and create moments that only exist in that performance.
That’s exactly what these live arrangements capture. The orchestra, choir, and band add a sense of scale while giving the songs the elasticity to evolve in real time. Instead of feeling like polished reproductions of the studio versions, they feel alive.
It’s a reminder that some artists make records, while others are built for the stage. Asake belongs firmly in the latter category. His music doesn’t just get performed in a live setting, it arguably reaches its fullest expression there.