Yemi Alade’s “Alhaja” and “Titanium” approach It’s Yemi Alade from two different points in its journey, with the opening track establishing a personal frame before “Titanium” turns inward later in the album. Both are solo performances, keeping Yemi’s voice at the centre while the record moves between its highlife foundations and newer R&B, afropop, and electronic influences. Together, they show how the album can look back toward its roots without making that return feel fixed.
Titanium
“Titanium” turns toward resilience through a more intimate R&B setting, with Yemi Alade’s voice floating above a guitar-led arrangement that keeps a connection to the highlife tradition running underneath it. Placed at track ten, the song arrives after much of the album’s movement between celebration, collaboration, and genre, giving its quieter approach a different weight. It is one of the points where the record seems to pause rather than expand.
The guitar is important to that balance. Rather than abandoning the album’s return to its foundations for a contemporary R&B sound, “Titanium” lets the two exist together. The result gives Yemi room to carry the song vocally while the instrumental remains relatively uncluttered, keeping the focus on the reflective side of the album’s themes of love, resilience, and identity.
By the time “Titanium” appears, It’s Yemi Alade has already established how wide its palette can be. This track narrows that focus again, using restraint rather than scale. Its place late in the record makes that change in perspective especially clear: after looking outward across genres, collaborators, and traditions, Yemi returns to a space where her voice is allowed to carry the weight on its own.
Alhaja
“Alhaja” opens It’s Yemi Alade by placing identity and cultural context at the front of the record. The title carries its own history, referring to a Muslim woman who has completed the Hajj and, more broadly, serving as a respectful form of address for women whose age, strength, or social standing commands recognition. As the album’s first track, that name gives the record an immediate sense of place before its wider mixture of styles begins to unfold.
There is something deliberate about beginning the album with a solo track rather than introducing its pan-African collaborations immediately. The record will eventually bring together artists from across the continent, but “Alhaja” starts with Yemi alone, establishing the personal perspective from which those wider musical conversations can develop. That choice fits an album concerned with roots, experience, and the different parts of an identity that have accumulated over time.
“Alhaja” therefore works as more than an introduction to the tracklist. It establishes the person at the centre of It’s Yemi Alade before the album starts opening outward. The title itself carries a connection to culture, respect, and lived experience, giving the record a starting point grounded in something older than its contemporary production.
