In Conversation with Libianca – Touring with Alicia Keys, Her Journey since the Voice & More [@iamlibianca]

Libianca’s tender Afro R&B vocals have been making the rounds with her viral track ‘People’. Now, a few more timeless singles deep and fresh off of announcing her tour with Alicia Keys – she continues to go from strength to strength, We sat down with her to have a chat.

Kat: Tell me about what it was like to work with JAE5 and Lojay on ‘I Wish’.

Libianca: It was a very great experience, to be honest. I learned lot, I was challenged. It was a vibe. It was something natural. 

Kat: Tell us about your new single ‘Jah’.

‘Libianca: Jah’ is a mixture of 2000s R&B with Afrobeats. The story of the song is being in close relations with someone and they just can’t let go of their trauma – you keep moving forward, past your own stuff and they seem to stay in the same place and so eventually you decide – as much as it hurts – to keep on going on. So I’m gonna put my trust in God and keep going in the path that I may not know exactly where I’m going, but I know that it’s gonna be somewhere good. It’s like the path of life, sometimes not everyone can come along with you. 

Kat: How do you feel about Afro sounds like Afrobeats, Afrornb and Afropop having it’s moment and finally getting the global recognition it deserves?

Libianca: I think it’s about time. There is a time for everything and what may be seen as not so good today, whatever it may be in a few years, the whole society’s perspective would be different. So I’m very happy that it is our time for our music and our culture to spread further than everybody itself. 

Kat: How have you grown from being on The Voice to now and what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt throughout the process?

Libianca: I think I’ve learned more about the process of creating for myself. I’ve learned more about my own process. I’ve just learned that sometimes you just sit and it’ll come out. Other times you gotta dig a little deeper, it all depends. I’ve learned to just accept things for the way they are. I don’t have the time to be stressed when I’m getting older by the day, and it’s better for me to just smile my way through than look at things in a very negative way.

Kat: Was the success of ‘People’ something you expected? How does it feel to have blown from that song and what was it originally about?

Libianca: No, I didn’t expect it at all. I was thinking I would be even lucky to get like 20,000 views on TikTok, from when I posted the snippet, but clearly God had other plans, so that was cool and I was shocked. I still have moments of realisation like, “Wow, this is my life now because that song changed my whole life,” and all it was for me when I created it was a form of therapy with myself and in turn that became a song of therapy for the whole world. I think that’s very amazing. 

Kat: I read that you have cyclothymia and that ‘People’ is inspired by that and I just wanted to ask, how do you feel that cyclothymia has an effect on your music? 

Libianca: Everything I’m not makes me everything I am so the cyclothymia and just my mental health in itself definitely plays a part in how I create. I think a lot of people love my music because it’s so deep and it talks about a lot of things that people don’t talk about and that’s a very unique thing in today’s time. What I have is what I have and I’m not ashamed of it. 

Kat: Describe what it was like when you got the call you were going to be supporting Alicia Keys this summer?

Libianca: I was over the moon. I grew up on her music, so it was definitely an inner child moment, the younger version of me was really happy – jumping on beds and all that stuff. I was having a time all throughout. I’m working with my team to get everything together and it’s a very fun process, ’cause she’s gonna be my first experience touring – it’s gonna be with her. That’s my first time ever, so that’s a very big milestone for me. 

Kat: Who inspired you growing up that you’d want to work with in the future?

Libianca: A bunch, Keyshia Cole, Chris Brown, Rihanna.  

Kat: How do you feel like being Cameroonian has had an effect on your sound?

Libianca: Everything you absorb is what you put out. Everything you take is what you give. So my culture – that’s my environment. The food I ate, the way I speak, the languages I speak – so it’s inevitable that that’s going to be a part of what I create and what I put out. I see it as something natural. I don’t really have a feeling towards it. I am proud of who I am, regardless.

Kat: What’s next for you this year?

Libianca: More music. Challenging myself, meeting my supporters. Challenging myself to the fullest and respecting myself more.

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