From healing to victory

Lady Zamar’s journey into Afrobeats began, as she puts it, with a bit of curiosity and a lot of listening. 

“It wasn’t even on my radar to make an Afrobeats project at first,” she recalls with a laugh. 

“It was a suggestion from people I trust musically and I thought: ‘Maybe I can try this.’”

The experiment turned into something bigger. She brought in producers and writers who understood the language of Afrobeats, started crafting songs that could move bodies while telling stories and slowly built a project that felt as expansive as it was personal. The result is Emperor Eclipse: Realm I — Awakening, set for release on January 30.

Zamar describes the album as a declaration of clarity and creative independence, a celebration of survival and triumph after missteps, misjudgments and misrepresentation. I caught up with her to talk about why Afrobeats became her language of choice, the moments during recording that felt transformative and the emotions that define life after healing.

You leaned into Afrobeats on this project. How did that come about and how did it affect your approach to the album?

I moved into Afrobeats because it’s been a genre that I’ve been listening to a lot for the past five years. I’ve enjoyed really getting to know the artists, getting to know the sound. 

I’ve really enjoyed the music that they make. I’ve explored some of the cultures in Nigeria, just really exploring them and trying to find the best way to approach it.  In the beginning, I wasn’t even thinking about making an Afrobeats project. Honestly, it was actually a suggestion that two people made, people that I trust musically. They’re like: ‘You know, this is something that you could do.’ 

At the time, I wasn’t sure if I could. So, I started with one or two songs and then it turned out really nice. Then I got a bunch of writers, people who understand how to write Pidgin, I got producers that understand the sound and we literally started working on the project. After the first four months of the project, I submitted it to my record label for listening. The response was that it was not nice. They basically told me at the time that I should go and try AmaPiano and not try to do Afrobeats because I wouldn’t be accepted by the Nigerian market. Which is funny because I have been [accepted]. 

You’re no longer working with that record label.

Yes I was signed to a different record label. You know, the thing is, at the end of the day, record labels are people. No one is perfect, no one is right or wrong. It’s just they’re looking out for your best interest. If you don’t have the map forward, you can sometimes think it’s not the right path. Like, in my family, I’m the only musician. Everyone else never really went into the arts. They all have professional jobs. 

When I left engineering to go into the arts, everyone in my family was like: ‘What?’ So, it’s not to say that the label was wrong or right. It’s just to say sometimes we’re not aligned. That’s exactly what had happened. It’s just that I really believed in what I was trying to do. I left the label because I realised that I wasn’t gonna be happy there. I started doing my own thing, looking around for new partners and when I finally got new partners they really loved the music. Now I could create in peace. 

When we think of Afrobeats, we think of a sound that’s joyful and communal. We think of dancing and parties and everything. How did that affect your storytelling on this project? 

I love dance music. I love anything that makes me move, anything that feels jovial. I think if you look at my discography, I’ve kind of consistently leaned into music that makes people dance. So, yeah, for me, that’s my vibe, you know. And when you look at Afrobeats, it’s a bit slower than the traditional piano three-step. It’s a bit slower than most electronic music but it’s still music that you can dance to, like really cute dances too. That was different in the sense I had to change the dance tempo and then how it affected the story writing because it’s a very joyful, communal type of music. 

You don’t put a lot of heavy subjects with heavy wording. You can address heavy subjects with a different approach. It’s like you make it light lyrically but you don’t make it light storywise. Whereas in pop music, the heavier the better. You know, with Afrobeats, people are going through so much on the African continent, in the diaspora. I think there’s a way that Afrobeats has found to tell stories in a creative way without dragging people into contemplation in that exact moment. 

You get to contemplate afterwards, like when you’ve left the club, when you’re just sitting and you’re like: ‘Hey, let me go through the lyrics,’ you know, that’s when you start to contemplate. But it’s really deep music. One of the things I love about Afrobeats is the ability to speak about almost anything and heavy subjects without ever making it feel so tiresome for the brain. 

You also said that the project reflects life after healing. You’ve talked a little bit about that but what emotions live in that space for you? 

Life after healing. I’m just gonna speak broadly and personally. The broader part of it is that a lot of us don’t get to the part of healing. We enjoy being victims of everything. We enjoy complaining. And then there’s the healing. The healing is hard. I don’t think healing is easy. It’s one of the hardest things that a human being has to do. Think of yourself. Think of a burn victim. You get burnt and it’s a horrible experience. 

Sometimes people feel like they should have just died because now to recover from that, the operations you’re going to constantly go through, the fact that your wound has to be cleaned repeatedly and they literally have to rip the old skin off. That’s literally what happens to us when we’ve gone through a horrible time. 

And you are ripping off the old skin and that ripping time is not nice. But, you know, it’s amazing when you get to the other side, where your skin has grown back and you’re better. You think: ‘Damn, I survived the pain. I survived the attacks. I survived.’ That’s exactly what this album is about. It’s victorious. It’s the victory to say, ‘Hey, I went through this and I’m on the other side. I’ve been through all that and I won’t go back and I’ll never ever find myself in that position again.’ I will forever celebrate the person I am today.  Because for me to get here, I paid a price. I paid a very high price. I was misrepresented. 

I was misjudged. I was told I was a liar. There were so many things that people said about me and so many times I wanted to give up. I mean, I did give up. Many times. I gave up in different ways. I gave up, you know, but then I was like: ‘You know what? People are gonna say so many things to bring me down because they don’t know me. They don’t know my story. They don’t know how hard this has been for me.’ 

I don’t even care about it half the time. I didn’t even get what people were saying because I was going through that process of talking about the healing process where your things that you’re telling me don’t even come close to how I feel in that moment. You know, how I feel in that moment is feeling so much pain. Now I’ve come to this other side and I’m just like: ‘Yeah, I don’t care what you guys say. You’re sharp.’ 

Any last words?

I just want to send a big thank you to everybody. I want people to know that I really have seen everything that everyone has been doing and I don’t think this project would be there had it not been for the people that have held me up, people that have supported me, people that have made sure that they did not get lost in the noise and they focused on what I am about. 

I’m a musician at the end of the day and I am a woman that loves love and I’ll never stop. And the fact that people have made sure that they know that I know that they’re there with me.