KING PROMISE 5 Star Tour

“I’m here to supply the vibes, I’m the vibe supplier,” King Promise summarises playfully. Imagining what he wants people to take away from his music, he sees a potent concoction of happiness, dancing, laughter and unity. In short, “making the galdem want to whine and the mandem want to buy bottles.” Though his sound shifts and changes, drawing inspiration from everything around him and penning songs on everything from love to hustling to partying to family, the common vision is one of pure, visceral h’enjoyment.

Born and bred in Accra, Ghana, Gregory Bortey Promise Newman was enveloped in music from a young age. His “musichead” father inadvertently helped shape his genre and culture-spanning tastes: immersing him in everything from reggae to R&B to boybands to Ghanaian highlife. To this day, Promise finds himself pulling from and enjoying an incredibly wide range of sounds, both in his own sonics and also during his creative process. At the moment, he’s particularly feeling Ghanaian drill, the South African Amapiano scene and collaborating with UK artists like NSG and Headie One for his own music.

But in classic child-of-African-parents form, Promise was focused mainly on finishing school and securing a degree up until a few years ago: “[Music] was never really my plan. I always loved making music but it was just more of a passion.” After jumping in impromptu during a friend’s studio session, his curiosity and raw talent was sparked whilst in the booth. He started to hone in on his own sound, writing his own songs and collaborating with producers. In his last year of high school, his headmaster even heard him singing in class once and made him join the school choir for his final term. But it was while he was finishing university that everything changed for him. After releasing music officially in 2017, first on Soundcloud and then eventually across all the streaming services, Promise’s fanbase began to swell as word spread and buzz manifested locally, and before he and his family knew it, his career had taken off: “My parents were superstars in the area before they even knew [what was happening].”

Nowadays, his sights are firmly set on world domination, both for himself and his peers. “To be honest, I feel like Afrobeats is gonna be the biggest genre in the world in no time,” he asserts casually. Falling under a host of different names and guises, he cites everything from Drake’s first number one single One Dance (with Wizkid) to the rapid rise of Afroswing in Europe or the international stardom of the likes of Wiz, Burna Boy and Davido on their own as evidence of his theory - a scene already making waves across continents. He beams, “I’m just happy to contribute my quarter. Because as much as my sound is local,” inspired in part by the Ghanaian music he grew up on, “it’s also global as well.” In fact, one of his main goals - aside from making people feel good - is to help form the bridge between Africa, the diaspora and the rest of the world. A mission he is making sure to actualise in his upcoming project.

Next single ‘Smooth Operator’ featuring Wizkid delivers heartily on the promise of its title. It’s an understated, infectious Afrobeats production with a self-assured hook and silken R&B vocals from both Promise and Starboy himself, in a pairing that feels exceptionally natural. And by the sounds of things, Promise’s next album is a fusion of similar elements: undeniable grooves fusing rhythm, blues and beats, overlaid with his signature crooner lyrics and a palpably warm and danceable energy. “I think I’m making the best music of my life right now, I just love the place I’m in.”

Before Covid struck, Promise was in the midst of an international tour that saw him covering London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Toronto and so much more. But the time to stay put at his base in Accra has thankfully gifted him the stillness to experiment and create a project that he is itching to share with the world and, when the time is right, finish off the tour he started. “I’m such an album person… I think that’s when you get to make music that you really love, not just what’s commercial.” And while the numbers aren’t Promise’s primary focus, they too are hard to ignore. With over 35 million streams on his top 5 tracks on Spotify alone, 3.8 million followers on his socials and one of Ghana’s highest streaming albums with his last project ‘As Promised’, it’s safe to say it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up with King Promise.

SOCIAL/SPOTIFY/YT LINKS

https://www.instagram.com/iamkingpromise

https://www.facebook.com/iamkingpromise

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4tIKaxUmpXzshok2yCnwdf

https://www.tiktok.com/@iamkingpromise

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoYzjVDfp5GPyeP8Vx818RQ