Features : Pheeliin launches his music with “Ndobo Bobe,” a poppy Afrobeat song of lost love

Though music has been the most important part of life for Pheeliin, from his birth and growing up in Cameroon, it wasn’t until he moved to Los Angeles in 2017 that it became more than a hobby for him.

His debut single is “Ndobo Bobe,” a smooth, mellow love song fusing Afrobeats, pop, hip-hop and R&B with lyrics in English, French and Douala, the language of his home region in Cameroon.

“‘Ndolo Bobe’ is a love song, a song about an old love who I haven’t seen in a while, and I’m just trying to get in touch,” he said.

The lyrics are delivered like a man singing a poem to a woman, with the beats carrying the melody of Pheelin’s voice. The intro, with piano, is an R&B style, fitting the story of a love that the singer has lost.

“I grew up in hip-hop and R&B, so, that’s my background, that’s how I sing,” he said.

The theme of love lost which is the meaning of the Douala title.

“I was just trying to get in touch, but I feel like it was kind of too late because she has moved on or something. The love is just not there. That’s basically the story around ‘Ndolo Bobe.’”

The music begins in the Afro sound, he says, and the melody shows the hip-hop influence. “So, that’s what I used to make the fusion for the Afropop song.”

Pheeliin, born Yannick Serges Guiegou in 1990 in Cameroon, moved to the United States in 2013, first in Maryland for a year, then two in Las Vegas, where he met the engineer with whom he began the journey toward a musical career.

When he became serious about music as a business, he moved to Los Angeles for the Los Angeles Film School.

“I never chose music as an escape plan in life,” he said. “Music has always been the first plan in everything. I do what I need to do and enjoy life. I enjoy singing and putting music out. I just wasn’t in a position through all these years to learn how the business works.”

The move to Los Angeles was for music production as well as for video because, “I was making beats already, but I wanted to know how to do what I wanted to do with it.”

Then, after 2019, the pandemic hit, “everything started going away, and because I was bored, I started recording.”

That was kind of a hobby phase.

“I’ve been around music all my life, but I never thought I would make a living out of it. I was just in love with music, a fan of music, and then it was like, ‘Okay, I’ll do it for a hobby, to have fun, and put it out there.’”

As he tells his story, it seems the idea of going into the business of music grew out of the fact that he ended up with a bunch of recorded songs. But he didn’t know how to push them, how to market them, and his study of the business of music resulted in a plan for putting his music out into the marketplace.

And more. He went beyond devising a plan for marketing his own music.

“Like I said, music was never an escape plan. It was always music but, as I’m growing, I’m figuring out different things that I can grasp on. So, instead of only doing music myself, I can sign artists and do the same thing I’m doing for me. Instead of just being an artist and singer, I can be an artist and a businessman.”

The result is Ndolet Stars Entertainment to go along with his clothing line, fashions that also bear the Pheeliin name.

“What’s next for me is putting more music out, having more projects.”

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