By Ayo OnikoyiRetro Love presents itself as a journey of both the future and the past highlighting lyrical contents and instrumentals that allows you flow between both times seamlessly. Once again, Kenneth Right was able to present love not just as an emotion but as a layered experience contained within tenderness, complications and eventually a life long journey to be experienced in different shades of seasons.
For Kenneth Right, this project was keened on going back to the Garden of Eden, so to speak. It’s an idealistic point of view, trying to return to the Author’s original design for love. Although inspired by his love for simplicity, because simplicity births clarity but there was a clear intention to move beyond surface-level romance, leaning rather into vulnerability and emotional honesty.
The four tracks EP was embedded into 13 minutes of musical exploration serving notes of love in different rhythms and themes but the highlight of this project was the direction it gave “Do Re Mi” which was recorded in a live session. From the back up inclusion to the complementary alignment of instrumentals such as the drums, shekere, trumpets, piano among others this track showed the depth and richness of this project in indescribable ways.
On other tracks on the EP; Here And There, I Know and S’alaye you’ll hear a thematic consistency of unity running through all the tracks. It’s really about the beauty of coming together, the beauty of a choice that someone makes in embracing the love they have and the love that embraces them back.
Modern love is often portrayed as complicated, transactional, or conditional. But Retro Love goes back to something more foundational, more intentional. It’s about partnership, about choosing someone and building with them which to an extent gets lost sometimes in how we talk about love today. Leaning into Afro-pop and Afro-soul to carry its message the sound is soulful, relatable, and very intentional.
The concept of love itself is beautiful because it takes you on a journey out of yourself. It brings you to a place of sacrifice, a place of selflessness. And a good lover is someone who is selfless. Unity cannot happen without submission, and submission is really just choosing to sometimes say no to yourself and say yes to someone else. The beauty of it is that it’s not done out of compulsion. It’s a choice you make to prefer your partner, and that choice is rooted in love.
And as much as his central theme was to take fans and listeners on a journey of love yet there was still no concrete messaging portrayed but lyrically, the EP shows strength which tells of the artist’s ability to articulate emotions especially around convictions and self-awareness as this adds depth to the listening experience. So there’s this beautiful balance where each track sounds unique, but they’re all connected to the overall sound and vision of the project.
Ultimately what puts the project together is the sincerity in the lyrics and safe use of words which adds a sense of authenticity that feels grounded and relatable. The EP may not fully push the boundaries of the genre, but it succeeds in offering a cohesive and emotionally resonant exploration of love which is one that lingers more in feeling than in spectacle.