Libianka was on the move. One day the Cameroonian American singer-songwriter is flying to Paris, the next she's in New York. A month before she attended New York Fashion Week in September this year, the Afro-soul singer-songwriter performed at Montreal's Osheaga Music & Arts festival, which was on her list of music festivals to perform. He joined SZA, Tyla, Raye and Chappell Roan in the lineup of one of Canada's biggest music festivals, where 147,000 festival goers flocked to Parc Jean-Drapeau for three days.
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While traveling around the world, Libianca (real name Libianca Kenzonkinboum Fonji) planned time to lock herself in the studio and finish the next project of her debut EP, Walk awayreleased in December 2023 via 5K Records Limited and Sony Music Entertainment UK. “Libyanka is in her 'I don't give af-k' era,” says the 24-year-old artist. Bulletin board above Zoom. “That's the best way to put it – because these past few months, I've been completely out of my mind. I stopped running at the wheel and [quit] trying desperately to find more admiration and fast track my latest accolades with more accolades and more glory. I'm just giving up on all that and just going back to where it all started. I just do this – because I love it.
But from the outside looking in, you'd see no trace of the nightmare the “People” creator faced just five months ago. In April, Libianka announced that she was postponing the North American leg of her Walk Away EP World tour three days before it kicked off in her hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The M3tro manager flew the Cameroonian flag on stage at the Souled Out festival in Sydney, Gold Coast and Melbourne in March, while the Australian flag was also flown during her performances. Uniting the flags it was a moment not only to show respect to the Australian festival-goers, but also to clarify Libianka's nationality as “there was a time when people mistakenly thought she was Nigerian,” explains M3tro. But Libianka's gesture of showing pride in her Cameroonian heritage, which she has appeared before with posting her country's flag emoji several times on social media, sparked disapproval from armed separatists in Cameroon known as The Amba Boys, who sent Libianka death threats.
The separatists have interpreted Libianka – who moved to Bamenda, Cameroon's largest English-speaking city, when she was four – waving the Cameroon flag as a sign of support for the country's long-time president Paul Biya and his Francophone-dominated government. In 2016, Anglophones protested against the government's imposition of the French language in courts and schools, fighting to preserve their cultural heritage and end decades of marginalization. The resulting 6,000 victims, according to the Human Rights Watch Global Report last year and more than 1,000 arrests between 2016 and 2021, according to Amnesty Internationalthey reinforced the Anglophone separatists' desire to have their own independent state, named Ambazonia, in the ongoing Anglophone crisis.
“Holding the Cameroonian flag was not to declare in any way which side I am on, but a symbol of faith that one day, we THE PEOPLE will reunite and lead with love because we are better together when we help each other instead of to hate each other,” Libianka wrote in a handwritten letter she posted on her socials on April 12. “The flag is not Paul Biya. WE ARE THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF CAMEROON, our vitality and culture together.”
said Libianka BBC in May when the death threats – which started coming in on March 23, the next morning her first Australian show in Sydney – included vulgar messages saying she should “never set foot in Cameroon – or I would be killed on the spot”. M3tro confirms it Bulletin board The numerous “disturbing” threats went to the team's professional email, as well as his personal email.
“In the beginning when [the emails] came, it was just one, two – like, 'Okay, this is something where here and there you get a fan who would just talk off the cuff, but it's nothing,'” he recalls. But along with the death threats, he said separatists were sending requests for money to the administration's email and there was a flood of inappropriate comments on Libianca's Facebook and Instagram accounts. “At this point, it's not funny anymore,” says M3tro. “I really had to call the team. We had to talk and figure out how to deliver it to her so she would understand and be able to complete the work she's doing in Australia – instead of just canceling it [part of the tour] also.”
Libianka says she took a day off work after learning the seriousness of the threats – which continued until her show in Perth on March 31 – “to sort out my feelings”. She and her team, including her North American representatives at APA, moved to postpone her 14-date North American tour – not only for her safety, but also to protect her US-based family members from Cameroonian separatists living here.
“For me, it wasn't an easy thing,” adds M3tro. “As a manager, I see everything. [She’s] work hard [rehearsing] and you try to do it [the tour]but now you have to put it on hold. And as a friend, I also see her heart, sweat and tears. It's not easy what he does, because the kind of music he makes, he has to express it on a deep level. And he was like, “I'm supporting my country. I want to bring my country to a brighter side and I face backlash for certain things.' And as a friend, for me, I could see the pain in her and that's what hurt me.”
In Libianca's aforementioned letter, she expressed how the threats “overshadowed” her dreams and making her country proud. After competition on NBC The Voice in 2021 – where she finished in the top 20 before being eliminated – Libianca's dreams of a music career came true when she released her global hit 'People' the following year. The Afro-soul track – which has spawned multiple remixes with Nigerian sensations Ayra Starr and Omah Lay, Mexican-American pop star Becky G and Irish singer-songwriter Cian Ducrot – earned Libianca her first career Billboard Hot 100 debut, reaching at No. 80, and peaked at No. 2 on the US Afrobeats Songs chart. In 2023, she won the Viewer's Choice: Best New International Act at the BET Awards and opened for Alicia Keys' Keys to the Summer tour. Libianka was on cloud nine. But during this recent dark period, Libianka says God and her support system – including her family, close friends and team – kept her going.
“After that, I just saw [the situation] in a very positive light. I had the opportunity to speak, not only for myself, but also for others. That's how I really handled the situation,” he explains. On April 24, he released the single “Gods People,” an anthem calling for an end to the killings in Cameroon and for harmony to be restored. In X, Libianca he wrote that the profits from the song's streams went to support the victims of the Anglophone crisis, which literally knocks close to her. What was once her “very lively” home, Bamenda describes, has become desolate as locals, including her family, have had to seek refuge in the French-speaking regions of Cameroon. In 2023, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that Cameroon has the second most neglected displacement crisis in the world.
After the Cameroon flag controversy, Libianka and her team appealed to continue their European tour in May and June. “[Her] the family is not [in Europe]. And we didn't feel that security is something that needs to be taken care of there. The rules are very different there than in the US,” says M3tro, adding that the majority of European countries have stricter guidelines for carrying firearms.
Libianka's team continued to add extra security measures to their shows, such as security guards patting down attendees. For their Osheaga festival set, which came two months after their European tour, M3tro said the group took even more precautions, such as not booking any of the accommodations under their name and having a bodyguard with them, either is in transport or walking. on public grounds.
With these security measures in place, Libianka has made it clear that she doesn't let anyone or anything make her live in fear. Performing her healing music to the masses is part of her mission, and she plans to continue doing so when she returns to US stages after her upcoming EP drops. “When I go on tour again and do it fully, it will be so good – because it will be a completely new project, on top of other things that have already been released,” Libianca explains. “There will be a lot more diversity in the things I can talk about with my fans. And the experience will be much greater than it was before.”
Following Walk awayLibianca released a handful of collaborations, including “Darling” with British singer Lewis Fitzgerald and “Side” with Ghanaian musician KJ Spio and Tanzanian artist Harmonize. She says her upcoming EP, which she reveals is “almost finished” and due out early next year, is influenced by her diverse musical tastes from her upbringing, from being in church choirs to boarding school until he listens to ABBA. He also teases that there are songs in the project that will “surprise people.”
“The play itself has all the things I've experienced since 'People' happened,” says Libianca. “I don't think I've talked to my fans since then about how I'm really doing, the things I'm going through. So I'm doing it through this project.”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/libianca-people-new-ep-cameroon-flag-1235810515/
