Another factor in the album’s delay was the death of Hawa’s great-grandmother, with whom she shared a uniquely intense relationship as a child in her family hometown of Conakry, Guinea, and after whom the record is named. Where her debut EP, 2020’s The One, was a bolder, brasher, and altogether more explicit ode to carnal pleasure and late-night pursuits, on Hadja Bangoura, she plumbs her emotional center, opening a window into her vulnerabilities. “I think in these songs you can hear that I’m more in tune with myself, and you can hear that this is a person who’s healing,” she says.
Other influences found their way onto the record, too—from her handful of failed relationships while she made it, to the time she spent back in Conakry writing—lending the music a sense of wistfulness. “[My great-grandmother’s death] just gave me more motivation and made me more inspired, as I wanted to take what I was going through and make her proud,” she says. “I knew she wouldn’t want me to cry, or be sad, or self-destruct in any way, shape, or form. I feel sometimes, too, that hardship isn’t always a bad thing. I’m a Muslim and a true believer, and in Islam, they say that Allah doesn’t put anything in front of anyone that he thinks they can’t handle. I just go and use the talent that God gave me and try to do what I love. I try not to think too much about what comes out of it.”
The album’s lead single, “Gemini,” neatly encapsulates the strangely compelling cocktail of grief and desire that—along with the album’s deliberately off-kilter sonic combinations, like the daring, drill-inspired percussion mixed with squelchy stacked vocals on “Trade,” or the plaintive, gorgeous piano and shimmering, distorted vocal lines of “Progression”—makes it a thrilling exercise in opposites. “What do you want from me?” Hawa sings in the achingly lovesick chorus of “Gemini,” her voice twisting and turning in on itself. “I’ve given you all you need / I’ve given you all of me.”
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