Album Review: For All the Right Reasons, Vol. 1 by Lekan
The Brooklyn-born, Columbus-raised Nigerian-American singer builds his debut on a classic blueprint and fills it with Yoruba choruses, family voices, and confessions specific enough to sting.
Brandy put her little brother on a skit. Usher gave his mama an interlude. Ashanti opened with a prayer and closed on a slow jam. The late-90s, early 2000s R&B debut had a formula, and everybody knew it: family voices tucked between love songs, a God track near the end, a spoken-word blessing from somebody who raised you. The formula said something about the singer. I have people. Lekan, a first-generation Nigerian-American who grew up in Columbus’s 614 after being born in Brooklyn, follows that playbook on For All the Right Reasons, Vol. 1 so faithfully it could pass for devotion. His father delivers a spoken-word outro on the opener. His uncle calls in on an interlude, losing his mind with pride. A gospel hymn interpolating “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” sits near the end. Released through a trio of indie imprints, Lekan is making the kind of R&B record that used to come in a jewel case with thank-you notes to God and Grandma on page three of the booklet.
But the songs justify the template. On “Make It Right,” Lekan owns a breakup he caused:
“Been chasin’ dreams so much, I never could commit
It is what it is
It make me sick
You found somebody when I didn’t take it serious.”
He hit her up last night. He misses her. The chorus keeps promising this time he’ll get it right, which is exactly the kind of thing you say when you probably won’t. “All of my mistakes, it just keep hauntin’ me,” he croons in the second verse, “Runnin’ from what was right in front of me/It was plain to see.” The production from 88jay, Bonxu, Hollywood Cole, and fantompower keeps everything open and vocal-forward, the kind of mix where you can hear the breath before the line. On “Give & Take,” the confessions go deeper: “I’m trying to balance these hoes/Back and forth between my goals,” Lekan tells us, then asks, “Who can I save when I too need saving?” He wants her there when the church starts clearing. He’s messed up too many times to play the victim. And the word “balance” reappears here, mid-confession, after opening the record as a spiritual principle on track one. Same word, completely different weight.
The chorus on “What They Want?” drops English entirely. Lekan raps “Heavy is the head, but it’s light work,” calls himself a son of a lion, says Oluwa fights for him. Then:
“Ki’lo fe so, Ki’ni wan wi
What they wan say to me (Olurun mi)
What do they want
Ki’lo fe se fu mi (Olurun mi)
Wetin con concern me?”
Yoruba and Nigerian Pidgin sit inside the hook as the primary language. The English lines are the ones doing the accommodating. “Olurun mi,” my God, runs through the hook the way “Lord knows” would on an American gospel record, except it’s in Yoruba, and the song is about ignoring doubters, not praising. The bridge flips to braggadocio: “Back to sender, back to sender/Money moves, it monumental/Undefeated, no surrender.” It’s the only track where Lekan sounds like he has something to prove to anyone other than the woman in front of him.
Faith keeps showing up inside the love songs. “What They Want?” threads “Olurun mi” through its hook. “Give & Take” puts the church in a love song; he wants her there when the congregation files out. On “Safety,” Lekan catches himself mid-sermon: “I promise I ain’t tryna preach to you/But I can make you a believer/Just let my love reach you.” And “Worship (Psalm 103)” drops all pretense. Lekan sings the psalm straight, then interpolates the old hymn, and stumbles on a word: “ever- everything to God in prayer.” D’Mile produced the track, and the piano carries a gravity that nothing else here matches.
Bongo ByTheWay, the Grammy-winning producer behind records for Jazmine Sullivan, H.E.R., and Kanye West’s Jesus Is King, shaped the record alongside Bonxu, who co-produced or produced half the tracklist. Some share the Darkchild family tree. Rodney Jerkins himself co-produced a track on Lekan’s 2024 EP So You Know, and the lineage is audible. On “Come Thru,” produced by Bonxu, Io, and TSB, Lekan croons “Way that body talk/You don’t even gotta speak/I hear you clearly,” and the track is slick enough to let those lines do all the work. On “Safety,” Bonxu and TSB build something warmer, something that makes the lyric “These streets gettin’ cold/Baby, come home/Right where you belong” feel like a room you could walk into.
On “Always,” Lekan describes curly hair scattered around the sink, last night’s makeup, dirty dancing in the sheets. “And it don’t matter to me,” he says. The pre-chorus answers every confession on the record: “Say you wanted something real/Well, here I am/Just below your pain/I’d rather give you pleasure.” In the second verse, “Never let a petty argument make you mean/And when you get lost/Make sure you find your way back to me.” He sounds like he’s writing vows in real time, not trying to be quotable, just trying to get it right.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “What They Want?,” “Make It Right,” “Always”