Joy Denalane has been making music for quite a long time, yet she seems to have passed under the mainstream radar - an injustice if ever there was one.

Born and Raised is an album that any one of her big names peers would be proud to call their own, and even an album that the influences that are so prominent may have been proud of as well.

When the first trumpet blares out at you on the album opener Change, you think that you know what you’re going to get. Denalane seems to enjoy proving you completely and entirely wrong.

As the album progresses, instead of being trumpet-ed to death, there are tinkling pianos, smooth guitars and of course the best weapon in her artillery - her voice. With heavy influences from the classics of Mo-Town, Denalane strikes just the right balance between musical endeavour and musical suicide leaving you with an album that is at times stunning.

Lyrically, the content of the album never strays far from the theme of change and growing up (thus the title Born and Raised). Unusually for any album, is Denalane’s acceptance that music is not the be all and end all.

Lupe Fiasco sums this up perfectly on the opener when he says: ‘there’s so much happening/ it ain’t gonna get fixed by singing and rapping’. Truer words were never spoken.

On the subject of Lupe, Denalane only has 3 collaborators on this album, an unusually low number for an R n B album. Of course by now everyone should have realised that Joy Denalane doesn’t do what is considered the norm. 

But of those that do appear, there is always an impact. Lupe may be the big name but Governor steals the show on the intoxicating Something Stirrin’ Up; a song about the oppression of work and the beauty of life.

Governor’s smooth low voice perfectly compliments Denalane’s silk and leaves you feeling slightly depressed when the song ends knowing that unless you press the ‘back’ button you’re going to have to wait at least twenty minutes to hear it again.

Many people may feel that this is going overboard, that Born and Raised can’t be that good. But all you have to do to understand is that it is. Joy Denalane has crafted this album, worked on it and said something that may have been said before but needs to be said again and again.