Bien: The Sauti Sol Frontman Turned Pan-African Pop Star
When his jeep arrives at the gates of Alára, a famed concept store nestled in a high-end borough of Lagos, Nigeria, Bien-Aimé Baraza steps out clad in a sleek, salmon-colored two-piece.
Flanked by his manager and wife Chiki Kukura, and Vannessa, his Lagos press manager, he stands towering, sporting slender black sunglasses with gold emblems on either side, with a snake-like bracelet circling his wrist.
As Bien settles into his seat at the store's luscious outdoor attachment - afrocentric woven mats beneath his feet and multicolor lamps hanging overhead - he looks every bit the image of seriousness, of reserved luxury. That is, until he opens his mouth.
“Vanessa is my slave driver,” he tells me, much to Vanessa’s amusement, by way of explaining how busy their press run has been. “My enemies are suffering!” he exclaims, when I cite his back-to-back successes. And his response when asked about his multiple number one hits? “Same shit, different toilet.”
It quickly becomes apparent that this level of jest is standard for Bien, if Chiki and Vanessa’s unperturbed air is any indicator. Between the ceaseless banter and his laid-back nature, it is difficult to tell where Bien the comedian ends, and Bien, the Kenyan Afropop superstar, begins.
His sheer relatability feels incongruent for one who had been a member of Sauti Soul, arguably the most iconic band in contemporary Kenyan music, for 20 years.
With earth-shattering albums such as “Live and Die in Afrika” and “Midnight Train,” star-studded collaborations with the likes of Indie.Arie and Burna Boy, and nominations for the Channel O Music Video Awards and the BET Awards, the four-man troupe changed the landscape of Afropop for good, leaving it markedly richer than it was when they first banded together in 2005.
As the band members announced an indefinite hiatus in 2023 to pursue their individual careers, Bien began to formalize his reign as a solo act. This journey led to the 2023 release of his debut album Alusa, Why Are You Topless?, and the release of its deluxe the following year.
The two projects have seen Bien collaborate with the likes of Rayvanny and Wretch 32, top Kenyan charts with little contest, and solidify his brand as a Pan-African pop beacon. Standout tracks like “Ma Cherie (Remix)” with the legendary Fally Ipupa, “My Baby” with Ayra Starr, and “Wahala” with Adekunle Gold & Shine TTW have made Bien’s solo run one for the books.
With an outstanding assist on the chart-topping “Extra Pressure” by Bensoul, a debut COLORSxSTUDIOS performance in collaboration with Spotify Africa, and recently finalized European and African tours, Bien clearly has his foot on the gas and is not letting up any time soon.
Over a gourd of palm wine, GQ South Africa spoke with Bien about Sauti Sol’s indefinite break, the Alusa, Why Are You Topless? journey, and the value of African unity.
GQ: How have you been liking Lagos so far?
Bien: It’s been amazing. We’ve achieved so much. We’ve seen the results in real-time. To be honest, it takes a village. And I have a village.
GQ: Your track “Wahala” with Adekunle Gold and Shine TTW has made you the first East African to earn a top 5 slot on the Nigerian charts. How does it feel?
Bien: It’s crazy. It’s nice for other people to infiltrate your market - they either have to work with you, or really fuck with your culture. I think that's what Afrobeats should do, to gatekeep in that sense. The rest of Africa sees this as international validation. So the sooner you guys know yourselves, the better.
GQ: These incredible wins are coming in the midst of Sauti Sol’s hiatus, which officially began after the band’s final performance at Sol Fest in Nairobi in 2023. What made you all decide that it was time to put the band on hold and focus on your individual careers?
Bien: Everyone is asking about my ex! [Laughs] Sauti Sol took a break, guys. We didn’t break up. That’s what we wrote in the press release. Our ending at Sol Fest was a bit dramatic. But how else do you end things than on a high like that?
To be honest, it started to feel like work. So the sooner we took a break and put it on ice, the better. So that when we come back, there’s new energy. We’re refreshed.
And imagine, we went for therapy before the break. People expect African men, especially boy bands, to have animosity. Unfortunately, we’re too classy for that. We’re the men of the 21st Century.
GQ: In those therapy sessions, did you talk about the process of transitioning from being a member of the band, to formally becoming a solo act?
Bien: We did, but the sessions were more about how we can maintain our joint ventures, because we have multiple businesses that we run together. We have a festival. We have so many entities that we've built over the years. So how do we maintain those?
How do we also maintain amazing relationships with one another? Because the brotherhood matters more than anything, and leaving cold turkey after 20 years is not easy. So how do we also transition into the new things that we're doing?
It's still a work in progress. We are still doing sessions together, we are still writing music for each other, we are still producing for one another. It's not like we've stopped. To us, we are still moving.
GQ: Even though it’s only a break, the hiatus announcement felt so emotional for everyone because of how symbolic of a group Sauti Sol is on the continent?
Bien: And if you’re the one feeling that, imagine me. I’m the biggest Sauti Sol fan I know!
GQ: Given that, what did it feel like working fully as Bien at first, without Sauti Sol?
Bien: It was a mix of everything. I would say, both consciously and unconsciously, I landed in a sweet spot. Even when I did the feature with Ayra, I didn't think it was going to be on the album. And then it turned out that, because of the timing, it came out at the same time that I was working on the album - so it ended up on the album.
A lot of things that happened around the album are very much divine. Some of the songs on the album were Sauti Sol rejects. They didn’t work when we tried recording them, and they turned out great on the album.
Some of the verses on the album are verses that I had from a long time ago and put in the place that songs go to die. And they came back to haunt me in a beautiful way.
GQ: Had you always planned on releasing the album so soon after the break?
Bien: In 2023, we didn’t have an album. Early in 2024, I was in London starting life afresh. This was just after Sol Fest.
I was like, let me go to London and look for sound. Look for a new direction. For Inspiration. And just in the last year, I feel like I've grown so much.
I'd already done an EP (Bald Men Love Better) with Aaron [Rimbui], and I knew I needed to cement my brand as an artist. I think there's no better way to cement your brand as an artist than putting out an album.
GQ: What message were you communicating with Alusa, Why Are You Topless?
Bien: Alusa is about who I am and the things that I value. It's a window for my fans to know what I stand for.
And definitely, it aims to leave you feeling better about yourself. When you finish listening to the project, I hope you feel better about yourself.
GQ: Your feature selection is heavily continental – you have Fally Ipupa, Scar Mkadinali, Ms Banks, Ayra Starr, Rayvanny, and more. What was it like working with these talents, and how did you decide which artists were the best fit for the album?
Bien: My policy with features usually is just to work with people who are my friends. And if they're not my friends, or if I've never met them or I've never heard their music, they need to be willing to leave the ego out of the room to make amazing art. Just come vulnerable.
All of those artists gave me vulnerability. They gave me a certain purity and a certain commitment to the album. And they're just personal friends, man. Ayra is a personal friend, Miss Banks is a personal friend. Those are my girls for real.
And Tay Iwar, that’s my homie. He also co-wrote some songs on the album, like “Lost and Found.” He came to a session as a songwriter, and he wrote me the verse. And I was like, “Go sing it, bro.”
I'm grateful to them for being the secret spice in the album because you know the features are the spice. Listen man, in all of those features, when they sent me their verse, I had to change mine. That's how good they were.
GQ: Post-Alusa, it seems like there’s still an ongoing effort to amplify Bien as continental and international brand?
Bien: The move is just to collaborate as much as possible. The intention, of course, is to go global. But in music, we collaborate in ways that our governments can't. The things that take the African Union years to do, musicians do with one song.
We unite African people on the dance floor, in the bedroom, in church - in all these beautiful places. That's why we collaborate: we collaborate to unite. Even just the lessons I get from working with someone like Fally Pupa, whose longevity is insane - that's why we do it.
And I think Africans should unite. We fight each other too much about who's winning what. Even in Kenya, someone will be like, “Why are you doing songs in Nigeria, blah blah blah.” I'm like, “Guys, relax. This is African music.” So let's collaborate a lot more. That's where the strength is.
And the strength is not only in established artists working with established artists. I didn't know Shine [TTW] when I went to the studio with him. We were in a writing camp, and he walked in and he blew my socks off. And we started working together.
That's how we build relationships. So it doesn't really have to be about big features, either. It's about artists who are willing to come into a room, leave the ego out the door, and put in the work.
GQ: How differently do you feel about fame and stardom now that you're fully operating as a solo act, as opposed to when you were in a group?
Bien: I think I'm so grown right now that it doesn't faze me anymore. And I'm so grateful that I started this solo journey right now in my life because I'm mature enough for anything.
There's nothing someone can come and show me, no contract you can give me, to phase me or make me feel some type of way.
So the fame doesn't really phase me anymore. I'm done being excited that people know me. I get excited when people in Nigeria say they listen to my music. Because, hey, that's a market I've been working in and on for a long time. But I’m just so I'm sober about many things. I've done the motions.
GQ: How differently do you see your career now than you did at the beginning of your career as an artist?
Bien: If someone told me even a year ago that I'd be here right now in Lagos and have an album that was chart-topping with these kinds of features, I would just be like, wow.
I expected success, but what it would look like, I didn't know. Anything I would have said then would have been a lesser version of what is happening now. What's happening now is more grand than I would have ever believed or imagined.
So I don't usually put caps on myself and say, “In the next five years, I want to be here.” It's nice to have goals, but it always looks much different and much better than you have thought because your mind has limitations. Your mind has all these barriers, and God’s plans are God’s plans.
Written By Blossom Maduafokwa