Meet Solana, the technicolour ‘YoruPop’ star trailblazing her own sound

Solana appears on screen in a burst of colour, popping up from a Lagos hotel room with hair that effervesces in a fusion of different styles. Soft yellow roots quickly fade into bright orange strands; a block fringe frames her face and long, silky-straight locs form her signature mullet. When she sweeps it to the side, she reveals layers of intricate orange braids underneath. Like her hair, the Nigerian singer’s artistry is immersed in colour, from her texture-blending, pattern-clashing outfits right down to the stage name that she’s chosen. Her moniker melds fragments of her birth names, Busola and Ogunlana, but also coincidentally derives from the Spanish word for sun. It fits the blazing artistic world that she’s curated, captured in the neon-yellow cover art of her euphoric breakthrough track. Enter ‘Okunkun’, the disruptive, genre-defying single that exploded online this summer, where Solana proudly showcases the endless possibilities of African music. In an exhilarating collision of sounds, the song pulsates with Afrobeats and Yoruba drums at its core, embellished with synth-pop sonics, rock-infused production and the palpable energy of a 1980s dancefloor. With no formal roll...