Ghanaian rapper M.anifest dives into the sound, the soul, and the spirit of his vibrant and deeply rooted sixth studio album ‘NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES,’ a genre-defying journey of self-reckoning, resilience, and radiant sonic fusion. Peeling back the layers of each song, he offers a candid look into the making of a bold and borderless record that’s as personal as it is panoramic – one that cements his place as one of African music’s most visionary voices.
“PUFF PUFF” – M.anifest ft. The Cavemen. & Flea
Fire on this mountain / Flames so exciting / We give thanks in writing / For this new day – it’s finally here.
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M.anifest’s latest album begins like a sunrise – self-assured and utterly magnificent, full of light and verve, an innate joie de vivre.
The Ghanaian rapper enters steady and clear-eyed, holding space for joy, for presence, and for the climb it took to get here – to his sixth studio album, to a worldwide cast of collaborators, to the global stage. These aren’t just lyrics; they’re a reckoning and a release. A new day has dawned, and he’s meeting it head-on. Urgent, invigorating, and unafraid to blaze its own trail, NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES is M.anifest in radiant full bloom.
Released March 13th via legendary hip-hop label Mass Appeal, NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES bursts with clarity and conviction – a bold and soulful body of work that bridges personal reckoning with panoramic cultural vision. It’s at once intimate and expansive, deeply grounded in West African roots while speaking to global frequencies. And for 42-year-old Kwame Ametepee Tsikata – who’s been releasing music under the moniker M.anifest as far back as 2007 – this album is as much a musical triumph as it is a mission statement.
Atwood Magazine previously praised M.anifest’s fifth album, 2021’s Madina to the Universe, as “an exhilarating deep dive into the artist’s world: One marked by being true to yourself, owning your roots, overcoming adversity, following your dreams, and never giving up.” As intrepid as that record was, its follow-up feels like a homecoming on even higher ground – colorful, compelling, and effortlessly captivating. Incorporating elements from jazz, highlife, Afrobeats, soul, rap, and more, M.anifest offers a cross-section of the 2020s African music canon through his own singular lens: He is the prism, the conduit, the glue.
“Hybridization remains at my core musically,” M.anifest tells Atwood Magazine. “This record was intentionally created to be bigger sounding, global facing, and more pithy in terms of how ideas were being communicated.”
The rapper adds that NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES came about by a series of fortuitous choices – “one key one being reconnecting with my longtime producer homie, Budo, who was living in Seattle at the time,” he recalls. “We locked in in 2023, for about a month and created the bulk of the record in Seattle and L.A. I naturally recorded in Accra as well, with ‘Highlands’ recorded in NYC.”
This album is about elevation – not just artistic, but emotional and existential. It dances between past and present, comfort and chaos, stillness and momentum. Featuring collaborations with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea, The Cavemen., King Promise, A-Reece, and Bien of Sauti Sol (among many others), it’s diverse by design – the product of a storyteller continuously reaching, stretching, and broadening his horizons. Created between Accra, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York, this record took shape through a two-year process of reconnection, collaboration, and fearless experimentation. “Forward-looking, ambitious, and pithy,” as he describes it, NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES is a vibrant mosaic of resistance, grace, and growth – culminating in the reflective closer “Second Hand,” a meditation on memory, ego, and inherited truths.
For M.anifest, this record continues the climb that Madina to the Universe began. But where that album reintroduced him as a boundary-breaking force rooted in his Ghanaian identity, NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES dares even further: It’s freer, riskier, more musically elastic – yet no less intentional. “Each project I put out in the world tends to be all part of a cohesive thought and musical universe,” he reflects. “Another way of looking at it is each of them propelling me up along the same journey. NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES is several more steps up the same ladder Madina to the Universe was on.”
The album’s title nods to his childhood home in Madina – a suburb of Ghana’s capital, Accra – where a guava tree once stood in the family yard – a symbol of growth, memory, and fruit earned through labor.
“The motivation behind the album was a need to chart a new path and make a fruitful climb,” M.anifest explains. “The house I grew up in as a child was in a place called Madina New Road. There was famously a guava tree in that house that is a part of many fond memories for me. The title is a nod to both the childhood memory and my personal raison d’être in making the album.”
As with all his work, the spirit of NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES lies in its construction as much as its content. “We made some bold decisions both in terms of song construction and how we decided to communicate ideas as a whole on the album,” M.anifest shares. “Songs like ‘TIME CATCH’ and ‘MY GOD’ break stride from what is typically known (structure-wise) from a Hip Hop artist. NRAGT also represents one of the most diverse musical choices I’ve made that all exist in a cohesive way on the same project. It’s rare that ‘FTYD,’ ‘WINE AND BLUES,’ and ‘HIGHLANDS’ can exist comfortably on the same art piece.”
Each of these songs stands tall on its own – and together, they reveal the breadth and depth of M.anifest’s artistic vision. “TIME CATCH” opens the record in a state of reverent joy, seizing the moment with a call to gratitude and action. “MY GOD,” featuring Atwood artist-to-watch Lee Lewis, is haunting and heart-wrung – a spiritual reckoning with betrayal and the need to reclaim one’s agency.
The jazz-laced “WINE AND BLUES” (ft. AratheJay) floats through weariness and grace. “On destiny’s road you’ll find a plethora of hurdles and days filled with the blues,” M.anifest explains. “But for those that embrace that they are chosen, coping is a natural instinct. Problem-solve with one hand, a glass of wine in the other. Ambition must live.” Meanwhile, “FTYD” (ft. A-Reece) channels righteous fire into a generational anthem of youth empowerment. “HIGHLANDS,” one of the album’s most softly seductive and moving moments, turns anguish into resilience – its message simple, powerful, and clear: Never, never, never die.
“Currently ‘WINE AND BLUES,’ ‘SAFE PLACE,’ and ‘HIGHLANDS’ are the ones I have most on rotation,” M.anifest says when asked about his own personal favorites. “One is a soulful reminder to self of destiny and purpose, another puts me in a resolved head space, and the third is how I make sense of a world in turmoil.”
As ever, M.anifest’s pen is as precise as it is poetic, and NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES is packed with lyrical gems that reveal themselves over time. Early standout “EYE RED” is a fiery portrait of desperation and determination on the margins, where M.anifest spits, “Decency is deceased / Wanna big men marry greed,” and later, “Twenty-four seven boys dey road / They are not smiling, stay on code.” It’s a raw expression of youth angst and economic frustration – what he calls “that mode or mindstate that African youth eventually get to… an excessively keen feeling of getting it by any means necessary.”
“Living in Ghana will make you ‘eye red,’” he says. “I know the feeling all too well.”
A clear highlight on the album, “PUFF PUFF” stands out not just for its vibrant energy, but for its particularly noteworthy cast of collaborators. Featuring The Cavemen. and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, it’s a soulful blend of styles (and characters) that feels both unexpected, and yet completely natural. “Problem no dey finish, Helsinki I’m guessing / Boys dey use humor to cover up / That currently currency low and dollar up,” M.anifest raps, capturing the tension between survival and soft defiance. The Cavemen.’s hypnotic hook rings out like a mantra: “Puff puff pass o / Keep the fire burning” – a reminder to press on through the haze. M.anifest calls it “one of my favorite ever collabs” – a radiant moment of musical synergy that captures the album’s spirit of genreless expression. “It’s so innovative and unexpected, yet sounds so familiar,” he says. With its breezy verses and trumpet-laced outro, “PUFF PUFF” is a celebration of survival, serenity, and keeping the fire burning.
On “MY GOD,” he delivers one of his most personal and piercing performances to date, cutting ties with a toxic love and the belief system it embodied: “Ɔdɔ adane me Nyame / But today I’m breaking all chains, me dɔ Nyame / If love is my religion and religion is opium / Find a new god, Kwame.” The hook of “FTYD” distills an entire ethos into one unforgettable couplet: “A lion has no place in a rat race / Free the youth, let them live in their truth.” And the album’s closing track “SECOND HAND” ends things with a wink and a gut-punch: “Every year it’s a cycle over here / Rebranded as new are recycled ideas – including this one.” These aren’t just verses; they’re dispatches from lived experience, delivered with clarity, cadence, and conviction.
M.anifest himself points to the album’s final lines as some of his personal favorites: “Every year it’s a cycle over here / Rebranded as new are recycled ideas / …Including this one / Flea market of thought you can pick one.”
“I particularly enjoy telling truths with a self-reflective bent,” he smiles – and that spirit runs throughout NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES, where clarity, conscience, and introspection meet in seamless rhythm.
Ultimately, NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES is more than a personal milestone – it’s a multicultural statement.
M.anifest pushes back against the flattening of African artistry, offering instead a rich, borderless tapestry that embraces complexity, contradiction, and communion. Through bold experimentation, heartfelt storytelling, and fearless self-examination, he delivers an album that is both unmistakably his and undeniably of this moment.
“I hope listeners understand that modern African popular music isn’t a monolith,” M.anifest shares. “And that this piece of art is a great design of what happens when Hip-Hop beautifully marries popular African music.”
NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES is a triumph – a masterclass in lyricism, vision, and genre-defying craftsmanship from one of Ghana’s – and Africa’s – most vital voices.
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside M.anifest’s NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES with Atwood Magazine as he takes us track-by-track through the music and lyrics of his fifth album!
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:: find NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES here ::
:: connect with M.anifest here ::
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‘NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES’ – M.anifest
:: Inside NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES ::
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TIME CATCH
Time catch = “It’s time.” I feel a sense of now. A fire underneath the surface. A fire that excites that needs to be let out. That’s the sentiment conveyed in this minimal but triumphant introduction.
EYE RED
In our lands the young feel an unbroken desperation. The kind that starts to feel dire and critical and has us walking around with bloodshot eyes looking for a way to make enough to paint the town red. ‘Eye Red’ is an expression of youth angst. It’s that raw feeling that prevails amongst the youth feeling the brunt of corrupt and incompetent systems and leadership. ‘Eye Red’ is that mode or mindstate that African youth eventually get to where there’s an excessively keen feeling of getting it by any means necessary. Living in Ghana will make you “eye red.” I know the feeling all too well.
BAD MAN ft. Vic Daggs II
Tapping into the role of a playful villain. One that moves with supreme confidence and mystique that intrigues women and puzzles men.
WINE AND BLUES ft. AratheJay
On destiny’s road you’ll find a plethora of hurdles and days filled with the blues. But for those that embrace that they are chosen, coping is a natural instinct. Problem-solve with one hand, a glass of wine in the other. Ambition must live.
PUFF PUFF ft. The Cavemen. & Flea
Puff Puff is a feel good song filled with ruminations on life while in a higher frequency state. It is one of the most seamless blends of highlife and hip-hop you’ve ever heard. I really dig how we switch up from the quintessential and dreamy highlife hook into the pithy verses driven by head banging 808’s, and then cap it off with that jazz trumpet solo. It’s one of my favorite ever collabs because it’s so innovative and unexpected yet sounds so familiar.
GYE NYAME & VIBES
To truly experience joy and freedom sometimes you need to send a prayer to the sky and then throw caution to the wind.
SAFE PLACE ft. Tobi & T’neeya
‘You know my mind is a weird place, my heart is a safe space.’ A ode to re-alignment. Navigating daily existence without internal conflicts that manifest externally.
MY GOD ft. Lee Lewis
Addicted to a torturous love. That Addiction can begin to feel like a deity. A conflict with faith. The story is a never ending one.
EASE MY MIND ft. Xperience
‘I see God in disguise when I look into your eyes.’ Loving another is an imperfect art. When all is said and done at least…’let me love you the way you like.’
SPIRIT RIDDIM ft. Bien & DarkoVibes
It sounds like summer in a drop top on a long stretch of empty road with a baddie staring into a serene sunset
FTYD ft. A-Reece
The fearless lamentations of the young untamed heart. Free The Youth Dem.
HIGHLANDS
The babies are born in places war torn. In many untenable situations. This is a song of hope for those whose fate never seems to smile on. The body expires but the soul’s forever.
HANG MY BOOTS ft. King Promise
A message of reassurance to a lover. It’s an “i got you and I love you” regardless, despite, in spite of, etc. No more love escapades. We go together perfectly well and I’m hanging my boots!
SECOND HAND
A soliloquy about nothing being new under the sun. Everything is indeed second-hand.
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:: find NEW ROAD AND GUAVA TREES here ::
:: connect with M.anifest here ::
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© Emmanuel Mensah Agbeble
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