Nearly 3 years after her last album, - and a SoulTracks Readers' Choice Award as "Best New Artist" - Nao Yoshioka has released Undeniable, an album born out of her unrelenting motivation - a motivation that has led her to create an album with a sublime concoction of warm, yet brisk live instrumentation and digital cutting-edge beats.
Nearly 3 years after her last album, - and a SoulTracks Readers' Choice Award as "Best New Artist" - Nao Yoshioka has released Undeniable, an album born out of her unrelenting motivation - a motivation that has led her to create an album with a sublime concoction of warm, yet brisk live instrumentation and digital cutting-edge beats.
In addition to Musicman Ty, producer of ‘I Love When’ from her album The Truth, Undeniable features production work of an all-star team including the “King of Indie Soul” Eric Roberson, Lorenzo Johnson (Ledisi, Maysa), Chris Dave and The Drumhedz keyboardist Daniel Crawford, and A Touch of Jazz production team alumni and Grammy-winning producer, Vidal Davis (Ne-yo, Usher) to name a few. The music was recorded live at the legendary Philly studio, MilkBoy the Studio, with Khari Mateen (Jill Scott, The Roots) at the engineering helm.
The album’s lead single, ”Got Me,” again produced by Musicman Ty, is a grey area love song of mixed feelings — not all love and hate is black and white. This song looks at the addiction of being together with someone which keeps you from leaving even if you’re deeply hurt and you can’t muster the courage to be alone. On the track “Liberation,” Nao delves into when there are times fear compels you to make mistakes in life. When you’re moving forward trying to wipe away anxiety and worries, there’s always your or someone else’s mistakes, or painful memories in the back of your mind trying to hold you back. Nao’s message is don’t live fearing your future, live like you have already achieved it. This is total liberation from fear.
“Up and Away feat. PHER,” produced by LA-based Lorenzo Johnson, features the extremely talented singer/songwriter Chris Turner (PHER) who, after living in New York for more than 10 years, recently picked-up and moved to LA, while Nao just recently moved to the US from Japan. Naturally their ambitions to start afresh in a new place synched to create a song that makes the listener just want to pack up and fly up and away.
Undeniable will certainly put Nao on the same level as her counterparts around the world, and turn a few heads along the way.
Undeniable is our latest SoulTracks Featured Album. Check it out below, and welcome back this incredible talent to SoulTracks.
Nao Yoshioka - Undeniable