Ghostpoet sings from a refugee’s struggle on comeback track ‘Immigrant Boogie’

Obaro Ejimiwe aka Ghostpoet has always maintained that he’s not a rapper, despite everyone calling him one.

The mood of new single ‘Immigrant Boogie’ proves further that he really isn’t, and that it’s hard to pin any one style on this London artist last seen in 2015, when his third album, ‘Shedding Skin’, won him a second Mercury Prize nomination.

The murky ‘Immigrant Boogie’ is kind of hunched to a post-punk pulse that matches its theme of a refugee’s dangerous struggle as they travel across borders. It features Charlie Steen of south London band Shame on backing vocal’s, too.

Ejimiwe says of the tracks

“It’s a first person account of a difficult journey across borders, partly intended to ask those who have questioned the arrival of refugees in recent times what they would do in the same situation.

The song is written in two halves – the first hopeful for a brighter future, while the second sees hope snatched away by forces beyond the control of the storyteller.

There is an important story to be told there, but I wrote the song in a way that aims to capture a broader human truth: that while we are all working for a better life for ourselves, we have to accept that we are not in control of the outcome”