thegiftedbarber Brings Warrior LXXII Out of Ghana, 38 Tracks Counting 72 Battles Won

Afrobeat Rhythms, Heavy Basslines and Pidgin Song Titles Shape a Long Ghanaian Album About Survival

thegiftedbarber is a barber and composer based in Kumasi, Ghana, and Warrior LXXII is his album about survival. It runs to 38 tracks, 33 of them under three minutes. Afrobeat rhythms sit beneath heavy, resonant basslines and sharp, metallic percussion. Out since 7 August 2025, it rests on the idea of 72 battles won. It also carries two things recent Ghanaian music has taken abroad: a darker sound and the Pidgin of the street.

thegiftedbarber’s opening track, Tears of Joy, is in our Afrobeat playlist below, a first taste of Warrior LXXII, and the coverage so far is collected on thegiftedbarber’s artist profile. The album came through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Press play, then keep reading for where the record comes from.

thegiftedbarber Brings Warrior LXXII Out of Ghana, 38 Tracks Counting 72 Battles Won

thegiftedbarber Made Warrior LXXII in Ghana, Where a Barber With a Degree in Music Writes Whole Albums

Start with the name, because it means exactly what it says. thegiftedbarber works as a barber as well as a musician. He puts the two trades side by side wherever he introduces himself. To him, styles and sounds are both things to craft, and he gives the music a barber’s care.

He came to that craft trained, too. He holds a degree in music and has Musixmatch certification as an artist. On his SoundBetter profile, he roots his writing in West African musical traditions. That training helps explain the scale of what he makes.

He works fast as well. His catalogue began with The Gifted Barber Anthem in April 2025, and a run of singles followed through May and June. Then August brought three full albums in a little over three weeks. Rhythm Vibes came first, on 1 August, with 27 tracks. Warrior LXXII arrived on 7 August with 38, and Getho Dreamer on 23 August with 37. Apple Music files each under a different genre: amapiano, Afrobeat and African dancehall, in that order. Warrior LXXII is the middle one of the three, and he built it around a story of endurance.

Ghana, where he makes all of it, has exported its own popular music for the best part of a century. The line runs from highlife through hiplife to the Afrobeats era. Its young musicians move between English, Twi and Pidgin, often inside a single song. Two of those languages, English and Pidgin, share the track list of this record.

Asakaa Drill, Black Sherif and the Darker Ghanaian Sound That Found Listeners Around the World

Those languages have also carried Ghana’s darker music a long way. Asakaa, the drill movement whose young rappers nicknamed their home city Kumerica, grew around 2020 and 2021. Its verses came in Twi and Pidgin over cold, heavy beats. Then it reached London, when Stormzy joined Yaw Tog and Kwesi Arthur on the 2021 remix of Sore. It showed that street language and a heavy sound could travel together. That pairing is also the raw material of Warrior LXXII.

From Konongo in the Ashanti Region, Black Sherif took that energy further. His 2021 breakthrough, Second Sermon, was a brooding song in Twi. Later, its remix brought in Burna Boy. Then his 2022 debut album, The Villain I Never Was, kept that confessional darkness across a whole record. Because that album travelled, a long, dark record from Ghana no longer has to lighten itself to be heard. That is the opening Warrior LXXII walks through.

What Ghana Put Into Warrior LXXII by thegiftedbarber, From Street Language to Heavy Bass and Sharp Percussion

Still, Warrior LXXII is an Afrobeat record, not a drill one. Instead, it comes at that darkness from another side. Afrobeat rhythm stays at its centre. Around it, the bass carries the weight and the percussion snaps rather than sways. Dark pads hold the tension underneath.

It also speaks that street language. Many of the 38 titles use Pidgin, the English-based language spoken across West Africa. Among them are Dem Go Talk, Fire Dey Burn, Pain Go Fade, Through De Storm and Rain No Fall. Others stay in standard English, from Bridges to Whispers of Courage.

Listeners who came to the genre through Burna Boy know his habit of blending Afrobeat with dancehall. He calls the mix Afro-fusion. thegiftedbarber sits close to that line too. He files Warrior LXXII under dancehall on Audiomack and under Afrobeat on Apple Music. Both traditions, then, shape how he hears his own record.

The running order then shows what he built from that sound and that language. Tears of Joy opens the album at just over three minutes. The early titles keep moving: No Delay, Bridges, Chase Am. The middle stretch turns inward with Cut My Pain, Fire Dey Burn and Life of Repairs. At 3:14, Life of Repairs is the longest song on the record. Then the last third rebuilds, through Through De Storm and Rain No Fall. The run home takes in Stand Tall, Phoenix and Together We Rise before the closer, When Stars Align.

Seventy-Two Battles, Fought in Short Rounds, Give Warrior LXXII by thegiftedbarber Its Shape

Those 72 battles are his image for the moment someone rises above the chaos and claims what is theirs. The short running times suit that image. Each song makes its point and moves on. So the album plays like a series of rounds rather than one long set.

AfroMusic.News’s curator team: “Thirty-eight songs is a lot to ask of anyone, so start with Fire Dey Burn and Phoenix back to back. One is the low point of the story and the other is the way out. Together they explain the whole album in a little over five minutes.”

thegiftedbarber, credited as Kingsley Offei, wrote the words and music of the opening track and produced it himself. The whole album also carries his name on its copyright line. Because of that, the arc of the titles reads as one person’s plan, from the first track to the thirty-eighth.

Warrior LXXII is for listeners who like their Afrobeat with the lights turned down. It belongs with the darker end of Afro-fusion and with cinematic electronic music. Anyone who likes heavy, industrial production that still keeps a groove should hear it too. The record began as one composer’s account of 72 battles. Heard whole, it is also the work of a Ghanaian barber with an exact hand in both of his trades.

Stream Warrior LXXII on YouTube Music, Boomplay and SoundCloud. Find thegiftedbarber on Spotify, Apple Music and his YouTube channel. Follow him on Instagram, TikTok, X and Facebook.