SPOTLIGHT: Meet Rose May, David Alaba’s sister on a mission to win hearts

“There’s no one like me here in Africa” was the most profound phrase uttered by Austrian-Nigerian singer Rose May Alaba during a recent sit-down with journalists.

The singer is the sister of Bayern Munich ace David Alaba, and while her brother is winning trophies in football, Rose May is seeking to win hearts through music. Particularly, Nigerian hearts.

“Since I have been infusing Afrosounds into my music, people are accepting me more,” Rose May said with a sheepish smile plastered on her face as she unveiled ’50-50 Love’, her new single featuring Mayorkun.

The night prior to the sit-down, she had spent hours on set having fun and labouring through the process of shooting a music video directed by Sesan.

“Mayorkun. I love him, love his voice and his music,” she adds while speaking about the Kiddominant-produced song.

On the female front, Rose May, who had to ditch football for music, is keen on working with Yemi Alade.

The 24-year-old went on to talk about the new ’50-50 Love’ song and her plan to charge into the Nigerian music industry.

Here goes…

50 -50 Love, that’s your new work. Did you write the song?

First of all, it’s produced by Kiddominant and I wrote my verse. We did the beat and Mayorkun wrote his verse. It was really awesome working with them, it was a great experience.

How did you discover you had a talent for music?

It’s been in me since I was born. As I said before, growing up in a musical home with my mum as a singer and my dad as an artist, we always had music in our home and it was very important to us. I feel like God has blessed me with a great talent to sing. I have great parents who supported me from the very beginning, who educated me in putting me into piano classes and then after that, I learnt how to play the guitar and watching Youtube videos and that’s when I started writing my own songs so it’s always been there like music has always been in me.

How much of the Nigerian music industry have you been able to take in?

We’ve been here since Wednesday now and these few days I have been seeing a lot of the music industry. We were at Universal Music Nigeria yesterday, we talked about the music industry. I just love Afrobeats, I love working with new artistes. I feel like I can learn so much about the music. I’ve been at the studio been Spotless. I’m working on new stuff. I know its tough cause they feel like for a woman coming in, it’s not easy but I know that there’s no one like me here in Africa so I feel like if I infuse Afrosound to the music I have been doing, people will appreciate it and I can feel the love already so I think I’m on the right track.

You have to connect with the fans to succeed. Are you considering staying back in the country to build that following?

Of course, that’s why we like coming here very often to get to know everything to get to know…. It’s kind of hard with my father being the manager of my brother and me, so it’s hard to jiggle out the time but right now, we’re staying. We’re still working on that but for now, we just want be present here.

You wrote the theme song for the Special Olympics, how did you seal that?

We’ve been in the Coca-Cola family for a long time through David and he’s been doing commercials for them a lot and they just believed in us. They asked me basically if I want to write a theme song for the Special Olympics 2017 and I was all in for it.