With “Like I Really Care,” Jungle Leez and her Cosmic Soul storm into the open

Introducing, with a song called “Like I Really Care,” artist Jungle Leez, a movement, an attitude, an energy, and Cosmic Soul — each of those and all of that.

The music dances, Jungle Leez’s voice dances, starting with a growl and sweeping up and down, high and low, the rhythms starting and stopping, by turns marching and running.

It is an exhilarating experience in listening.

“That song is more a movement for freedom, for freeing yourself from others, people and their opinions of you,” she said. “It’s all about being authentic, saying what you want to say and standing up for yourself.”

The song says:

I stay focused
Focused on my gifts
Focused on my drift
Focused on my lane
The vision in my veins

“Just stay focused,” she said. “Stay focused on the vision. Stay focused on your goals, on yourself — I’m getting better — and, yeah, you will get there.”

Her partner in the musical project she calls Cosmic Soul, the Atlanta based Money in the Building and Dirtey House Productions, puts it another way.

“From my standpoint, producing this track, me and Sancho (Money’s production partner in Dirtey House), we didn’t want people to put us in a box. We don’t want anyone to say Jungle Leez, she’s under the R&B section, or Money and Sancho, they just do R&B songs. We wanted to be trailblazing pathfinders at that point.”

That, the desire to be trailblazers and pathfinders, is “what the music came from,” said Money. The chord progressions in the original form of the song went from major to flat, and “Leez made it work.”

“It was kind of funky, but Leez made it work because she did that chord progression in her vocals and then we adjusted the music to it.”

Musically trained people, he said, have told them that “you broke every major rule but you made it work.”

This is where attitude comes in. Leez and Money talk about how this song is an attitude, not a feeling, though feelings do come in at the writing stage. Leez says she was upset when she wrote “Like I Really Care.”

“I was in a state where, really, I didn’t care, and I wrote the song in 30 minutes. Everything just came out to me, like I was maybe downloading the song.”

She describes the work with Money as listening to the music and “whatever comes in the moment, in the present moment, I will use that and write a song. I will record straight away because it is so hard to go back to the state that you were in a week ago, a month ago, to have the same essence.”

The movement, being free of the expectations and opinions of others, is a part of the energy of Cosmic Soul, what she calls her musical expression, a fusion of hip-hop, soul, reggae, pop, nu-soul, house, jazz, R&B and, no doubt, others.

She has a voice that can do about anything.

Her artist name reflects the variety in her music. “Jungle,” she says in her bio, is “the eclectic, colored, powerful side” of her music. “Leez” is the “suave and sophisticated side.”

All the sides, all the musical styles come together in Cosmic Soul. “Soul” because, she says, “soul is the base.”

Leez, born in Cameroon, in West Africa, lives in London after spending several years performing all over Europe, from eastern Europe and the Balkans to France, where she has won the GAFA Trophy as Best Singer of African Descent. She opened for Princess Eud in Paris and headlined the Orchid Festival at London’s Kew Gardens.

She, Money and Dirtey House are in a project to bring Leez and Cosmic Soul out in the recording and producing side of the music industry before returning to live performance in a big way.

“Right now, we’re focused on releasing and building a strategy, a marketing strategy, to really put our message out there, to not get lost in the crowd,” she said.

“Like I Really Care” and the track she released this year, “Waves,” are part of a larger project for her and Dirtey House. They are building to an album, but they want to feature each of the songs as a single first.

Money said their approach has been different, beginning with a massively creative phase.

“We have created enough music to make four to five albums. We have an album, but we want to showcase every song as a single because we feel that good about this music.”

“This is why this project is so exciting,” said Leez. “We have, maybe, between 12 and 14 songs, and from the first one to the last one, you’re traveling to different universes. No song is similar. They’re all different, but you can recognize the touch. This is Jungle Leez and Money in the Building. This is our vibes. This is our universe. I love this project so much for that, because it gave me the freedom to express whatever I wanted to.”

Next is a single called “Bombshell,” which will be more on her jungle side, more reggae, but “still soul.”

“The base is always soul.”

“Stay tuned,” said Money, “because we have another single following ‘Bombshell’ with Sizzla Kalonji, an incredible reggae artist.”

That one will be called “Army of Light.”

Leez is a performer — watch her videos. In London, she has performed here and there, but she is in the studio now, developing, with Money and Dirtey House, a marketing strategy and putting out singles.

“I just want to perform the new songs, to be honest. So, I’m waiting patiently to be able to do that.”

Until she is performing in a venue near you, or is on your TV screen, you can connect to Jungle Leez on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.

Amazon Music
Apple Music
Deezer
Napster
Pandora
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
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