IBEYI don’t make spells anymore, they make offerings

Four years since Spell 31, IBEYI return with Offering — their first fully independent album. If Spell 31 was an act of transformation, Offering feels like what comes after: an open-armed surrender.

The record carries the electricity of everything that has shaped them in the years between. A return to Cuba, to family, to the ground their ancestors walked. Grief, love, and rupture settling into the sound. You can hear that accumulation in the way the album moves: Olokun unfolds with the patience of deep water, invoking the Yoruba deity, while Moshpit tears through with distorted percussion and industrial R&B. Tenderness and force give shape to each other. On the title track, they strip away every defence. There is no performance or ego in their vulnerability, as they find the ultimate power of giving away your all — even when it’s not reciprocated. “Don’t make spells anymore, Now I make offerings,” they chant, selflessly and free.

As they move between English, French, Spanish and Yoruba, language becomes a way of carrying different inheritances in the same hands, allowing continents, bloodlines and generations to answer one another. Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi have always shared an almost uncanny musical intuition, but Offering makes space for the edges of each sister without loosening the bond between them. Their individual voices become sharper, their trust in one another deeper.