{"id":9540,"date":"2026-09-05T19:50:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/?p=9540"},"modified":"2026-09-05T20:07:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T20:07:04","slug":"the-abuja-girl-who-just-became-apple-musics-africa-rising-cover-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/the-abuja-girl-who-just-became-apple-musics-africa-rising-cover-star\/","title":{"rendered":"The Abuja Girl Who Just Became Apple Music&#8217;s Africa Rising Cover Star"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apple Music names Abuja singer ru. its September 2026 Africa Rising cover star after her new project, Silk II. Here&#8217;s her story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, so here&#8217;s a fun one. There&#8217;s this singer from Abuja who goes by &#8220;ru.&#8221; small letter r, small letter u, full stop and everything, and Apple Music just handed her one of the biggest spotlights an African artist can get right now.<br \/>She&#8217;s the new Africa Rising cover star for September.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;ve never heard of ru. before, don&#8217;t worry, you&#8217;re not alone. That&#8217;s kind of the whole point of Africa Rising. Apple Music uses it to pick out artists who are clearly going somewhere, before the rest of the world catches on.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her real name is Ruth Unde, and honestly, her sound is hard to box in. She mixes Afropop with soul and a bit of alternative R&amp;B, and there&#8217;s this thread of faith and honesty running through everything she makes. She&#8217;s not the type to write generic love songs just to chase a hit. She writes from real life, and somehow that makes her music feel like it&#8217;s about your life too.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Right now, she&#8217;s riding the release of her new project, Silk II. Five tracks. And it&#8217;s basically her continuing to explore what it means to be a woman, to be soft and sure of yourself at the same time.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You might already know some of her earlier songs without realizing it was her. Remember &#8220;i think i love you&#8221;? That was ru. Same with the sequel, &#8220;i think i love you 2,&#8221; which had Magixx on it. And &#8220;Woman,&#8221; that empowering one that a lot of people related to? Also her.<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So this Apple Music moment isn&#8217;t coming out of nowhere. It&#8217;s the payoff of steady, quiet work.<br \/>When she found out she&#8217;d been picked, she didn&#8217;t try to sound cool about it. She said:<br \/>&#8220;To be seen in this way is a gift. I&#8217;m deeply honoured to be part of Africa Rising, and grateful for the opportunity to share a piece of my story. I hope this moment encourages others to believe that gentle beginnings can blossom into moments like this.&#8221;<br \/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That last line hits, doesn&#8217;t it? Gentle beginnings blossoming into something big. That&#8217;s basically every artist&#8217;s dream, and she&#8217;s living it in real time.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As part of the honour, her music gets pushed across the Africa Rising playlist all month, she&#8217;s sitting down with Ebro Darden for a chat on Apple Music 1, and she&#8217;ll also show up on Africa Now Radio with Nandi Madida.<br>So keep an ear out. There&#8217;s a good chance &#8220;ru.&#8221; is about to become a name you hear a lot more often, and now you can say you knew about her before it was everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apple Music names Abuja singer ru. its September 2026 Africa Rising cover star after her new project, Silk II. Here&#8217;s her story. Okay, so here&#8217;s a fun one. There&#8217;s this singer from Abuja who goes by &#8220;ru.&#8221; small letter r, small letter u, full stop and everything, and Apple Music just handed her one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[445],"class_list":["post-9540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trends","tag-ru"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/images281429.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9545,"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9540\/revisions\/9545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isokovibe.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}