Afro-Soul

Libianca has been on the move. One day the Cameroonian American singer-songwriter is flying out to Paris, the next she’s in New York City. One month before attending New York Fashion Week in September this year, the Afro-soul singer-songwriter performed at Montreal’s Osheaga Music & Arts Festival, which was on her bucket list of music festivals to perform at. She joined the likes of SZA, Tyla, Raye and Chappell Roan on the lineup of one of Canada’s biggest music festivals, where 147,000 festivalgoers flocked to Parc Jean-Drapeau over three days.

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While traveling around the world, Libianca (real name Libianca Kenzonkinboum Fonji) has been mapping out time to lock in at the studio and finish the follow-up project to her debut EP, Walk Away, that she released in December 2023 via 5K Records Limited and Sony Music Entertainment UK. “‘Libianca is in her ‘I don’t give a f–k’ era,’” the 24-year-old artist tells Billboard over Zoom. “That is the best way to put it – because these past few months, I’ve gotten out of my head completely. I stopped running on the wheel and [quit] desperately trying to find more admiration and quickly follow my most recent accolades with more accolades and more glory. Just giving all that up and just going back to where it all started. Just doing this s— ‘cause I love it.”

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But from the outside looking in, you wouldn’t see any trace of the nightmare the “People” hitmaker faced just five months before. In April, Libianca announced she was postponing the North American leg of her Walk Away EP World Tour three days before it was set to start in her hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her manager M3tro raised the Cameroonian flag on stage at the Souled Out Festival in Sydney, Gold Coast and Melbourne in March, while the Australian flag was also waved during her performances. Uniting the flags was a moment to not only show respect to the Australian festival attendees, but to clarify Libianca’s nationality as “there was a time when people mistakenly believed she was Nigerian,” M3tro explains. But Libianca’s gesture of showing pride for her Cameroonian heritage, which she has previously displayed by posting emojis of her country’s flag numerous times on social media, sparked disapproval from armed separatists in Cameroon known as The Amba Boys, who sent Libianca death threats. 

The separatists misinterpreted Libianca — who moved to Bamenda, the largest English-speaking city in Cameroon, when she was four — waving the Cameroonian flag as showing support for the country’s long-serving president Paul Biya and his Francophone-dominated government. In 2016, Anglophones protested against the government for the French language being imposed in the courts and schools, fighting to preserve their cultural heritage and end decades-long marginalization. The resulting 6,000 casualties, according to the Human Rights Watch’s World Report last year, and more than 1,000 arrests between 2016 and 2021, according to Amnesty International, have heightened Anglophone secessionists’ desire to have their own independent state, named Ambazonia, in the ongoing Anglophone crisis.

“My holding of the Cameroonian flag was not to state in any way what side I’m on but a symbol of faith that someday, we THE PEOPLE will reunite and lead with love because we are better together when we help each other instead of hating each other,” Libianca wrote in a handwritten letter posted on her socials on April 12. “The flag is not Paul Biya. IT’S US, THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF CAMEROON, our vibrance and our culture together.”

Libianca told BBC in May that the death threats – which started coming in on March 23, the morning after her first Australia show in Sydney – included vile messages saying that she should “never step foot in Cameroon – or they would kill me on-site.” M3tro confirms to Billboard the numerous “alarming” threats went to the team’s business email, as well as his personal email. 

“At first when [the emails] came, it was just one, two – like, ‘OK, this is something where here and there you get a fan that would just be talking reckless, but it’s nothing,’” he recalls. But along with the death threats, he said separatists were sending money requests to management’s email, and there was a flood of nefarious comments on Libianca’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. “At this point, this is not a joke no more,” says M3tro. “So I really had to call the team. We had to talk and know how we’re gonna deliver it to her, so she can understand and be able to finish with the job she’s doing in Australia – rather than just cancel that [part of the tour] as well.”

Libianca says she took a day off of work after learning about the severity of the threats — which went on until her show in Perth on March 31 — “to sort through my emotions.” She and her team, including her North American reps at APA, proceeded to postpone the 14-date North American tour – not only for her safety, but also to protect her U.S.-based family members from Cameroonian separatists living here.

“For me, it wasn’t an easy thing,” M3tro adds. “As a manager, I see everything. [She’s] worked hard [rehearsing] and you’re trying to do [the tour], but now you have to put that on hold. And as a friend, I also see her heart, sweat and tears. It’s not an easy thing what she does, because the type of music she does, she has to express on a deep level. And it was like, ‘I’m supporting my country. I wanna bring my country to a brighter side and I’m facing backlash for certain things.’ And as a friend, to me, I could see the pain in her and that’s what hurt me.”

In Libianca’s aforementioned letter, she expressed how the threats “overshadowed” living out her dreams and making her country proud. After competing on NBC’s The Voice in 2021 – where she finished in the top 20 before being eliminated – Libianca’s dreams of having a music career turned into reality when she released her global breakout hit “People” the following year. The Afro-soul track – which spurred multiple remixes with Nigerian sensations Ayra Starr and Omah Lay, Mexican American pop star Becky G and Irish singer-songwriter Cian Ducrot – earned Libianca her career-first entry on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 80, and it reached No. 2 on the U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart. In 2023, she won the viewer’s choice: best new international act award at the BET Awards and opened for Alicia Keys’ Keys to the Summer Tour. Libianca was on cloud nine. But during this recent dark period, Libianca says that God and her support system – including her family, close friends and team – kept her afloat. 

“After that, I just saw [the situation] in a very positive light. I had a chance to speak up, not just for myself, but for others. That’s how I handled the situation really,” she explains. On April 24, she released the single “Gods People,” an anthem that calls for casualties to cease in Cameroon and for harmony to be restored. On X, Libianca wrote that profits made from the song’s streams went toward supporting victims of the Anglophone crisis, which literally hits close to home for her. What was once her “very vibrant” home of Bamenda, she describes, became deserted due to locals, including her family, having to seek refuge in the French-speaking regions of Cameroon. In 2023, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that Cameroon has the second-most-neglected displacement crisis in the world.

After the Cameroonian flag controversy, Libianca and her team made the call to follow through with her European tour in May and June. “[Her] family’s not [in Europe]. And we didn’t really feel like safety is something that has to be taken care of there. The rules are much different there than the U.S.,” says M3tro, adding that the majority of European countries have stricter guidelines on bearing arms. 

Libianca’s team still added extra security measures at her shows, such as security guards patting down attendees. For her set at Osheaga Festival, which came two months after her European tour, M3tro said the team took even more precautions, like not booking any of their lodging arrangements under her name, and having a security guard with her whether she’s in transit or walking on public grounds. 

With these safety measures, Libianca made it clear she’s not letting anyone or anything cause her to live in fear. Performing her healing music to the masses is part of her mission, and she plans on continuing to do so when she returns to U.S. stages after her upcoming EP drops. “When I get to go out on tour again, and I get to do it fully, it’s gonna be so good – because there’s gonna be a whole new project out, on top of other things that have already been out,” Libianca explains. “There’s going to be so much more diversity to my set of the things I can talk about with my fans. And the experience is going to be much greater than it was before.”

Following Walk Away, Libianca has released a handful of collaborations, including “Darling” with British singer Lewis Fitzgerald and “Side” with Ghanaian musician KJ Spio and Tanzanian artist Harmonize. She says her upcoming EP, which she reveals is “almost done” and slated to be released early next year, is influenced by her diverse music taste from her upbringing, from being in choirs at church and boarding school to listening to ABBA. She also teases that there are songs on the project that will “surprise people.” 

“The project itself has all the things that I’ve experienced since ‘People’ happened,” Libianca says. “I don’t think I’ve been open with my fans since then about how I’m genuinely doing, the things I’m going through. So I’m doing it through this project.”