Akeine

Born Laura Mujuni Blessing in Kampala on June 29, 1997, Akeine found her way into music at ten years old, after a guitar melody hit her hard enough that she couldn't shake it. Six years later she was already performing live, encouraged by the people around her to take the stage rather than just write in private.

Her sound splits the difference between her parents' record collections — her father's love of South African percussion on one side, her mother's Western listening on the other — landing on an Afro-soul blend that pulls in jazz, blues, reggae, dancehall, and R&B. She's described her own role plainly: translating sound and emotion into words. That translation work started publicly with "Wanted" in February 2020, followed the same year by "Mpumuza," a collaboration with Cxnrvd and Chxf Barry that became one of her early crowd favorites.

Her defining project so far is Niwe Akeine, a self-titled six-track EP released in February 2022 with producer Axon, who first floated the idea back in 2020. The EP carries "Correct," "Uninspired," "Legeza," and "Carry On" — the last featuring Joshua Baraka — and Tangaza Magazine credited it with the kind of "excellence and maturity" that pushed her up the ranks of Uganda's Afro-fusion scene. She followed it in 2023 with the singles "Untold," "Better," and "Saving My Love" featuring Kohen Jaycee, and holds additional collaboration credits with Wonder Jr, Kavali King, Navio, KSL Alpha, and St. Nellysade. Her catalog's most recent entry is "Blessed," released August 28, 2026 on Soundverse Africa — tagged Reggae/Zouk on DSPs, a step beyond the Afro-soul palette of Niwe Akeine and toward the reggae and dancehall corners of her sound she'd already been working in on earlier tracks.

Akeine is a member of the Bantu Vibes collective, the Kampala platform she credits with helping reshape the city's music scene, and she now performs regularly with her own live band, Bakeine, at rooms like The Patio, Kush Lounge, and Motiv. Asked about her role in her own music, her answer stays consistent: "I translate sounds and emotions, puts them into words, into music, into art."