The second preview of the up-and-coming singer and MC’s upcoming debut album, Get Your Money Up is a funked-up anthem about making your dreams become a reality — about showing up and putting one foot in front of the other to move forward. “There are a lot of people that do nothing more than brag about their goals and dreams — but 80% of it is fabricated,” Alpha says. “This song is about seriously pursuing your dream — whether it’s music, the arts, a side hustle, education, or a life goal. Nothing happens unless YOU put the effort into it over the long term. There are no cheat codes to success in the real world.” Get Your Money Up is both an optimistic blueprint to following your dreams and a biographic tale of Alpha’s own ambition to get to this point in his career. Alpha Centauri (real name: Sean Chigumba) is originally from Zimbabwe, where he was educated (and later worked) as a lawyer. However, after passing the bar and becoming licensed in his homeland, he realized that the legal life was not for him. He changed gears and got on a plane for Canada with the plan of giving music a serious shot. Alpha made quick use of his new B.C. home by releasing a single (with fellow ex-pat Zimbabwean Swisher) about his experience leaving home (Away in 2016), which he self-produced on a 12-year-old laptop on his apartment’s kitchen table. Away was recently used as the theme to the feature film Evelyne, now streaming on the Roku Channel.
Alpha then set his sights on getting in front of local live audiences, performing shows with local hip-hop artists such as Moka Only, Illvis Freshly, Mo Moshiri (of Sweatshop Union) and Sirreal to refine his craft. During this time, he also began a surge of songwriting, which continued through the COVID lockdowns of 2020. Eventually, Alpha caught the ear of producer Wes Smith and engineer Justin Hicks. Eight songs were recorded with a full band between January and October 2022, with the Afrobeat-tinged first single I’ll Fly released in January 2023.
