GRAMMY Winner Matt B Traces His Roots Back to Nigeria Through DNA Journey

When GRAMMY-winning artist Matt B swabbed his cheek for an AncestryDNA test six years ago, he couldn’t have imagined where that simple act would take him. The search for his roots evolved into a profound journey across West Africa, culminating in ‘ALKEBULAN III: The Water Remembers’—a powerful trilogy finale that weaves together music, memory, and the unbreakable threads connecting Africa to its diaspora.

The Chicago-born artist’s quest began with a question that echoes through millions of African diaspora descendants: “Where do I come from?” His answer arrived in percentages and genetic markers that pointed him toward West Africa, eventually leading him from Los Angeles to the slave routes of Ghana and finally to Owerri, Nigeria. There, genealogical research revealed his ancestral connection to the Igbo people of Imo State—a discovery that transformed from data on paper into a living, breathing homecoming.

Fresh off his 2025 GRAMMY win for Best Global Music Album with ALKEBULAN II, Matt B chose to push deeper rather than rest on his laurels. ALKEBULAN III represents his most ambitious work yet: a multi-format project spanning an album, short film, and feature documentary. It’s built on a compelling premise—that while history can physically separate people from their homeland, it cannot fully erase the cultural memory embedded within them. This concept moved from theoretical to visceral when Matt and his wife Angela V. Benson, who produces and manages his work, made the pilgrimage to Ghana and Nigeria in June 2026.

Their journey through Ghana confronted the brutal history head-on. At Assin Manso Slave River, where enslaved Africans were bathed before their march to coastal ports, the couple participated in traditional blessing ceremonies honoring those fractured lives. Standing at Elmina Castle’s Door of No Return—that haunting threshold where millions passed before being forced onto ships—history stopped being abstract. For Matt, walking through these sites while actively tracing his own lineage transformed academic knowledge into something deeply personal and immediate.

But Nigeria offered something Ghana couldn’t: recognition and reunion. In Owerri, Imo State, Matt wasn’t just visiting—he was coming home. Community members embraced him through traditional ceremonies, with His Royal Majesty Eze Engr. Chidume Okoro bestowing upon him the Igbo name Ikechukwu, meaning “God’s power.” He received the chieftaincy title ‘Ahamefula’—”May my name not be forgotten”—a phrase carrying extraordinary weight for descendants of people whose names were deliberately erased. His Royal Highness Eze Leo Nwokocha later honored him as ‘Nwanne Di na Mba,’ meaning “A brother in a foreign land.”

The most powerful moment came without titles or ceremonies. Matt met living relatives in Owerri for the first time. Genealogy shifted from percentages to faces, voices, and embraces. He connected with family members and learned about a lineage including respected traditional leaders—a history his branch of the family had been separated from for generations. Suddenly, ancestry wasn’t something discovered; it was something restored.

This emotional journey saturates every element of ALKEBULAN III. Musically, the album bridges African traditions with R&B, Afrobeats, and sweeping orchestral arrangements recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. The collaborator list reads like a Pan-African summit: Fatoumata Diawara, Skales, Goya Menor, Boy Spyce, Camidoh, The Cavemen, and Kabusa Oriental Choir alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s richly layered work that feels simultaneously intimate and expansive.

The project’s title carries its own significance. “The Water Remembers” positions water as both witness and metaphor—the Atlantic Ocean that separated millions of Africans from their continent now becomes the symbolic bridge connecting them back. It’s a contradiction that pulses through the entire work: the same waters that carried people away now mark the path home.

ALKEBULAN III transcends personal narrative to speak to broader diasporic experience. Millions live with family histories disrupted by slavery, colonialism, and cultural erasure. Names vanished. Languages died. Specific villages and ethnic identities became impossible to trace. Matt’s journey doesn’t suggest every search will end with relatives and ceremonies, but it affirms something more fundamental: that the search itself holds power and meaning.

What began with a DNA test evolved into a meditation on identity, memory, and cultural reclamation. Matt B went searching for the people who came before him and found clarity about who he’s become. Centuries after the Transatlantic Slave Trade tried severing millions from their origins, his journey offers a different ending: some stories survive the distance, some names find their way home, and sometimes what history tried to erase is still waiting to be remembered.

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