M.anifest answers the call on Ezra Collective's Streets Is Calling

"Streets Is Calling" is a single by the London band Ezra Collective, featuring the Ghanaian rapper M.anifest and the South African singer Moonchild Sanelly. It came out in early September 2024, with DIY and Clash reporting it on 4 September.

The song is on the band's album Dance, No One's Watching, released by Partisan Records on 27 September 2024. A visualiser followed on 26 September. The band describes the sound as a blend of highlife, amapiano and afrobeats.

Who made it

Ezra Collective are Femi Koleoso, TJ Koleoso, Joe Armon-Jones, James Mollison and Ife Ogunjobi. The Koleoso brothers have Nigerian roots. In 2023, the band became the first jazz act to win the Mercury Prize, for Where I'm Meant To Be.

M.anifest is the grandson of Professor J.H. Kwabena Nketia, the ethnomusicologist who died in 2019.

Femi Koleoso told Clash the song is about that feeling when people call you up to say there is a party happening tonight.

What the breakdown found

BAR FOR BAR read the track as one phone call answered from three countries. M.anifest opens his verse with morning tea. The episode notes that in Ghana, "tea" can mean any hot morning drink, Milo or cocoa included.

The song also plays with double meanings: Dark and Stormy is the weather and also a rum and ginger beer cocktail. Moonchild Sanelly's part mentions Jozi, the nickname for Johannesburg, and uses galdem, London slang for girls.

M.anifest also mentions Charles Manson, the US cult leader, as a warning about dangerous strangers.

There is no published lyric sheet, so the breakdown transcribed the song by ear.

The awards

At the BRIT Awards on 1 March 2025 at The O2, Ezra Collective won Group of the Year, the first jazz act to do so. Dance, No One's Watching was nominated for Album of the Year, which went to Brat.