A DNA Test Took GRAMMY Winner Matt B on a Journey Back to His Ancestral Homeland

A DNA test in 2019 changed the trajectory of Matt B’s life, and now the world is watching the full story unfold.

The Chicago-born GRAMMY winner has spent the last six years chasing an answer to one question that wouldn’t leave him alone: “Where do I come from?”

That search has now become ALKEBULAN III: The Water Remembers, the final chapter in his acclaimed ALKEBULAN trilogy, and it’s landed him right here in Nigeria, tracing his roots straight to Owerri, Imo State.

How it all started

Back in 2019, Matt B took an AncestryDNA test hoping for closure. The result told him he was majority Nigerian. But for a man who describes himself not just as African-American but as a “Freedman” and “Foundational Black American,” a percentage on a screen wasn’t going to cut it.

“When they found my living ancestral line, I said that it’s not enough for me to just know that information. I physically have to go there, and I have to meet them,” he said.

That drive took him through the slave routes of Ghana and eventually into Nigeria, where he traced his lineage to the Igbo people and reconnected with living family after centuries of separation.

From ALKEBULAN to a GRAMMY

The journey first became music in 2023 with the original ALKEBULAN project. A year later, ALKEBULAN II arrived, and it did something historic. The album earned Matt his second GRAMMY nomination and won the 67th GRAMMY Award for Best Global Music Album, marking the first GRAMMY win for East Africa, Uganda, and for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Instead of resting on that win, Matt B used it as fuel. Rather than treating the GRAMMY as the end of the story, he pushed the search even deeper, and the result is a body of work more concerned with what stays inside a person than where they physically live.

Enter ALKEBULAN III

ALKEBULAN III: The Water Remembers combines the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, with a lineup of African stars including Nigeria’s own Skales, Goya Menor, and Boy Spyce, Ghana’s Camidoh, and GRAMMY-nominated Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara. The Cavemen and Kabusa Oriental Choir also feature on the project.

One standout moment is “My Mother’s Song,” his collaboration with Diawara. The track draws from the true story of a girl from Sierra Leone taken from her family during the transatlantic slave trade in the late 1700s, who kept a melody from home alive through generations until it eventually helped her descendants trace their ancestral tribe. Matt B called Diawara’s contribution irreplaceable, saying her voice brought an emotional depth to the record that nothing else could.

The project isn’t just an album either. It spans a short film and a full feature documentary, all built around ancestry, cultural memory, and the bond between Africa and its global diaspora.

And Nigerians are already showing love. The album debuted at number one on the U.S. iTunes World Albums chart.

Why this matters beyond the music

Speaking to Forbes Africa, Matt B summed up the entire mission in one line: “I truly believe you can’t fully understand where you’re going until you understand where you’ve been.”

His story is landing at a moment when African heritage, DNA testing, and diaspora reconnection are becoming bigger business than ever, from tourism to entertainment to tech. Genealogy itself has grown into a multi-billion-dollar global industry, with ancestry now fueling partnerships across tourism, film, music, and culture.

For Nigerians, this hits different. An American artist with a GRAMMY on his shelf traced his blood back to Igboland, got on a plane, and made an entire body of work about it, featuring some of our own biggest names.

What do you think about Matt B’s journey back home? Would you want to hear “My Mother’s Song” or check out the full ALKEBULAN III project? Drop your thoughts and share this one with someone who needs to hear it.

: Matt B DNA test ALKEBULAN III The Water Remembers Matt B Fatoumata Diawara Matt B GRAMMY winner Matt B Igbo ancestry Matt B Nigeria