While learning at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, Sampa the Great encountered an “intense culture shock” — one that just about stopped a journey of self-exploration and expression of her African tradition.
“Being visited with the actual reality of how the world works and how the world sees me as a young African girl, that experience was huge enough for me to actually stop expressing myself,” she says of this time interval, which contributed to a two-year lull in writing.
But that point in America was eye-opening for the now-29-year-old, serving to her turn out to be considered one of up to date rap’s most valued voices, because of her fearlessness and unparalleled potential to explain the world round her.
Growing up in an inventive household, the Zambian-born, Botswana-raised Sampa Tembo began taking piano and singing classes round age 9. During this time, she began journaling and poetry, sparking an affinity for songwriting. The younger Sampa discovered the “catharsis” of “being heard” as the center of 5 kids, and, later, writing supplied her with the potential “to document [her] existence.”
“[My ‘why’ as a writer] is to exist and to feel,” she tells SPIN over Zoom, brushing her brassy crimson aspect bang away from her eye with a smile. Despite it being almost 8 p.m. her time when she calls from Lusaka, Zambia, she’s vivacious whereas discussing her writing course of: “It’s a very therapeutic experience that also allows yourself to see you through a bird’s eye view versus [through] tunnel vision, which is usually how we go through life as human beings.”
Sampa’s early appreciation for hip-hop, particularly acts like 2Pac and Lauryn Hill, helped her understand the connection between poetry and music. In round 2013, after her time learning in California, Sampa moved to Australia to pursue an audio engineering diploma and begin engaged on her music profession, unbeknownst to her dad and mom. Her first mission, 2015’s The Great Mixtape, launched her sharp fusion of political, social, and religious themes, amplified by African, hip-hop, and neo-soul-inspired sonics.
As her fan base expanded, so did her music, from the reflective method of 2017’s Birds and the BEE9 mixtape to her eclectic debut LP, 2019’s The Return. She collected 4 ARIA Awards between 2019 and 2020 each for her album, her empowering single “Final Form,” and her general artistry. She additionally, crucially, carried out as the opening act for musicians like Hiatus Kaiyote, Little Simz, and Kendrick Lamar on her come-up.
“I remember doing the sound check [for Kendrick’s Auckland City Limits show in 2016] and his setlist was on the ground,” Sampa says. “It got me thinking [that] I really should take this thing seriously, because I’m here at a point where I have the opportunity to express myself musically and be an artist for an artist who I’m inspired by. That’s when I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna be an artist.’”
Sampa The Great’s second album, As Above, So Below, represents her energy as an African lady. Birthed after a return house to Zambia throughout the early days of the pandemic, the mission explores Sampa’s interior ideas (“I can be hard, I can be soft, I can be anything under the stars,” she affirms on the confidence-boosting intro “Shadows”) and her most prideful moments but (“I think [giving a fuck] is beneath me now, I ain’t even trippin’ no more, no more, no more,” she raps and sings with conviction on the energetic “IDGAF,” which options British-Ghanian artist Kojey Radical.)
“It’s been a very important journey back home,” Sampa says of her time in Zambia. “Just being able to come back to the place that inspired me, [journeying] back to why I started being an artist in the first place, connecting with my younger self who wanted to express herself.”
Sampa says As Above, So Below gives a “lighter air” than her earlier tasks, the results of “shedding away” the have to show who she is: “[The album is] more of the focus on why I’m making music and why I love expressing myself through music, versus defending [why I’m] making music and defending who I am.”
Her aplomb on wax takes the type of an alter-ego, Eve, who permits her to “be the woman that [she’s] always wanted to be,” remaining steadfast in a discipline she was apprehensive to hitch as an African lady. “A woman who raps is not even in the conversation when it comes to what people expect from African women,” she notes. “It feels like I’m breaking a stereotype and changing the direction of what we define as what an African woman ‘does’—and I’m tying that to the first woman, scientifically, being Eve.”
Throughout the album, Sampa pays homage to the music and cultural affect of the African diaspora — a “full-circle moment.” Zamrock, a Zambian-created fusion of African music with psychedelic rock and funk, percolates all through the affirming “Can I Live.” Global icon The evocative vocals of Angeliqué Kidjo, who “paved the way for African artists,” punctuate the introspective finale “Let Me Be Great.” Zambian musicians Mag44, Sam Nyambe, Sammy Masta, and Solomon Plate are credited alongside Sampa as producers. “These are artists who I saw growing up, who [expressed] themselves musically and inspired me to push our culture and our country forward,” she continues.
This quest for private liberation has not been simple for Sampa — her stage identify, she notes, serves as extra of a lifelong aim fairly than a braggadocious moniker. But all of those cases have formed her fashion, sound, and spirit.
“For me, [being ‘the great’] is this goal to attain, to be the greatest version of myself,” she says. “It was more about ‘I’m going to be the biggest version of myself, and that will be the sum of the great versus me,’ especially at that time. I felt the opposite of that when ‘Sampa the Great’ was created.”
“The thing that I don’t sort of give myself a small pat on the back for is the courage that it took to create these projects,” she provides. “They represent something bigger than me, and I was loud and bold in that representation. I’ve enjoyed the process of the journey instead of focusing on the destination.”
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