Sampa the Great: Nu Zamrock review – a full-circle moment for a world-class act

In 2019, as Sampa the Great, Sampa Tembo became the first woman to win an Australian Recording Industry Association award for hip-hop or rap; she’s also the first (and only) person to win the Australian music prize twice. But she’s said consistently over the past decade that, while her music career began in Australia – when she was based here between 2013 and 2019 – she is still Zambian-born, Botswana-raised.Having returned to Africa to live and record, she told the Guardian in 2022: “I was constantly being called Australian. I felt that I really had to defend Zambia and Zambian music and culture. The fact I was raised in Botswana and heard this music as I was being raised there fell to the wayside.”Does Australia’s eagerness to claim her as Our Sampa come in the same earnestly admiring spirit as we claim other imports whose careers took off from an Australian launchpad, like, say, Crowded House or Rebecca Gibney? Or is there an ugly, acquisitive streak in the disproportionately white Australian music industry that rushes to congratulate itself for “producing” “diaspora artists” like Tembo, who make our national creative output feel less stale and pale?Tembo’s blend of blends ‘settles in beautifully on repeat listens’ Photograph: Loma Vista Recordings/PAWith the sounds of amapiano and Afrobeats entering the global pop charts via artists like Tyla and Burna Boy, mainstream western audiences are beginning to have a better grasp of the unique qualities and context of African pop and rock fusion genres, not to mention a better understanding that music was not invented in Liverpool in 1960.In Nu Zamrock, Tembo also seems to call out peers who only start repping the culture when the mainstream catches on: “You’ll find me in Africa winding my waist / You ever been global? You just in the States,” she sneers on Location, nodding to her own explorations of the world: “Switching the game like a young relocation / Find me in Ghana and not on vacation.”Her move back to Zambia, and her discovery of her family connection to Zamrock codifiers WITCH, also heavily informed and framed her 2022 album, As Above, So Below, and at first it’s a little hard to discern what is supposed to be “Nu” about her approach. But the full-circle feeling of her blend of blends – the tidal wave of psych-rock influence that has travelled the globe from the UK and the US in the 60s, to 70s Zambia, to Australia, through modern jazz and soul, all the way back to southern Africa – settles in beautifully on repeat listens, tumbling even more of those distinctive polyrhythms, kalindula and raw, high-gain guitar fuzz in alongside the self-possessed snap of her lyrical style. Collapsing genre further, she stacks repeated references to being an African and Zambian “rock star”. It’s as though she has relaxed a little as both a performer and producer – the way you can when surrounded by people for whom you don’t have to perform an identity – without sacrificing any discipline.Through her sonic evolution she remains thematically consistent: Nu Zamrock is at least the third of her records to contain lyrical nods to the concept of “a seat at the table”, and she gives us an update on the “demons” she described at her heels on Shadows, the opening track to As Above, in the stomping Simon Says: “I say all my demons is dead.”The early single Can’t Hold Us is a sync-ready anthem about resilience featuring her sister Mwanje; the unflinching Canary hits like a truck; while the lush Catch If You Can lets the listener catch a breath. A guest spot from Sia in Supernova fits surprisingly well – there is a rat-a-tat quality to their respective deliveries that works beautifully – but not even Sampa’s charisma is a match for the pop juggernaut’s steamrolling, blocky toplines. Tembo has never sought commercial approval but the softer tracks here remove any doubt that she could crush pop music if she wanted to.Later, on Star, she croons affirmation to someone who might be wondering how to get from the crowd to the stage: “Did you know you could be just the way you are, love / To be someone like me?”Nu Zamrock is the sound of Tembo telling the industry that how it chooses to perceive her is none of her business. Whereas back in 2018 she wondered “How you supposed to be Black down under?” on Simon Says she now shrugs cheekily: “Sampa the Great is the problem I’m waiting for them to solve.” For her, delivering a world-class view of a widescreen world is no problem at all.