Nigerian pop star Ayra Starr linked up with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, bringing together two young public figures whose careers occupy entirely different worlds but whose trajectories contain an intriguing point of convergence. One became a global Nigerian pop star. The other became New York City’s first African-born, Muslim and South Asian mayor….
It would be easy to describe the moment simply as another milestone in Amapiano’s extraordinary rise, but filling FNB Stadium tells us that Amapiano is popular. As Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa prepare to bring Scorpion Kings Live to more than 70,000 people at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium, Amapiano’s journey is becoming about more than…
As social media users turn to artificial intelligence to imagine themselves in the 1980s, Chaka Khan has responded with something better: the archive. The internet is busy imagining itself in the 1980s. Chaka Khan has receipts. Across social media, a new AI-driven nostalgia trend has users transforming present-day photographs into imagined portraits from the decade…
Afrobeats Heat Different continues to document what those sounds are doing while the map is still changing. From Young Jonn and Rema to Yemi Alade, FOLA, The Cavemen., Gyakie, Medikal, Octopizzo and a closing South African movement, this week’s 19-track Afrobeats Heat Different documents an African music ecosystem becoming increasingly difficult to contain within a…
There are artists who cross genres because the industry demands versatility, and there are artists whose music naturally refuses the borders placed around it. Yamê belongs to the second category. The French-Cameroonian artist has built his musical identity somewhere between rap, jazz, soul, R&B, French chanson, and African musical traditions. His voice can move from…
With KAESTYLE on the cover, this week’s Custodian Gems moves through 6uff, Kayode, Taene, Pabrymo, OluwaMillar, Ef Moon, Abefe, Sigag Lauren, Lil Frosh, Lasmid and Hunnyboy – a selection interested less in who already commands the conversation than in where attention might be moving next. Discovery becomes less useful when everybody has already agreed on…
Bringing together Maa, Swahili, Sesotho and Amharic alongside musical traditions stretching from Kenya and Ethiopia to Lesotho, Mozambique and North Africa, on Eshi, Jua’s latest CHIKKA experiment asks a more interesting question about Pan-African music: what if connection does not require sameness? Africa has spent generations being described through its differences. Different languages. Different borders….
The new collaboration AJE? arrives as one of the early releases emerging from Cinq Music and Nairobi-based Soul HQ’s developing relationship – bringing three distinct creative voices into a record whose significance extends beyond the song itself. There is something increasingly interesting happening around Nairobi’s contemporary music ecosystem. Not simply more releases. Not simply more…
From Blaqbonez and Seyi Vibez to KiDi, Sarkodie, Sofiya Nzau, Phyno and King Paluta, Music Custodian’s latest playlist update captures African music moving confidently across scenes, borders and generations. The final New Music Friday of August does not arrive with one dominant story. That might be its most interesting quality. This week’s Afrobeats Heat Different…
From Whitney Houston’s transformation of “I Will Always Love You” to Beyoncé’s reimagining of “Jolene,” Dolly Parton ’s relationship with Black artistry offers another way to remember a songwriter who understood ownership without confusing it with possession. Dolly Parton belonged unmistakably to country music. Born in rural East Tennessee, raised in Appalachia and eventually transformed…
