+ (614) SAMPA THE GREAT

Issue 02Issue 01Music

4 Nov

Written By Francesca Nwokeocha

PHOTOGRAPHY Tatenda Sasa

STYLIST Tio Nason

FASHION Bwana Dee

HAIR STYLIST Malanga Mukanzo

MAKEUP Tika Banda

WORDS Tariro Mukando

My first introduction to Sampa the Great was through her song Blue Boss in 2016. She had just finished supporting Kendrick Lamar on the Australia and New Zealand leg of his good kid m.A.A.d City tour. After realising that the artist who recorded Blue Boss was the same artist who had toured with Kendrick, I had to know everything I could about the Black woman with the afro on her cover art. My second introduction to Sampa the Great was on Zoom several years later. As I anxiously fretted about lighting and my best angles to conduct the interview, her agent allowed us to enter the Zoom and introduced us. To say I was starstruck would be an understatement, but the more Sampa and I spoke, the more I realised that despite being a chart- topping global artist, she’s still a Black woman living in the diaspora just like me. The relatability was real. She was in her home country of Zambia working on the follow up project to The Return, her widely celebrated and award-winning album.

614. You were born in Zambia but raised between Botswana and Zambia, what was it like growing up between those two countries?

SAMPA. I know I picked up a lot of my characteristics from the people of both places. Batswana are funny and charismatic. Zambians are passionate. They go for whatever they put their minds to. They’re also people who can be content and not need too much to fulfil themselves so I got those from my upbringing, and it helped form the character of who I am now. It also left a middle ground where I felt like I didn’t belong to either place, which is a huge identity thing that happens to people in the diaspora. I know home’s there, but I’ve never been there or been there long enough for that to be called my home.

614. The concept of home is something all of us in the diaspora think about regularly. How have you cultivated a sense of home within yourself?

SAMPA. Being away from home definitely affects me; emotionally, mentally, and physically. I’ve had to cultivate a way for me to take what home is to me and bring those with me. If it’s physical, it’d be my mum’s scarf or something from my little brother, or just music or videos from home. Any little thing that can remind me of home while I’m not at home. Also, some personal stuff and personal notes that I carry with me and just make it known to my spirit that I will be back.

614. I’ve observed that we [Black people] sometimes find ourselves trying to assimilate in predominantly white spaces, especially when it wasn’t cool to be Black. How did you navigate this time in your life?

SAMPA. When I first came to Australia, the first two years when I was in university, I noticed a lot of ways that we are forced to assimilate. There would be times when I would come to uni wearing an all Chitenge outfit and I’d just get so many looks and I’d be like ‘What’s going on?’ or I’d have my afro out and people would want to touch my hair and I’d think, ‘What is wrong with people?’. I recognised that the days I didn’t have anything to tie me to Africa on me, there’d be more communication with me. Like ‘Oh okay, so when I am actually expressing my culture you fall back, you’re afraid or intimidated, but when I assimilate or I look like you or I talk like you, this is when I’m approachable?’. You just see how assimilation is taught and how reactions to you when you aren’t assimilating are. I picked that up pretty early during my stay. That’s probably why you [mainstream Australia] don’t understand multiculturalism in the first place, because every time somebody expresses themselves or their culture you get uncomfortable and defensive, so regardless of how you feel I will express myself.

614. From braids to cornrows to your afro, your hair represents so much to Black women everywhere. What has your relationship with your hair been like?

SAMPA. It’s been a very interesting journey. Off the bat I was always the afro kid and it was made a huge point by the media. I always found that really strange. It always became a thing and I took that on because you don’t see this often or it’s deemed unkept. From time to time I’ll wear my braids and I feel like there were certain moments in my career where I was not allowed to do anything outside of that. That’s one thing musically and as an artist; for people to understand you, they try to box you into one thing. ‘You’re that, that’s very Black power of you, keep the afro’. Black women are endless in what they can do with their hair, with what they can do with their beauty, but I definitely understood the power of having my afro out and knowing that like this I am beautiful, regardless of the European standards that are put on us. So hair – you know a lot of people will be like ‘ it’s just my hair’ – but it’s very, very political. It says a lot, and as an African it’s within us. It’s the way we communicate and what tribe we’re from. It’s our identity, and I knew that at a young age. It’s definitely something I’ve grown with and shown in my artistry and will continue to do so.

614. For many of us, it takes a long journey to reach a point of being unapologetically Black. What advice would you give to Black people who are trying to reach that level of confidence in their identity?

SAMPA. I also believe as Zambians, we are often humble to a fault. So entering a new space is like ‘Okay, how do people do things here?’ as opposed to ‘here I am!’. We think we must come in quietly and not disrupt anything. That’s still a thing, and that’s a cultural thing that I also had to grow from. The community helped me see more people like myself, more culture like mine and reminded me daily that what I was experiencing is not madness, it’s not something that’s just in my head. If you have that type of community with you, you’re definitely going to get to a point of confidence.

“Regarless of how you feel, I will express myself.”

— Sampa The Great

614. What’s it like being a woman in Hip Hop and Rap?

SAMPA. It’s a love-hate relationship, it’s a real love and hate relationship. You have to look at the culture versus Rap, what rap is, what rap personifies, and who is the main person within rap culture. There are even certain songs that I can’t sing or even features that I’ve had to cancel on, because I’m like ‘Yo, as a woman I can’t be on this song. Do you understand what you’re saying?’ Rap has definitely perpetuated a lot of misogyny. You come in as a woman who loves poetry and who loves rap, and you see what you’re up against and you’re like ‘This is really hard to navigate’ and it still is.

Even more so, I’m more in the realm of soul music because of that very thing. It’s definitely a tight rope that I’m still navigating to this day. It’s really hard to be part of a genre that sometimes fights against you, but you still uplift the very people in the genre.

614. What are your thoughts on the current state of the Australian music scene?

I’m so so happy to see so many young Black people and people of colour in the industry. It’s just like popping up from everywhere. From the standpoint of someone who really needed women in Hip Hop around me, it’s so nice to see there’s a whole gang, a whole wave of women who have sisters to hit up and be like ‘Yo, what do you think about this and that’. These Black artists aren’t afraid to showcase their culture, they’re not afraid to say ‘No, that’s racism’. Whereas before it was like, ‘This is going to affect my job, this is going to affect my money, I don’t wanna rattle people too much’ which is understandable but there’s more fierceness.

What I’m not excited about is things still not being owned by Black people or people of colour. This is on a label end, a promoter end and even on a magazine end but we can cross that one off the list now! When you have these labels or these promoters owned by people who look like you, you have an understanding there. I don’t think we’re there yet until we start seeing some ownership and that’s something I’m definitely looking forward to. Of course, the most negative is that we’re still a racist industry on the inside. It’s a racist country, so it’s going to be a racist industry. Systemic racism is there, it’s in plain sight, the blueprints are still there, and that’s something that we definitely have to fight against.

614. 614 Who are some [Australian] artists that you think we should all be paying attention to right now?

I’m gonna be so biased because I know them but Pookie from Melbourne and definitely BARKAA, Glo from Sydney and JK 47 is amazing. There are so many artists and we have them in surplus. When could we ever say that? When did we ever not count everything on our fingers? To have it in surplus to the point where you can’t even remember everyone, that’s where you wanna get to. To know there are stories being told that are not the usual stories that we hear in the mainstream. There are sides being represented that are not always represented. There’s still more work to do but I’m glad.

614. Time’s Up dropped at a time when the entire world was assessing and addressing their interaction with Blackness. As someone whose music is so personal, are there certain things you have to consider to minimise the risk of the industry exploiting you and your identity?

SAMPA. 100 percent. For me, it’s been a fight against tokenism because you know in doing the things that I’ve done and the music that I’ve made, you’re always being labelled as ‘The first Black person to do X’, instead of asking, ‘Why are we the first Black people to do X’, instead of asking, ‘Why are we the first Black people to do X?’. That becomes an escape route. ‘Look, we’ve given that Black person this so we must be moving forward’. This is not the case at all. This is systemic and I feel like this needed to be a point especially with Time’s Up, and with Krown – who’s a younger African coming up in the music industry in Australia. It was us having a conversation from the perspective of a person that’s been in the industry and someone who’s coming up and hasn’t seen all the hurdles that we have to go through.

Black artists don’t get to just be artists or make music because they feel happy today. There’s always another level where we have to be conscious of what Black joy means, or Black love means, and how comfortable it means especially in the Australian context where you don’t see that a lot. We definitely had to make a point of mental health and the toll it takes on you as a Black artist in the Australian industry.

614. You won a whole lot of ARIAs - Best Independent Release, Best Hip-Hop Release and Best Female Artist for The Return - how did you feel when you heard the news?

SAMPA. A lot happened around the ARIAs. Obviously I wasn’t there in person which would be something totally different, but to get on these stages and say exactly what we need to say, or what we want to say as Black people— that doesn’t seem like an impossibility now, which I’m proud of. There are definitely things in that performance that I fought to keep in and I’m glad we were able to keep them in there. I think we have long ways to go, but I’m just happy I got to showcase the different people I worked with throughout the ARIAs. At the end of the day, regardless of what their motives were, I felt we deserved it because the music we made was amazing. The story of The Return was incredible. The people that were involved in making it are incredible. We did deserve to be recognised.

614. I feel like it’s so sad that us as Black people can’t enjoy our things, because we always have to wonder if there are other intentions.

SAMPA It was a very momentous year, and nobody [within ARIA] mentioned the march, nobody mentioned BLM. This happened globally, so why do I have to bring this up? They only asked myself and Jessica Mauboy the question about what we think about it. ‘Why is this a Black question?’ You know this is the reason we’re still here because everyone is treating this as a Black issue. This is a human issue. These are human atrocities that are happening. A person who is white also has to give us their thoughts and views on what is happening because they’re happening in your country as well.

I get giving us the first initiative to answer the question but don’t stop at that. Don’t make this a Black issue and it’s the same with awards. You don’t get to enjoy the fact that you’ve made this accomplishment because, you know, behind [the scenes] there are all these other potential motives of tokenism.

614. ‘The Return’ explores your identity, displacement, and freedom. What does your next project explore?

SAMPA. The Return was definitely themed in displacement and being part of the diaspora. It was understanding the diaspora and then recognising the similarities within your own journey. It was searching, a sense of loss, a sense of emptiness, but knowing that you’d find that place. With the next album it’s cemented. It’s, ‘I’m here’ because I am making this music at home now. You’re not searching anymore, you’re at that place.