Yugen Blakrok on Going Global Without Selling Out

It was a stressful time, but one she now sees as “clarifying.” “Kanif was a supporting force. He really had my back, especially when the loneliness hit, being ‘the Black’ in every situation. He’s the only person here who knows where I come from,” she says.

Having traveled back and forth from Europe on three-month Schengen visas since 2016 — and seeing firsthand how expensive the exercise was – Yugen and Kanif decided to partner with one of the many labels that approached her in the wake of the Black Panther movement.

“It was as strategic as, hey, we can keep getting ourselves three-month visas, but if we’re linking with a European label (IOT Records), they can get me as long as I need to do what we need to do,” she says. “They were small enough that we could holler at them face-to-face, say what we like and don’t like. And they were open enough to assist us. This same industry that we needed to learn — we knew we had to be in it, not on a three-month tourist basis, but in it, from South Africa to the global scene.”

Living in Europe has been both generous and disorienting. There’s the matter of persistent ignorance. “A lot of people out here are very European in how they engage with African things — often dismissive, and just ignorant, because of the kind of information they receive about us,” she reveals.

“I was forced to find a new way of seeing,” she continues. “We were far from the comforts of Iapetus (their Johannesburg-based independent label). That only really hit when the urge to start recording came. We’d been in Europe for four years, moving between rentals and living in other people’s spaces. You carry yourself differently in someone else’s house.”

This prolonged feeling of displacement eventually led to an outburst, creatively and emotionally. “By the time we started recording, we’d finally found space in this super-old house we were renovating. Building a studio from scratch — I’d never done that before. That physical process shaped everything.”

Being so far from home brought out another side of her already layered superpowers. She found herself “less afraid” to pursue the things she wanted and more willing to explore beyond the terrain she’d carved out on her two previous offerings. Her debut,Return of the Astro-Goth, was a monumental achievement that shifted the scope of what was possible for an “underground” hip-hop artist in South Africa. It featured labelmates Shorty Skillz, Alka, and Likwid Skillz, with whom she had formed a rap group called Sista Slash.

“It doesn’t make sense to keep holding yourself back because we’re in a different situation. It’s a different socio-politics. The things I was fighting for in Joburg are not the things I was fighting for in Marseille or Berlin. That sense of identity — expand it on a personal note and an artistic note.”

In between sober reflections and philosophical asides, Yugen drops hilarious observations — like no longer being labeled an “up-and-coming artist,” a tag that trailed her back home. Europe, for all its complexities, feels like a clean slate: an opportunity to define her artistry on her terms, far from the tempting familiarity of home.

“There’s no story I can hang on to. There’s no one I can say, ‘You gatekept me.’ They don’t know me; I don’t know them. So, who am I, and what do I want to present? Of course, there’s the other side — there’s no comfort, no familiarity.” Moving to a new place and picking up a Mediterranean language or two also changed how she thinks. “Suddenly, there’s space for different expressions, words that I don’t have in my language,” she says.

Going into the new album, she wanted to present ideas shaped by this new environment.The Illusion of Being is where experience meets intent, a project anchored by the willingness to start anew, to explore what lies beyond the familiar. It’s a bet on oneself that unfolds across 13 intricately linked songs. These include mantras like “Fighter Mantra,” nods to “the eternal sisterhood” like “The Grand Geode” featuring Sa-Roc, and clear-eyed confessionals like “Lonely,” which opens with a clip from James Baldwin. This is timely, as this year marks his centennial, speaking on writing, identity, and humanity.

“Where would a fleeing Black man go if he wanted to escape? There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some. There’s more than one would think.”

That gives way to a contrabass-driven delicacy over which she flows:

“I’ve stood my ground when my worst side refused to flee violence /refused to seek asylum / faced the tiger, tamed her vicious roar to gold silence.”

For Yugen, the mission is bigger than herself. “[We have] the desire to build something as a halfway point between where we’re from and where we’re going for other artists. One day, the idea is to get the skills, get a spot, and extend all of what we’ve learned to others.”