Sampa the Great sounds an alarm on her latest release. “Big announcement, I am with the Palsians,” she proclaims — a bold, assured reintroduction nearly three years since her last drop.
“I don’t even know where that came from,” she tells OkayAfrica from Botswana, where she is currently stationed. It was during a session with [producer, frequent collaborator, and forthcoming album's executive producer] Cadenza. “His sounds are just larger-than-life; they sound like anthems. Subconsciously, I was thinking, ‘yo, this sounds like a statement.’ The first thing that popped out was ‘big announcement.’”
It’s been a rollercoaster ride. COVID-19 forced a permanent return home to Zambia after she’d left in 2012 to study sound engineering in Australia. There, she established herself as one of the country’s premier artists. The move back — undertaken with her sister and regular collaborator Mwanjé — was prompted by their father falling ill with COVID.
“It was really looking like it was done,” she recalls. By ‘it’ she means everything: a rap career on the cusp, the realization of a long-held dream, all of it suddenly out of reach. “Not only global health-wise, but the music industry had halted. To this day, there are results of what the pandemic [did].”
Post-pandemic, the cracks in the music industry have widened: touring costs have ballooned by 20–30%, squeezing mid-tier artists even as superstar tours dominate headlines. Fans are paying higher ticket prices but attending fewer shows, creating a new stratification in live music. On streaming platforms, per-stream payouts keep shrinking as tens of thousands of tracks flood DSPs daily, while layoffs and a surge in low-quality AI uploads have made the ecosystem more volatile than ever.
In what can only be described as a frantic, pandemic-induced burst of activity, she regrouped with a new band, reconnected with childhood producer icon Mag44, and began laying the groundwork for what would become one of 2022’s most electrifying releases in As Above, So Below, the follow-up to 2019’s The Return.
“It slowly turned into, ‘maybe this is for a reason. All of my creation, all the things that I listen to, all the things I’ve been exposed to happen in Africa, whether Zambia or Botswana,’” she says, acknowledging how deeply both her birth country and the country she grew up in shaped her. “I was like, maybe this is my chance to re-establish myself in the place that birthed the dream, versus the place I went to that just happened to start the career. It was dope, and there are terrible and amazing elements of Australia. But it’s where my career started, and where I have a strong Black community too, because there are Black people in Australia, contrary to popular belief.”
The Zamrock Bloodline
The next two years were a hive of activity: back-to-back festival appearances at giant platforms like Primavera and Glastonbury, multiple award nominations, a deluxe album version, and a making-of documentary — all contributing to a rising public profile that felt rooted at home in every sense, helmed by one of the most engaging lyricists and performers on the continent today.
Before that whirlwind, she made a stop in Johannesburg, performing at Music In Africa’s ACCESS showcase in 2022.
“That may have been our first show outside of Zambia. You could see people were like, ‘how is this going to go?’” she recalls, erupting in a roar of laughter, the brightest spark in our conversation. “It was really dope. Obviously, it was nerve-wracking because it was the same day a new COVID variant was announced. We couldn’t hide from what was happening in the world, but we really banded together in the way we communicated with the crowd. We understood what was going on, and we had to find a sense of connection with the audience. I think we established then what we’re about as a band. We’re not here just for entertainment; we’re going to react to what’s happening in the world, because we do that as individuals.”
The past two years, she says, have required a great deal of “reworking.”
“Rebuilding things, making an album, being back after two years of no music, of changed management, of changed spaces. But I’m happy to be moving in the strides of the other side, where it looks like there’s some sunshine involved, which I like,” she says, joy evident in every word.
Details about the new album remain under wraps; she doesn’t yet have a firm release date.
Home also brought comfort. For the first time, she didn’t have to explain anything — be it a drum pattern, a reference melody, or a continent-renowned pop song. It all just flowed.
“Having to translate sometimes, elements get lost when you’re working with bands that aren’t African,” she says.
“Can’t Hold Us” has been warmly received, a testament to the trust she’s built and the love she’s cultivated. When she raps in the second verse, “Here’s a moment of silence, bring it back to the art / mindblowing, it’s a classical part of the Zam rock of hip-hop,” it sounds ordained, especially given what we now know about her uncle, George “Groovy Joe” Kunda, a founding member of the legendary Zambian Zamrock band W.I.T.C.H.
“[They] were my introduction to Zam rock, but even stranger was the way it happened,” she says. She first heard a song while watching the series The Watchman with her sister, then logged onto X to find discussions about the Zambian band. The song was “Living In The Past” from their 1974 debut album, The Past.
“So I start looking them up. I need you to know I had no clue my uncle founded this band, being a pioneer. This is like listening to a song and thinking, ‘that’s cool,’ finding the band and working with them, and then, a year or two later, discovering your uncle actually founded the band. I was just like, it’s so crazy because my career took me to a different continent, and it started there. Maybe had I stayed and learned more about my family’s musical history, I’d have found this out. It was really destined. And rock — Afro-rock in particular — has always been part of my music, because of its boldness and loudness. Knowing there’s a blood connection to this music, and in particular Zam rock, has given me permission.”
