Sampa The Great’s Tiny Desk Performance Shows ‘The Return’ Remains Potent, Two Years After Its Release
Sampa The Great released her breakout debut album The Return almost two years ago, and she's barely stopped promoting it since. The Zambian-born, Botswana-raised, and formerly Sydney and Melbourne-dwelling hip-hop artist recently returned to live in her birthplace, and it seems to have launched a whole new phase of the record's cycle. The semi-permanent return to her home country is something Sampa has foreshadowed for a long time. On "OMG" (also featured on the soundtrack for Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You), she stressed the importance of returning home to relearn language and culture.
After The Return won several ARIA Awards last year, Sampa submitted the stodgy award ceremony's most memorable performance in decades – a version of "Final Form" recorded in Botswana, calling out the ARIA board's lack of diversity. Now, The Return feels closer to its own final form with Sampa's first Tiny Desk performance for Black History Month.
The singer-songwriter and hip-hop artist is dressed in the reddish-orange hues, affecting a regal air with a braid-like crown and a traditional staff in hand. Recorded in her new home base of Lusaka, Zambia, her seven-piece Tiny Desk band is plucked from the city's finest musicians. They imbue the three tracks from The Return with a slower, groovier tempo – it lacks the same bombast as before, but gains something more assertive.
The evolution of these songs via live performance is a key to the direction of where Sampa might go next. She recently cancelled a planned Australian tour, 'An Afro Future', due to frustrations with flip-flopping border restrictions. On the plus side, Sampa will reportedly use the free time to finish her second album while living in Zambia.
Watch Sampa The Great's Black History Month Tiny Desk concert below:
Written by Josh Martin, a Melbourne-based freelance music and media writer with words in MTV Australia, NME, Junkee, Crikey, etc. Follow him on Twitter @joshmartjourn.
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