With Africa on My Sleeve
Given the previous drawn out experience with narrowing down the selection for Teintée Africaine, this time around we made sure to get more hands ears on the job. As the number of songs kept growing, we had to find a way to present the playlist that wouldn’t overwhelm the listener. In the course of arranging...Continue reading
Armed with much feedback from the first edition, we had set out to include more English songs as well as more artists from the continent. That was the easy part — sort of. In the course of putting this second edition together, we kept discovering new songs and artists. (That has turned out to be...Continue reading
Growing up as a francophone in (East and West) Africa, my preferred choice music was rap. American rap since that was the reference; French rap because I could understand it; and French African rap because it was there afterall. Back then, the US set the tone in terms of style and sounds and it trickled...Continue reading
Second edition of the LYS series is hard hitting rap at its finest for me. It’s all about the booming bass, the exhuberant energy, the brash deliveries, and the cocky attitudes.
I’m of the mindset that you can have music for most (if not all types) of occasions. (You will agree that we explore that a ton in this place.) Part of the rationale behind this series is to dive in deeper into music that would fit a particular context or situation. So let’s get you...Continue reading
‘R&Cs: Expensive Pain’ is part of a trove of playlists we just recovered. While it may be…ancient, we still believe it holds value in helping with music discovery. I don’t know when you got on the Meek Mill train, but the title track to his latest album, Expensive Pain, is the type of joint the...Continue reading
‘R&Cs: Lo Siento BB:/’ is part of a trove of playlists we just recovered. While it may be…ancient, we still believe it holds value in helping with music discovery. I never miss the opportunity to showcase Latin Pop music — it’s usually classified under the umbrella of Música Urbana, which I abhor. When super producer...Continue reading
‘R&Cs: Poke It Out’ is part of a trove of playlists we just recovered. While it may be…ancient, we still believe it holds value in helping with music discovery. If you qualify as an old head as I do, from the first notes of Wale’s single “Poke It Out”, you’d be quick to remember the...Continue reading
Back with another one! Yet again, we’ve sat on this “Teintée Africaine” update for close to a month 😅. This is around the time when labels and their artists choose to release their summer anthems — yes, despite “summer” being a strange notion for the African continent 🤷🏿♂️. So, we had to make sure we...Continue reading
I shall believe that we’ve sufficiently documented my feelings about amapiano. The sub-genre — I prefer to call it a movement though 😉 — has enjoyed a steady dose of new talent and elements since it burgeoned out of Pretoria. I didn’t start out ‘MPN 2‘ to reflect how more sophisticated and diverse amapiano has...
