For Sampa The Great, There’s No Place Like Home
[NPR]
By Raina Douris, Kimberly Junod
There’s no place like home. You know that feeling: When you’ve been away from home for a long time and you finally get back, it’s like taking a big exhale. You can put your bags down. Hug your family. Be your true self. That’s what Sampa The Great does on her latest album As Above So Below.
Sampa The Great was born in Zambia and raised in Botswana, but she started putting out music in 2015 after moving to Australia. In 2019, she won the ARIA for best hip hop release for “Final Form” and then won the same award again in 2020 for her debut full-length album The Return. That same year, she moved back to Zambia to write and record her new album.
In this session, Sampa talks about what it was like to be claimed as an “Australian” artist when she didn’t feel like an Australian, collaborating with Beninese musician Angélique Kidjo and how coming home after a long time away affected her music.