- Sampa Tembo was born in Zambia, raised there and in Botswana, moved to the US in her late teens, then out to Australia where her career as Sampa The Great has blown up; and she’s been all over since then. I’m sure that her footloose upbringing has given her a cosmopolitan perspective, setting her apart from most people. It's easy to imagine positive aspects of that, but equally how it could leave her feeling isolated and alone. A black, female artist, making it big in Australia, was always going to have some questions about identity. For Sampa in particular, it really comes as no surprise at all that we should find her journeying back through the steps that brought her to where she is, across the entirety of her expansive, debut LP.
A few tracks into The Return there’s a rather staged-sounding phone-message interlude, which still candidly lays the terrain for the record: an exasperated friend says “Listen, I get what you’re dealing with, one-hundred percent and it’s really hard and it’s rough but we’re black and you’re black in the music industry no less / This is just how it is, you just have to be able to deal / I don’t think you have time for all this finding yourself, spiritual shit / And I think you need to focus on the fact that you’re here and we’re all here with you / You need to wake up.” It’s clear that Sampa hasn’t really taken that advice, in fact she’s having-her-cake-and-eating-it. Taking as much time as she liked, she journied in person back to Botswana earlier in the year. You can hear the evidence of it in the various styles of African pop, beats and folk styles rearing up their heads in amongst the soul samples in this more-than-hour-long journey to her roots and back again. She shot some great music videos on location as well, especially the fantastic clip for Final Form. There’s so much material that ends up packed into The Return -even in the innumerable advance singles, which don’t account for half of what’s here- it’s a bit difficult to know what to focus on.
This might be her debut full-length, but, you know, there’s those mixtapes and Sampa is, no question, already fully-established as an artist. This record confirms it, because, despite its length, the LP has little which could be called filler. Part of what keeps it pumping is the very generous amount of space Sampa allows her cavalcade of guests, but her own MCing is always on-point. Having said that there are some bars which really reach out and grab you. Take this sequence from the aforementioned Final Form: “Credit my maker, take a trip to see Jamaica / Marley spirit with the paper back to Zion that’s the nature / Africa the new America / I hope her role is permanent / And this I put my pen in it / Got my land and my permit with it.” In just a couple of phrases she neatly subverts Grammy winners thanking God, America as the unquestioned heart of the musical world and establishes a new spiritual and artistic mandate. The Return is good, but there are moments which are stellar.
It’s interesting to notice the progression of Sampa’s personal sound. She’s more distinctively mannered here than ever before. I’m prepared to cop flak for saying it, but if she pushed just slightly harder into the diphthongs and nasal pronunciation you could begin to mistake her for Madlib at his most over-the-top. Of all the many vocalists on The Return, at first listen she is definitely the most difficult to understand. I guess she just expects you to spend as much time with all this as she has.
If you didn’t get the stakes that are in play on this spiritual journey before, there’s a line that begins the title track, the first of the record’s final three, epic soul / r’n’b cuts: “Broken, bruised and battered, wandering this world endlessly / As the house n***** of this country / I better find myself, before I breathe my self-hate to this world.” As statements of intent go, they don’t come with much more intensity than that. I mean, can you imagine if Adam Goodes turned up at a press-conference and said that? Over the course of the soulful and soul-searching Don’t Give Up and Made Us Better and, indeed, this record as a whole, you’ll be convinced that Sampa has succeeded in her search. For any person, never mind an African-Australian woman, bathed in the harsh light of stardom, moments of respite and spiritual wholeness are few and far between. For the purposes of The Return at least, Sampa The Great is the most powerfully complete she’s ever been.
- Chris Cobcroft.