Sampa The Great

Sampa The Great hails from Africa the motherland. A female poet and singer-songwriter who aims to inspire through music, poetry and visual art. She captures you with her thought provoking words, yet keeps you laughing and enjoying the simplicity of creativity.

Sampa was born in Zambia, whereas at a young age her family decided to move to Botswana, where she was raised. At age 9 she decided to dig deep into this new found love hip-hop. It began when she walked into her cousin’s room to call him for dinner, 2pac – Changes was playing. Listening to the lyrics and harmonies, she fell in love.

Once, a group of boys were set to perform a rap song at her primary school. She was intrigued by their performance and asked if she could join the group, the response: “You cant rap with us, because your a girl.” From that moment forward she decided not only to be a great female rapper, but a great rapper period.

“It’s a search for creativity, laughter, purpose and rhythms.” With those four simple terms, Sampa the Great describes her astonishing debut release, “The Great Mixtape.” Tampa has a penchant for poetry and weaves dense lyrical mazes with her verses, drawing listeners into a lush, imaginative world. Her music bonds from spoken-word to pure hip-hop rapping, with stops at psychedelic and bluesy waypoints in between; it’s the sound of an adventurous young mind pushing out against all boundaries. To listen is to learn. The debut 12-track mixtape flows through a collection of experimental beats and left-field rhymes shaped by Sampa’s wide-spanning influences of Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, Thandiswa Mazwai, Asa, Nneka and Yasiin Bey.

The entire record was produced by Australian beatmaker Godriguez, who has received abundant praise for his progressive tones and wide-spanning style. “The Great Mixtape” contains sounds both classic and completely new, like a Digable Planets record that really did arrive from another, funkier planet. Acts like Hiatus Kaiyote and Kimbra have been proving for years that R&B is still alive and well down under; now, The Great Sampa and Rodriguez have done the same for hip-hop. With such a fantastic new release now logged, we can only expect to hear more and more from Sampa.”