I’m taking over the Friday music break this week. First up, the prolific Azonto producer E.L. surprises us this week with a 25 track debut album. He had so many songs stored up he decided to release a video for one that’s not even on the album. Check his Swagga.

Kanye and Jay Z team up with Romain Gavras who capitalizes on images of our global instability. Will marrying Hip Hop with riot chic help out Angolan protesters? Probably not.

In a video that is a little more grounded than your average commercial Hip Hop video (and especially contrasting with the one above), Nas, who has collaborated with family members before, releases a song and video tribute to his daughter!

Trying to deliver on the promise to incorporate more Afro-Latino-ness on the blog, here’s Colombian Pacific Coast Hip Hop group Choquibtown’s latest “Hasta El Techo.”

http://youtu.be/azYcDY7mnco

And, Maga Bo’s “No Balanço da Canoa” featuring Rosângela Macedo and Marcelo Yuka. The remix album for his Quilombo do Futuro project dropped this week.

Nos vemos a primeira feira!

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Trump tariffs and US Imperialism

Trump’s April 2025 tariff blitz ignited market chaos and deepened rifts within his own coalition. Beneath the turmoil lies a battle between technocrats, ultranationalists, and anti-imperial populists, all vying to reshape—or destroy—American global power.