The Weekend Music break is here! Check out a round up of tunes and visuals that caught our ears and eyes at Africa is a Country headquarters this week!

Kicking things off, AIAC contributor Blitz the Ambassador has a new video for his tune Juju Girl.

French-Cuban Hip Hop Son twins Ibeyi are making their rounds in North America, and they seem to be having fun doing it!

Afrikan Boy celebrates his trans-continental identity on M.I.A. (Made in Africa).

Brazilian pop-electronic artist Silva shoots a beautiful portrait of Luanda.

Jneiro Jarel is a Viberian. I’m not sure what that is, but I’m liking it!

Busy Signal asks “What If” with impressive lyrical prowess! h/t @rishibonneville

Keeping it in the Caribbean, Champeta artist Mr. Black has a video and musical ode to the colorful sound-systems from the Caribbean coast of Colombia.

It’s been a heavy week in South Africa. So, let’s let Aero Manyelo and his fellow revelers lift us up with some Kwaito party vibes.

Afropop Worldwide shares a Benin roots-pop primer. Included is this interestingly shot video from Norberka.

And finally, Rihanna launches a discussion piece for your Saturday night dinner conversations

About the Author

Boima Tucker is a music producer, DJ, writer, and cultural activist. He is the managing editor of Africa Is a Country, co-founder of Kondi Band and the founder of the INTL BLK record label.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.