AfricaIs aCountry

Weekend Music Break No.101

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Weekend Music Break No.101

By
Boima Tucker

It’s the last music break of the year, and we leave 2016 with the 101st edition. It’s been a pleasure for me to do these playlist. If you’ve been enjoying them as well, make sure to donate to our end of the year funds drive, so we can continue to expand our coverage of the global African pop culture map!

Weekend Music Break No.101

1) This edition we kick things off with Blitz the Ambassador who has a new album out this week. The above video, shot in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, is the final installment of his self-directed Diasporadical video triology (we’ve featured part 1 and part 2 here before). Be sure to check out the album that perfectly accompanies this video short collection. 2) Next up, we head to Nigeria with Santi and Odunsi and their “Gangster Fear” video, shot in Lagos’ streets and teenage house parties. 3) After that we get some rhythmic fire from Cameroon’s Reniss, who teaches us about the joys of Cameroonian cooking. 4) We have a habit of posting Booba videos here on the Weekend Music Break, why break with tradition? Headed to DKR (and once again linking with Sidiki Diabate) to represent his Senegalese roots, Booba certainly shows he has no intention to. 5) UK Afrobeats og Silvastone teams up with Frank T Blucas in the video for “Remedy” showing a warmer side of London that is probably being missed by that city’s residents right now. 6) Teddy Yo and Joe Lox take us to Addis Ababa showing what might be the exciting growth of an indigenous Ethiopian Hip Hop scene? (Take back those samples brothers!) 7) A UK-raised Sierra Leonean, Brother Portrait reflects on the Black British experience in this video poem for “Seeview/Rearview”. 8) Next up Ghalileo attends a funeral in Ghana, and channels a history of pan-African leadership in the process. 9) Then, Vic Mensa takes on police brutality in Chicago. 10) And finally, Star Zee takes on “2 Much” corruption and general social malaise in Sierra Leone.

Have a great weekend and a very happy holiday season wherever you are, and whatever you believe!

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

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After Paul Biya

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Leapfrogging literacy?

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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.