007! Music Digest: South African 3-Step, Digital Girl Groups and the Return of Reggae
One love, and three step.
We’re mere weeks into this fresh new year, and somehow things already feel strange and chaotic out there. In the broader world of the music biz, Pitchfork, UMG and WMG all announced layoffs and / or restructures, Soundcloud announced that it’s gearing up for a $1 billion sale, UMG has taken all its music down from TikTok, Coachella revealed its slowest sales of all time and Pioneer has changed its name to…AlphaTheta.
On the artist side, Sophie Ellis Bextor has this year’s “Running Up That Hill”, with her 2001 single “Murder on the Dancefloor” going back to No. 2 on the UK Chart thanks to Saltburn, rap beef had a renewed moment courtesy of Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion, and Flowdan became the first UK MC to win a Grammy. Elsewhere, people are talking about the new Burial record on XL, the return of Justice on Ed Banger, Kim Gordon making a rap track, and Beyoncé’s surprise country release. Meanwhile, I’m still jamming to the steel band cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P” from the (excellent) movie Anatomy of a Fall and keeping my fingers crossed for a new Rihanna album in 2024.
This past week, American artist YG Marley (grandson of Bob and son of Lauryn Hill and Rohan Marley) had the first reggae track to hit the Billboard 100 in over seven years. His debut single “Praise Jah In The Moonlight” has already hit top ten in the UK, number one in New Zealand and top ten in the worldwide Apple Music chart. It coincides with the release of the Bob Marley biopic which releases this week, and so far I can’t tell if the song is even in the movie (since it’s not included on the official soundtrack) or whether it’s a smart marketing play to make reggae feel relevant to a new generation of prospective Marley-clan fans.
The Marley family name is synonymous with reggae, so much so that there’s a running joke about how a Marley always wins the reggae Grammy (despite Bob himself never getting one). In reality, either a Marley wins, or a White band from California wins. In fact, to further that dynamic, the last “reggae” song that hit the charts in the way that “Praise Jah in the Moonlight” is doing now, was “Rude” by the Canadian band Magic. And before that, Damian Marley. Of course, there are great reggae acts doing their thing out there - like Protoje and Chronixx - but this is the first time a reggae act has broken through for a mainstream moment in a very long time. And honestly, the song is good. I’m interested to see if YG Marley ends up switching genres for his next move, especially since his “related artists” on Apple Music are the likes of Brent Faiyaz and Frank Ocean, and not Peter Tosh.
Otherwise, Jamaica is having its own nostalgic moment. I wrote a couple of editions back about the return of the riddim - how riddim culture had fallen out of favour in recent years, but that in 2023 the Big Bunx Riddim dominated. The trend continues on with the release of the Dutty Money Riddim, which is a revival of 2010’s Go-Go Club Riddim. There are already 22 cuts (aka songs) on this riddim, including Sean Paul, Stefflon Don and Jada Kingdom, and a favourite, from Valiant:
The trend continues with Street Vybz Riddim 2.0 (with this Aidonia cut below), a resurrection of another 2010 riddim of the same name, and now other producers from the era are threatening to remake their own classic riddims too. There’s nothing new about riddim revivals - it’s a strong tradition in Jamaican music - but both of these feel like a departure from recent JA production and more of a return to slightly more dance-oriented beats.
This year’s Grammys brought amapiano its first win, via Tyla, who I wrote about back in a digest last year. It was the first year for the new category of “Best African Music Performance” and the South African was up against three Nigerians and Benin-born, Nigerian-based act Ayra Starr. It seems like quite a monolithic category to represent the whole of African music, but what can you really expect from the Grammy institution? We probably won’t be seeing Sudanese piano shredding or Tuareg psych-rock up there any time soon.
While amapiano makes its way into the pop sphere, South African producers are always one step ahead, or three. The latest genre to emerge in their local chart is 3-step - an off-shoot of afrotech that gets its name from a dropped fourth kick drum. Pioneered by producer Thakzin, it’s been gaining some momentum, though still not at breakthrough phase entirely. One of SA’s biggest hits last year, “iPlan” by Dlala Thukzin, Zaba & Sykes seems to be at least inspired by 3-step if not categorically being it. Alongside foundational tracks by Thakzin, like “The Magnificent Dance” and “Possessed”, producers like Heavy K, MÖRDA and Oscar Mbo are also ones to look to for this sound right now.
If you enjoy the heavy percussion of 3-step, you might also like this track from Nigerian artist Kizz Daniel, “Twe Twe”, which is trending in Nigeria, and for good reason. Listen to these drums.
Last week Little Simz released a new EP, Drop 7, her first in two years. The production is both far-reaching and interesting: the first two tracks draw heavily from Brazilian funk carioca (and even sees Simz rapping in Portuguese), as well as the afro-house tinged “SOS”, a 90bpm DnB track “Power” and a Jersey-inspired finale.
As I was looking through the viral charts this week across a bunch of platforms, I came across a track I’d heard on TikTok before: “Cleared - REMIX” by Liliztheplug. They’re a “digital girl group”, i.e. a group made of avatars rather than real people, in the same vein as Gorillaz or Lil Miquela, which frankly I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of in the age of Midjourney. The song credits don’t seem to lead to signs of major label involvement, which makes it much more maverick and interesting, especially given that it seems to owe much of its popularity to being the soundtrack to fan videos of animé heartthrobs. Who can claim attention spans are dead when there are 63k plays on a video of this track slowed down and repeated for one full hour?
Lastly, I featured on Tom Lea & Chal Ravens’ excellent No Tags podcast a couple of weeks back. If you’d like to listen to us talking about the state of the music biz, dancehall’s relationship to the press machine, Culture Clash and more, you can head to their Substack here to listen:
And some random things I’ve been enjoying lately: