009! Music Digest: Kenyan Arbantone, Ugandan Electronic Music and Club-Pop

Underground hits from East Africa + beyond

Hi everyone, and to the new subscribers - thank you and welcome! I’ve been a lil waylaid with ~real life situations~ this month so I’m behind schedule and this edition is a lil less in depth than usual. I plan to start bringing in some interviews and new features sooner than later, bear with me!

Kenyan matatu dedicated to dancehall artist Vybz Kartel

While the music world has largely talking been about Taylor Swift’s latest album, beef between rap’s Big Three, Cindy Lee, and the latest hit that seemed to come out of nowhere (this one is quite fire), somehow I’ve been coping by going down a wormhole on Kenyan YouTube.

I’ve worked with a few artists with big followings in Kenya, and I’m not exactly sure why there’s such a deep connection between Kenya and dancehall (forgive my research efforts), but they have an unbreakable relationship on par with Posh & Becks.

For some years now, the local genre Gengetone has been the ruling sound of young Kenya. This past year, though, a new nascent contender - Arbantone - has come through. Arbantone takes lyrical inspiration from Gengetone, but its true foundation comes from 90s and 2000s dancehall riddims. While Jamaica is in its own nostalgia for circa 2010, here we’re going back to the golden era of dancehall, mining the new millennium. It’s quite a vibrant scene of artists, often jumping on the same riddim, and doing numbers on YouTube and TikTok.

Here’s one of the biggest Arbantone hits of recent months, that you might recognize from Shaggy’s “Hey Sexy Lady”:

This one takes the Filthy Riddim and gives some strong nods to Red Rat:

Here, Mr Tee has a go on one of the all-time greatest riddims, Diwali:

Lil Maina is a favourite of the bunch, particularly “KINARE” from last year. Here’s a new one, riding on top of one of last year’s biggest Jamaican riddims, Dutty Money:

There are also more original beats, and some that have a more reggaeton bent, like this one. I was very taken in by UncoJingJong’s flow:

In a parallel world, Ice Spice just gave a sneak preview of her new song at Coachella, which samples Sean Paul’s “Gimme The Light”, while Kehlani just dropped a new song on 2003’s Coolie Dance riddim, made popular in the US by Nina Sky’s “Move Ya Body”. Maybe we’ll call this retromania, but it feels more like the reviving of a specific kind of feeling more than anything. With dancehall’s current move into a darker place, it could be argued that there’s a gap on the dancefloor that people - in Kenya and beyond - are looking to fill.

Alongside Kenya’s affinity for dancehall, East Africa remains one of the most exciting places for underground electronic music, in part thanks to DIY labels like the Kampala-based Nyege Nyege Tapes, Hakuna Kulala and their orbit.

One of Nyege Nyege Tapes’ greatest releases since their founding in 2013 has been their Sounds of Sisso compilation, focussing on singeli - a strand of soundsystem culture straight out of Tanzania’s Dar Es Salaam. Next week the label releases a new album from singeli act Sisso & Maiko, accompanied by this video:

It’s pure trance-like freneticism, going at breakneck speeds of over 200bpm, so fast it might make gabber blush. If you enjoy that, you might want to check out their recent Boiler Room set where they blindfold themselves and play their synths with their face (24 mins in):

Thanks to this ecosystem of labels and artists, I’ve also recently been put on to the Kenyan sound artist KMRU, and heavy metal act Lord Spikeheart, who both have new albums, as well as Kenyan leftfield pop act Kabeaushé, and Ugandan producer Masaka Masaka.

Masaka Masaka’s debut album is an impressively far-reaching record. It lilts between jungle, techno, drill and more experimental-leaning sounds, much like a carefully crafted mixtape. Here’s a favourite:

In the much wider world of African music, I was interested to hear Headie One & Stormzy’s new single features a sample of Asake’s hit “Lonely at the Top”. Despite the recent sampling boom and obsession with IP, it’s pretty rare to hear a sample from the current zeitgeist, or from African music at all. It only counts for about two seconds of the song, but it’s expertly placed and creatively woven into the verse. I can hear the crowd shouting out this new hook at the live show.

It also speaks to the space that African acts are occupying in music right now. Where mainstream pop acts might have turned to rappers for features or remixes (in the vocal pop sense of Remix), now they are turning to African stars.

Usher immediately preceded his Superbowl moment with a collaboration with Nigerian artist and producer Pheelz, and the remix package for the single featured remixes by South African producers, including a 3-step remix by MÖRDA. Shout out Usher’s A&R. Justin Timberlake released a collaboration with indie artist Fireboy DML, acknowledging that some of the finest R&B is coming from outside of the USA, and Nigerian Ayra Starr featured alongside Lil Durk on David Guetta’s single late last year.

Last week I watched a few live moments from Coachella from the safety of my own sofa. I wanted to see what Two Shell were up to, since they are known for their antics (maybe I’ll write on that some day). I expected the unexpected. The unexpected ended up being a set design fit for a wizard, live and twisted vocals, mash-ups of Avril Lavigne and Aphex Twin and QR codes that led to codified group chats and tongue-in-cheek merch. I enjoy their playfulness, and their school-of-Aphex Twin trolling. I had thought they would make a good pairing with PinkPantheress, but their latest single and first vocal collab is with FKA Twigs. Though it’s not hitting as hard as Home for me, I enjoy the happy hardcore-adjacent sound (that’s probably the first and last time I’ll say that).

I was also impressed by the recent collaboration between Tinashe and producer Machinedrum, which sees Tinashe having a go on some liquid DnB. What may have sounded more underground some years back, now sounds quite like what pop music is in 2024. Is RnDnB a thing?

In other interesting link-ups, this Empress Of track caught my ear.  Taken from her latest album, and the first of hers to be sung in Spanish, it’s produced by PC Music affiliate, Umru. It’s got moments that sound so otherworldly they might be beautifully dissonant, reminiscent of late-career Bjork, or earlier-career Rosalia.

Shygirl has also been putting out more club experiments lately, following her Club Shy EP and collaboration with Florentino on XL Recordings. Total conjecture (this is why we are on Substack and not in publications), but it seems like Shygirl is an artist that genuinely knows the producers she chooses to work with and has a real curatorial interest and flair. This track, “Making The Beast”, is taken from a forthcoming Fabric compilation. The artwork is also on point.

And lastly, some random things I’ve enjoyed lately:

1. This “electronic music similarity search engine” - post a link and it’ll recommend you similar things.

2. Richard Serra’s “Television Delivers People”.

3. This ridiculous and shocking New Yorker piece on why no-one can get a restaurant reservation these days.

4. This mix, featuring “booty-shaking selections from the Detroit-born trio of rappers-producer-DJs putting a modern twist on the city's electrifying ghettotech sound”.

5. The Search Engine podcast episode on those spam texts we all seem to get - the reveal is both unexpected and bleak.

6. Robin James on the No Tags podcast.

7. The look of these handcrafted ceramic speakers.

8. Ripley on Netflix. I didn’t think it could ever be on par with the Minghella movie, but I think I was wrong.