Sampa Tembo, known globally as Sampa the Great, is one of hip-hop’s most distinctive voices - fearless, poetic, and unflinchingly honest.

With The Return (2019) and As Above, So Below (2022), she became a globally recognised artist, earning multiple ARIA Awards and two Australian Music Prizes, gracing some of the world’s biggest stages, from Coachella and Glastonbury to NPR’s Tiny Desk, Later… With Jools Holland and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Her forthcoming, third studio album, Nu Zamrock marks that return: bold and spiritually charged, blending hip-hop, rock, soul, and Kalindula rhythms into what she calls Nu Zamrock, a sound that bridges generations, geographies, and selves.

Born in Zambia, raised in Botswana, and then travelling to Australia for university, Sampa's return to her homeland marked a pivotal shift in her artistry, a re-rooting of sorts.

Having discovered her blood connection to Zambia’s legendary psychedelic rock band WITCH, pioneers of the 1970s movement known as Zamrock, Sampa reimagines the genre - that daring fusion of rock, funk, and African rhythm - through her own lens, merging it with hip-hop, poetry, and soul to create Nu Zamrock, a form both ancestral and futuristic.

Nu Zamrock is a reclamation of voice, lineage, and continent. It’s the sound of Zambia in conversation with the world: rock guitars meeting ancestral drums, defiance meeting tenderness, modernity meeting memory. It’s Sampa Tembo stepping fully into her name, honouring those who came before her, and creating something entirely her own - fearless and free.

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