It’s rare to hear music that feels not just new but from a whole new genre you didn’t even know about. But that was absolutely what happened when I heard amapiano for the first time.
Sometime in 2020, a casual year in which little of note happened, this song came across the transom and kind of kicked my ass. It landed as slow, soulful deep house music with vocals sung in Zulu. I do not, in fact, speak Zulu but am fluent in vibes and started listening to it incessantly. The South African group behind the track is Blaq Diamond and, when trying to find out more about what I registered as “south african house,” I came across the term amapiano for the first time.
Amapiano emerged from the Johannesburg townships in the late 2010s and features distinctive piano elements, percussion (in particular its log-drum basslines) and a slower pace that draws from Kwaito, a genre of music from Soweto that was massive in the 90s. I still don’t know nearly enough to do a comprehensive amapiano deep dive for you, but for now a scan of the TikTok dance challenge (over 6 billion views) and this recent set from the “king of amapiano” Kabza De Small gives you a pretty good idea of how special it can be.
When trying to figure this out, it was wild how much other house music from South Africa I came across: Bacardi House from Pretoria, the raw, frenetic Gqom and its more radio-friendly cousin, Sghubu.
Turns out the Blaq Diamond song that started it all isn’t even really amapiano and is generally thought of as Afro-pop. This sent me further down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out if there was a difference between it and Afro-fusion, and trying to parse the role that a single confusing “s” has in delineating Afrobeats, a newer umbrella term for contemporary West African music, from Afrobeat, which you might recognize as the sound that Fela Kuti made famous. It’s complicated, but one thing is clear: afros are involved.
We’ve taken the scenic root to arrive at the point, which is relatively simple. It would be easy to see genre as a frustration or distraction. At best a dry academic take on something that gives joy, at worst a pointed, Pitchforkian tool for sneering at people that don’t know as much as you about something.
For me, it’s not that at all. It’s a vessel that invites investigation and research and, as a lifelong electronic music fan, I was embarrassed to realize how little I knew about the African electronic music scene. Genre is a way in to a world now without musical borders, a planet packed with micro and regional scenes. Hell, just yesterday I learned that there's something that’s big in Russia called drift phonk which mixes washed out Memphis rap samples with pitched-up house music.
As a research tool, genres can be interesting but I’m very willing to admit that they often have their limits at describing the music they’re talking about.
Pitchfork tied itself in knots describing this one: anxious R&B, Midwest emo, Afrobeats, Jersey club… for me it’s just R&B? Either way, it sounds new. Jim Legxacy is a London singer/rapper and “dj” is a catchy, kind of heart-breaking song where his voice, feather-lite, floats over a stuttering beat. The bittersweet lyrics contrast with the incredible feeling you get from this video of him and his crew moving around London’s Lewisham neighborhood. The smile to posse ratio in unprecedented. While you’re at it, check out his other single built around a killer sample flip.
That Lil Yachty, someone I think of mostly as the guy behind the (banging) Teen Titans remix my kids love, wanted to try something new is not a surprise. I guess the surprise is that it’s good? His new album, Let’s Start Here, is basically prog/psych rock I guess or maybe it’s just a really weird rap album. It doesn’t work everywhere, but when it does it’s kind of revelatory. The internet is trying very hard but doing a bad job of describing it, which feels like an unnecessary undertaking for an artist who also put out an infectious song called “Poland” that you don’t need to understand to enjoy.
This was excellent - thanks for putting it out. And this turn of phrase: "I do not, in fact, speak Zulu but am fluent in vibes and started listening to it incessantly." 😂 So good. Blaq Diamond now on heavy rotation. Keep it up!