Sampa The Great released her third album Nu Zamrock today, Friday, October 30, 2026, through Loma Vista Recordings. The 16 track Sampa The Great Nu Zamrock album runs 37 minutes and features Sia, KAMAUU and Mwanjé.
The record is her first full length since As Above, So Below in 2022, and it is built on a family discovery. Sampa learned that her blood uncle, George Kunda, known as Groovy Joe, was a founding member of WITCH, the Zambian psychedelic rock band that helped create Zamrock in the early 1970s. The album opens with Sampa interviewing her uncle, and that conversation sets the terms for everything that follows.
A Family Discovery Becomes The Album
Zamrock fused rock, funk, psychedelic guitar and traditional Zambian rhythm into one of the most distinctive sounds to come out of Africa in the 1970s. WITCH stood at the centre of that movement, and George Kunda helped found the band. For Sampa, who was born in Zambia and built her career after moving to Australia to study audio engineering, the discovery turned a genre she admired into a direct inheritance.
The album was executive produced by Grammy Award winner Cadenza, with Sampa sharing executive producer credit. Across the 16 tracks, hip hop, rock, soul and kalindula rhythm sit inside the same songs rather than taking turns. Guitars snarl under rap verses, live drums push against electronic low end, and Sampa moves between rapping, singing and spoken passages without breaking the thread.
Simon Says And The Singles Run
Three singles carried the rollout. “Can’t Hold Us,” featuring Mwanjé, arrived in 2025 and went on to feature in EA’s FC26, the Arsenal and Adidas campaign and the summer trailer for Fortnite. “Simon Says” followed in September with a visualiser and the short prelude film Ukwamba: (To Start), shot in Zambia with her uncle. “Location” landed on October 8 as the third single, days after her Australian live return at Move My Way Festival.
“Simon Says” is the album’s argument in miniature. Sampa has explained the song as a reflection on the pressure of visibility, and she framed its target plainly:
Simon Says critiques the industry, where ‘Simon’ is the system telling artists how to be.
On the album, the track pairs that critique with a buzzing bass riff and percussion, Sampa spitting her verses over a synth that sounds like an alarm. It is a short song with a long shadow, and it tells you exactly how she intends the rest of the record to be heard.
Inside The Nu Zamrock Tracklist
The full tracklist runs: “Intro,” “Prayer In A Dance,” “Can’t Quit Music,” “Simon Says,” “Catch If You Can,” “Can’t Hold Us” featuring Mwanjé, “Location,” “Canary,” “Maybe Then,” “Supernova” featuring Sia, “So Mone,” “Star” featuring KAMAUU, “The Journey Is Underrated,” “Gone” featuring Nicole, “Nicole’s Interlude” and “I Can Love.”
“Supernova” is the pop summit of the record, with Sia trading lines with Sampa in the verses before taking over the chorus. “Star” opens with a calm, dense verse from KAMAUU before Sampa’s hook lifts it. “Canary” carries the album’s boldest claim, as Sampa declares, “I am the new king of Zamrock,” over a psych rock storm of guitar and drums. The closing run softens the attack: “Gone” and “I Can Love” trade the swagger for melody and self acceptance, ending the album on vulnerability rather than volume.
What Happens Next For Sampa
The release week does not slow down. On November 4, Sampa plays a special double show, matinee and evening, at Blue Note in London, a new venue stop that puts the album in front of a room built for listening. The record has already been named a feature album by Australia’s PBS FM, and early reviews have praised how completely the Zamrock source material is absorbed into her own voice rather than pasted on top of it.
That is the real achievement of Nu Zamrock. Plenty of artists sample the past. Sampa went home, sat across from the uncle who helped invent the sound, pressed record on the conversation, and built her third album out of what he handed her. The result is a hip hop record with a documented bloodline, and it is out now on every major streaming platform.
