#82

#82. Sampa the Great - Final Form (#89, 2019)

6th of 2019

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I have to issue a correction. Not for this blog, but one time, which I suspect was in late 2015, I was in the car with some family members with the radio on. A song was playing that someone was very much not into, exclaiming 'who is this?'. I wasn't very confident but I assumed it was that new rap upstart I was hearing about, so I said it was Little Simz. I suspect it was actually "F E M A L E" by Sampa the Great. In hindsight, I would never make that mistake again, but the differences in their flows were not quite as obvious as they are now that we have a decade of further experience to go by. I would also sooner defend both of them because they've proven to be pretty fantastic MCs.

In the case of Sampa the Great, what we've got here is one of the most unexpected breakout moments I've ever witnessed. That is a time accurate observation before, it was in 2015 that Sampa the Great first started getting played on triple j, and over the years she continued within that periphery. triple j plays so much Australian music that it's normal to become acquainted with many artists who you can be pretty certain are going to stay in their lane. Sampa the Great seemed like the most obvious one of these. She had a distinctive voice for sure, but nothing in her music screamed like it was ever primed to break through. There's never been much space for female rappers in Australia, and even less for rap that was so slow and introspective. The song I first cottoned onto was "Black Dignity", which I think is fantastic, but you can't listen to it and say that it's a future hit. Even when her music was more upbeat, it still just didn't really fit in with what the kids were listening to. I sometimes got a Macy Gray vibe except nearly two decades too late for that.

I'm not sure I even clocked any of this when "Final Form" came out. It's a bit of a different turn for her, but at the time I was already on board so I didn't consider the idea that she could convert more people. Even then, for as many people in the music industry who might talk it up, it still doesn't mean it'd convert. It's not like The Drones ever made the Hottest 100 after all. As it turns out, it was a bit of a sneak into the list, but it's rare that you get a song that so triumphantly announces its own arrival. This song's horns roll out its own red carpet and it's marvellous. Both those horns and the post-chorus vocals are sampled from "Stay Away From Me" by The Sylvers. Another song that came out a year earlier than "Final Form", "Late Night" by Space Invadas has a similar use of the sample.

I don't even think anything is compromised for it all in the end. It's certainly more pop friendly than usual for her, but it's still a song that takes nearly two minutes to get to its hook, and before that you get multiple verses of Sampa just owning the microphone. It all just feels like one of those moments when all the people who want to champion a talent like this finally have an easy avenue to win people over. Sampa the Great hasn't really had another hit or anything like this since. I thought her song "Better Days" with Baker Boy had some potential there but maybe not enough people heard it. The only other interesting observation I have to say in the aftermath is that her second album was called "As Above, So Below". That's also the name of Australian rock band Stonefield's second album from 2016. I remember hearing from Birds of Tokyo that they named their 2016 song "Above / Below" as such because they didn't want to copy Stonefield. I'm going to assume I heard that during a live show though because there's no word of it online. Jury is out on whether or not the current #1 album in Australia got the message, though that artist will eventually appear on this list. Maybe Sampa the Great could get a bigger hit in the future. She left some room for tempered expectations when she said she only 'might' final form. While I'm at it, Freeza never actually said 'This isn't even my final form', but in fairness he's had so many final forms at this point that it's hard to feel threatened by it. Well, he would be threatening if he wasn't just a cartoon, what with all the planets he's blown up.