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LP
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MM 117LP
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2021 restock. "Urban Zulu changed South Africa's music forever, rewiring Zulu migrant roots music for the 21st Century. Busi Mhlongo's powerful voice and challenging lyrics soar over driving bass lines and glittering guitars of an all-star South African maskanda line-up, backed by a multi-national cast including Lokua Kanza, Brice Wassy, Jacques Djeyim and Will Mowatt. With this album Busi Mhlongo subverted and then claimed Maskanda music's previously patriarchal space, voicing a new social blues narrative. Her songs cut to the essence of simple joys, unrequited love, abuse in the name of love, and month-end money blues. Topping charts in Europe and South Africa, Urban Zulu struck critical and commercial success. Yehlisan'umoya Ma-Afrika 'creates a sensation of being inevitable because the riffs are so organic, it feels like it would be a crime against nature if they fell together any other way' (AllMusic). 'We Baba Omncane' became the sound track for a global Adidas campaign, while a later re-mix became a smash hit for Black Coffee." "Unlike many African music albums produced at the time, Urban Zulu is tight, with every inch of the vocals worked over to powerful, husky perfection. Rarely pretty but exquisitely detailed, Urban Zulu is intense, angry, and bewitching." --Jean Barker
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