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African ChillZone Vol. 6

Fifty-two tracks catching the exact moment when African pop stopped needing to be introduced to anybody. Volume six.

The crossover years

What this volume documents is a transition. Earlier editions of a series like this were doing discovery work; by this point the artists involved were charting internationally, appearing on American records, and being sought out rather than sought.

The mix holds the chill-out brief while taking in Nigerian pop, South African house, amapiano, and the British Afro-fusion scene, which by this stage were effectively one industry with several postcodes.

What to listen for

Lojay and Sarz appear twice — "LV N ATTN" with Wizkid and "Monalisa" — and the LV N ATTN EP is one of the best Nigerian projects of its year. Sarz's production is the sparsest thing on this list and the most distinctive.

Jorja Smith and GuiltyBeatz's "All of This" is the clearest illustration of the London–Accra connection, and Black Coffee's "You Need Me" with Maxine Ashley and Sun-El Musician is the South African summit.

Tyla appears with KOOLDRINK on "Getting Late" — this is well before "Water" made her a global star, and it is the record that first marked her out.

Niniola's "Too Sweet (O Dun)" continues her run as the artist who most consistently bridges Nigerian pop and South African house.

Moonchild Sanelly on "Summer Time" is worth flagging — a genuinely uncategorisable South African artist whose gqom-punk-pop hybrid sounds like nothing else.

Tomi Owó's "Beautiful" in the Masterkraft amapiano remix and Chikune's "Omutima" are the deep cuts, the latter bringing Uganda into a mix that rarely reaches East Africa.

AV's "Big Thug Boys" is the most immediate thing here.

Go deeper

Lojay and Sarz's LV N ATTN EP is the single best onward recommendation.

Moonchild Sanelly — Phases is a bracing listen and she is one of the most interesting performers on the continent.

Tyla's self-titled album completes the picture of what the popiano hybrid became.

And Sun-El Musician's Africa to the World remains the warmest South African dance record of the last decade.

Why it flows: the sixth volume leans further into patience than its predecessors, letting tracks arrive and depart without announcing themselves. That is harder to sequence than a set of peaks — there is nothing to hide behind — and it is why the whole thing works as one continuous room rather than a sequence of songs.

Best played straight through, in order, with nothing else competing for the room's attention.

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