TBKS Blog Spot

We often mistake legacy for memory. We think it lives in platinum plaques, sold-out concerts and awards cabinets. We associate it with milestone anniversaries, tribute concerts and emotional speeches delivered after the final curtain has fallen. Leg…

There is something deeply disorienting about the way modern life has taught us to experience the body. We are overstimulated but emotionally underfed. Hyperconnected but increasingly disconnected from ourselves. We scroll endlessly through other peo…

Yebba doesn’t present forgiveness as something she has arrived at. Instead, she circles it, questions it, and returns to it over time, as if testing whether time itself has changed its meaning. On Jean, forgiveness is never declared. It is imagined,…

ANOMY doesn’t announce itself as a crisis album. It doesn’t need to. It moves with the calm of someone who has already accepted that the moral centre has shifted, and is more interested in mapping the damage than sounding the alarm. Throughout the a…

One Year Later: Living With Handsome Luke & The Heartbreakers A year after its release, Handsome Luke & The Heartbreakers feels less like an album you revisit and more like one you quietly live alongside. Time has a way of revealing what music w…

The first artist to win the Best African Music Performance award when the category was introduced at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards in 2024 was Tyla, who won for her song “Water.” She became the inaugural recipient of that newly created Grammy catego…

People first met Sho Madjozi in "Gqi" back in 2016, and even in that brief flash of screen time the shock was immediate. Not the cheap kind of shock that comes from styling tricks or trend-chasing, but the deeper kind that happens when someone arriv…

I still remember the first time I heard Aweh. We were in studio, lordkez was playing me songs from what would become You, Me & the 90’s, asking for feedback like she often does. I’ve been in her corner since her first SoundCloud upload several years…

We inherit more than names or traits. We inherit questions, absences, the way someone we love leaves their echo in us. Legacy comes not only through what is done or said, but through the marks left behind — subtle, insistent, shaping who we become. …

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how whole careers can be lit by Black music and Black style, how those careers can be marketed on the back of a thing that wasn’t theirs to sell, and then how, once the checks clear, the story quietly changes. It’s n…

One of my favourite things about being in this industry is when I come across an artist who is just starting out and then watching them grow year after year. I’ve been watching Kristi Lowe for a couple of years now and so naturally, I was keen to fi…

If you have been listening to Olivia Dean for as long as I have, you will agree with me when I say that love, for Olivia Dean, has never been a static emotion. It’s an ongoing practice — imperfect, patient, and deeply human. Her sophomore album, Th…

There’s something fitting about naming an album after a tree that thrives in places it shouldn’t. Juniper carries that spirit in its marrow. It’s resilient, stubbornly alive in harsh terrain, and evergreen. For Joy Crookes, the title isn’t decoratio…

When you really listen, many of our most beloved love songs sound less like confessions of romance and more like prayers. Pop lyrics are drenched in sacred metaphors: “heaven,” “hallelujah,” “angel,” “saviour.” Jeff Buckley once sang that in love, “…

I first met J Molley in 2016 and went on to be part of his musical journey, from Dreams Money Can Buy, through Leader of the Wave and All Is Fair in Love & War, to Almost Dead, his last official project released in 2022. I write this as someone who …

There are songs that announce themselves like an arrival, and others that feel like the slow opening of a room’s curtains. Songs about grief often belong to the latter; they ask you to enter, sit down, breathe the still air. They work by subtraction…

I have been listening to Annahstasia since her first release in 2022 and I have been living inside her debut album Tether since June. It creeps up in the quiet hours, it demands a replay on the walk home, it settles like a soft bruise behind the ste…

A few years ago, I wrote about AI and music like it was something distant. It was an interesting theory you might bring up at a party, not something that should make you check your headphones twice. Now it’s real. It’s loud. It’s in the control roo…

There’s a special kind of power in films where music doesn’t just accompany; it embodies. Think of Jaws, where those two ominous notes are the shark before you even see it. Or Birdman, where the drums bulldoze through scenes, forcing you to sync wit…

Recently I was asked to curate a playlist on ‘longing and nostalgia’, and it got me thinking about our relationship with music in this modern era of digital/streaming. Sure enough, a couple days later, I found myself scrolling through my collection …

There was a moment during After Hours when it stopped feeling like we were just listening to The Weeknd. It was like we were watching a character unravel right in front of us. The blood on his face, the broken nose, the vacant stare… it wasn’t just …

There’s something sacred about bearing witness to an artist who isn’t just writing from their soul, but excavating it in real time. ZuluMecca doesn’t just rap, she unearths, she contends, she offers blood on the altar. A few months ago, my brethren…

The music industry is one of the many sectors that have been greatly impacted by the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). The impact of AI in the music industry is complex and multifaceted. These days AI has the ability to change the way mu…

Amanda Rosemary Kakia, popularly known as kakia, is a 22-year old artist hailing from Namibia in Southern Africa. She is known for her gentle vocals, intimate, introspective lyrics and minimalist production. She tackles themes of love, loss and ment…