Toya Delazy

Zulu musician Toya Delazy has been smashing down musical and cultural boundaries with aplomb, playing sold out shows across London, to Glastonbury, Mixmag or Keep Hush. From laid-back grooves to almost 200bpm, from hefty pounding to extraordinarily complex polyrhythms, her beats and rhymes are multilingual, multicultural, multidimensional.

Now based in London, the Zulu rapper, is no slouch as a producer; but she also knows how to pick the perfect collaborators to fit her “Afrorave” aesthetic. That’s very much the case here: More Time Records founders Ahadadream and Sam Interface, Joy Anonymous, Tash LC, Raf Riley, collaborate on thick and treacly techno bass throb, jungle and DnB, surrounded by subliminal slurps and crackles. It’s clearly inspired—at least in part—by South African gqom; but it also creates something altogether new for Delazy’s syllables to rampage through. It encourages the listener to reimagine the experience of people of colour. However, its ideas transcend racial lines with messages of self-awareness, free expression and empowerment. Much like the early pioneers of Afrofuturism, like Sun Ra, Afrorave Vol. 1 is fixated on universal suffering, social commentary and enhancing the lives of all people, taking Afro-rave away from being a purely black concept and interweaving it into ideas of the ‘other’.