Maison Margiela has taken its Artisanal line out of the salon and placed it directly on the street. Artisanal: Our Creative Laboratory, staged in Huangpu District, Shanghai, brings together 58 couture looks spanning from 1989 to 2026, installed inside industrial shipping containers arranged in an open-air grid.

The setup is deliberate. The containers reference Shanghai’s port history and echo the brand’s recent runway, which Glenn Martens staged in a working shipyard. Instead of white gallery walls, garments sit against raw metal interiors, exposed to daylight, traffic noise, and footfall. The shift in setting changes how the work is read and makes it less insulated, more immediate, and harder to aestheticize from a distance.

The selection begins with one of the house’s earliest Artisanal pieces, a porcelain plate waistcoat from Autumn/Winter 1989 which was created under Martin Margiela, and moves through to recent runway work, including a Edwardian-style gown, which was treated with beeswax, from the Fall/Winter 2026 collection. Seen together, the pieces map a consistent approach. Materials change, but the Margiela methods hold, taking familiar objects and reworking them until their original function becomes secondary.

Throughout the exhibition, that method is made visible. Garments built from combs or wigs sit alongside tailored pieces that have been pulled apart and reconstructed, their internal structures exposed. Elsewhere, surfaces mimic other materials entirely, with porcelain effects achieved through scanning and airbrushing, or finishes that read as aged and cracked through wax treatments. The emphasis stays on how things are made and what they are made from.

Several of the more recent runway pieces hold substance. A dress constructed from porcelain shards bound with organza reveals the various layers between fragility and structure. A beeswax-coated gown appears preserved and deteriorating at once, its surface catching light unevenly. Another look, built from 150,000 miniature star stickers, flattens into a single texture from afar but becomes dense and almost excessive when viewed at close range. A five-meter painted canvas, sourced from a Paris flea market, has been cut and reassembled into a column dress, its original imagery still partially legible across the body.

Martens keeps one of the house’s core ideas intact: that material hierarchy is flexible. As he noted during the Shanghai presentations, the starting point for Margiela was often the thrift store. What matters is how something is seen and reworked. That approach carries through here, where upholstery, plastic, paper, and wax are treated with the same attention as traditional couture fabrics.

The exhibition extends beyond the physical installation through a public digital folder where the house uploads process images, fittings, and documentation as the project unfolds. It offers a partial look into the making of the work without fully demystifying it. Shanghai marks the first stop in a four-city project titled Maison Margiela/Folders, with subsequent chapters set to focus on anonymity and masking in Beijing, the Tabi shoe in Chengdu, and the house’s white paint technique in Shenzhen.

What holds the Shanghai exhibition together is its focus on construction. The labor behind each piece becomes more legible in this setting. A taffeta gown shaped through hundreds of hand-sculpted points, requiring close to 200 hours of work, reads as both controlled and excessive. Tailored jackets incorporate stretch jersey as internal structure, replacing traditional darts and subtly reshaping the body. Even the subtler pieces carry layered processes, printing, coating, binding, that only fully register at close range. When placed directly on the street, these details land differently. Visitors move through the containers without the usual cues of a fashion show or gallery, taking in the garments at their own pace. The result is material presence, pushed to its limit and held there.

“Ntaba Ya Kin” is Next Up in Africa’s Rap World

In the midst of the vibrant streets of Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, there hides a reality, often met with terror, poverty, and hardship, that finds a way to rise from the ashes. It comes as no surprise that an American genre like Trap music would find a place in this Congolese community, reimagined and authentized into its own Congo Trap movement by local rappers like Kevin, better known as Bogo Thegoat, or Ntaba Ya Kin. The lyrical content and aesthetic both mirror the sound that dominated North America in the past years, but while it may have fallen off across oceans, it is because of Kevin’s storytelling that we choose to pay attention.

Like many young African boys, Kevin began his journey in the studies of Communication. For a long time, society has had everyone believing that the higher the level of education, the better the occupation you may land in the future. However, this concept, brought from the Occident through colonization, dismisses the reality that young Africans often face on the continent, from higher-ups' corruption to monthly payment rates as low as 50 dollars, which is currently the average that Kinshasa’s residents make. This idea that education is elite fails to recognize the lack of infrastructure in many African cities, actively preventing innovation and alternative ways of revenue from taking shape, where young Africans could thrive and keep up with the entrepreneurship of the world.

Kevin is no different to this harsh reality, and after his grandfather’s death, he decided to drop out of school and focus on music solely. In only 3 years, he has managed to garner an audience who not only sees themselves in his lyrics but also can find an escape in his music. Similarly to how Trap music in the US has given young black boys an alternative to the inescapable firm grip of gang violence and poverty, Kevin’s rap influences a generation long scattered and silenced. It obliges authorities to rethink their involvement in destabilizing the population and its chances of aspiring to a better life.

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When you ought to try something new, it comes with its setbacks. Although Rap music is a thriving genre in Congo, it is nothing compared to its dominant sounds, such as Rumba or Soukous. Thus, it is up to Kevin’s persistence and ambition to keep this momentum alive. While Bogo Thegoat mostly raps in Lingala, which would target a smaller group than, let’s say, musicians who speak in French or English, his sound is so well-curated that it surpasses language barriers and has been met with millions of views across social media.

When you observe his fashion sense, it screams modernity and in-the-know of what young people, even outside of Congo, currently consume. When you listen to his interviews, he speaks in a sophisticated manner, in which you understand every thought process and what has ultimately brought him to pursue music and his plans for the future. It goes without saying, Kevin is Congolese through and through; he mingles with Trap music and its essence because he thinks more about having a global impact rather than just regionally. Which sets him apart.

In that sense, Kevin is radical in his approach, daring to branch out not only from a society that looks down on freedom of expression but also from a sonic culture that has seen little to no evolution from its Congolese origins. You see, the thing about Congolese people is that they are naturally very patriotic. Congolese music is made for Congolese people, and therefore, they have little interest in urbanisation or even making it more accessible with mixtures of languages or aesthetics, for example. For this reason, the music scene has seen little change, and that’s where Bogo Thegoat comes in. He challenges the status quo, showing how far one can go with just determination and a desire to push their music to the world.

It is hard to predict whether Bogo Thegoat will manage to take his music out of the Congo, or even stay true to his roots once he does. Kevin’s message is pivotal in shedding light on a generation completely set aside and in need of a leading voice, similarly to how Trap music has impacted young people in the States. Unlike what most may think, Kevin’s music doesn’t glorify the hardship of Kinshasa, but unleashes reality in a way that can not be folded away and ignored. We are confident Bogo Thegoat can reignite Trap music, while showing everyone a piece of the world that we often close our eyes to.

There is a specific kind of ambition in placing yourself on top of the world and asking seventy thousand people to watch. On April 1, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, opened the first of two sold-out nights at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, performing atop a massive rotating globe structure that dominated the stadium floor, shifting between resembling Earth and something far lonelier - what one observer called "a lonely planet of one." It was his first US concert since 2021. It was also, more than anything else, a visual argument.

The set design - the result of a collaboration between Ye and Aus Taylor, with lighting by See You Later and Trask House's John McGuire is the clearest statement of intent the show produced. Taylor, a Baltimore-born filmmaker who has worked alongside Ye since the Donda era, has described his creative philosophy simply stating "Art isn't meant to be understood, it's meant to be felt." In his first-ever interview, published by 032c in 2024, he outlined a career built on deep creative relationships rather than commissions and a refusal to work for money rather than mutual admiration. When credited as the set designer on Instagram following the show, Taylor corrected the framing: "Ye & Aus. I'm just a vessel." 

That sense of shared authorship is legible in the production itself. The globe is not a neutral stage prop. It is a deliberate visual language. Ye elevated, solitary, presiding over a structure that contains the whole world and simultaneously reflects his own psychological isolation. He performed in a black mask throughout all the while obscured from the audience even as the crowd responded to his presence. Fog swallowed the stage repeatedly. The backing track frequently overpowered his vocals, making it difficult at times to confirm he was rapping live. None of this felt incidental. It felt like a condition. The terms under which this particular return was being offered. 

The production had its rough edges, and Ye did not attempt to hide them. He stopped “Good Life three times to correct his lighting director yelling, "stop doing the vibrating Vegas lights, bro. We went over this in rehearsal." He restarted 'King' and 'This a Must' after mic and sound failures. The famous perfectionism that produced ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ was on display not in a flawless show but in the live, visible negotiation between an artist and his own vision. In another context, this would read as chaos. Here, it read as consistency - the same man who delayed ‘Donda’ for months over sound mixing was stopping a 70,000-capacity stadium show because the lights were wrong. 

For two hours, Ye moved through his catalogue - Bully cuts giving way to ‘College Dropout’, ‘Graduation’, ‘Watch the Throne’, ‘Yeezus’, ‘The Life of Pablo’ with Don Toliver joining for 'Moon' and 'E85', and North West appearing for their collaboration 'Miss Westie'. The generational range of the crowd was its own kind of testament. Elder millennials mouthing every word of 'Can't Tell Me Nothing' alongside Gen Z fans discovering ‘Bully’ in real time, all of them standing beneath the same rotating globe, all of them watching the same masked figure trace the same lonely orbit at the top of the world.

Ye's comeback is complicated by things that do not disappear simply because the music is good -  and the music is good. The catalogue is enormous and undeniable. The Wall Street Journal's apology of January 2026, in which he addressed his antisemitism and his bipolar disorder, was an acknowledgement rather than a resolution. The globe does not solve any of that. What it does is frame it. Aus Taylor's philosophy -  that art should be felt rather than understood - is doing real work here, because the clearest thing the SoFi show communicated was not redemption or explanation but a specific visual feeling: a man, a world, a great deal of distance between the two.

That the production occasionally broke down, that the vocals were sometimes swallowed by the fog, that the lights needed correcting three times, none of it disrupted the central image. If anything, it reinforced it. The globe kept turning regardless.

Setlist - Night 1, SoFi Stadium, April 1 2026 King / This a Must / Father / All the Love / Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1 / Can't Tell Me Nothing / N-s in Paris / Mercy / Praise God / Black Skinhead / On Sight / Blood on the Leaves / Carnival / Power / Bound 2 / Say You Will / Heartless / Moon (with Don Toliver) / E85 (Don Toliver) / Miss Westie (with North West) / Good Life / Through the Wire / All Falls Down / Runaway

IG:@ffeistyhuman

Four years after 'Boy Alone' made vulnerability sound like a genre, Omah Lay returns with twelve tracks and a quieter and firmer claim. 'Clarity of Mind' is not trying to move you. It asks only for your curiosity, once more, to follow Omah Lay through his carefully curated and fragile interior landscape. A landscape that extends from the pastures of 'Boy Alone', only now woven intricately with themes of acceptance and submission to higher understanding.

Twelve tracks. Thirty-three minutes. Released on the third day of April, 2026. Whether by intentional curation or spiritual accident, Omah Lay somehow arranged his sophomore album around the geometry of the sacred and holy — twelve apostles, and a runtime that mirrors the age at which Christ was said to have completed his ministry on Earth, dropped on a date signifying the resurrection of Christ — signaling a sort of personal messianic rebirth. You could dismiss this as a coincidence. But Stanley Omah Didia has never made a careless gesture in his life, and 'Clarity of Mind' is anything but.

Unironically, He arrives here the hard way. From claims of scrapping the original project after publicly accusing a fellow Afrobeats artist of appropriating his unreleased sound to admitting to trying everything and anything in his search for peace, the album presents a man who continues to make the case for his own daily survival, with each track serving as evidence. 

Sonically, the album is quiet by design. Tempoe, his long-standing collaborator, heartily imprints himself on the project, producing seven of the twelve tracks, and the result is a mid-tempo bed of Afro-fusion built for introspection rather than the dance floor. For featuring acts, there is only one: Elmah on "Coping Mechanism," whose vocals arrive like rain on a corrugated roof, soft and structural at once, melding perfectly into an almost spiritual rendition. From listening, the element of restraint is obviously recurring. However, the restraint is a choice, as this is an album where a single voice argues with itself, and the absence of outside noise is the argument.

Throughout the album, the voice contains contradictions that Omah Lay neither resolves nor is interested in resolving. On "Holy Ghost," the Spirit is his cocaine and his confidence; on "Waist," he blames Samson's fall not on betrayal but on the nearness of desire, describing his own relationship with pleasure. On "Amen," he asks God for peace of mind and enough money to buy anything he wants, in that order. Succinctly put, 'Clarity of Mind' is an album in which the spiritual and the erotic occupy the same register, and neither apologizes for the other. And against the backdrop of both, Omah Lay wraps his mortality. In the Nigerian musical landscape, where faith and flesh are routinely kept in separate rooms, such particular honesty is its own kind of radical act.

Still, the project's lingering critique is that at thirty-three minutes, 'Clarity of Mind' occasionally mistakes brevity for resolution. The themes of 'Boy Alone': survivor's guilt, the weed-coping tendencies, the slow violence of fame, recur here with less excavation and more acceptance. Some listeners will call that growth. Others will call it a shorter distance traveled. Regardless, both readings are available, which is perhaps the most Omah Lay thing about the project.

The star has urged listeners to play the album upside down for better cohesion. So, play it upside down or play it right-side up. Either way, you feel a man still mid-crossing; not lost, but also not yet arrived. A man in motion who sees himself clearly enough to know that true clarity comes from the full acceptance of self.

Clarity of Mind Cover - KeyQaad / Warner Records Inc.

‘By an Immigrant', the tagline embraced by British-Sierra Leonean designer Foday Dumbuya for his menswear brand, Labrum London was punctuated in March with his Autumn/Winter 2026 collection, Threads of Osmosis. Under the gilded ceilings of Westminster's The Great Hall, meters away from the House of Parliament, Dumbuya’s Threads of Osmosis opened with a monologue by British-Nigerian poet, Yomi Sode speaking on how migration should be appreciated as new cultures enrich a place. As the monologue ended, ’70s Ghanaian music selected by British-Ghanaian producer Juls filled the room. Models followed clad in clothes inspired by British tailoring and traditional African fashion. Accordion-shaped hats from Agadez culture of Niger, cowries threaded in their hair and tailored suits made with passport-printed textile littered the runway. Explaining to Fashion Roadman Dumbuya stated it is about “[The collection is about]family.. travels. My first time arriving in Sierra Leone, my first passport…all of that is a journey that (Labrum London) tries to record."

At a time of shifting UK immigration policies, this interplay of British tailoring and West African culture staged at London Fashion Week in the building where anti-immigration laws are passed is Dumbuya’s way of utilising fashion as a means of making a bold statement. Through his designs for Labrum London, Dumbuya archives memory and cross-culture mix that happens when people move across borders. In doing so, he also questions why immigrants aren't treated as contributors to a culture  and openly challenges the negative connotations associated with migrants—a stance made strong by ‘By an Immigrant’ the tagline.

“When people look at a brand, they assume it's just fashion, just clothes, but it’s deeper than that because all our stories are intertwined with our culture and community,” he said on conceiving Labrum in 2014.

Dumbuya was born in Sierra Leone and lived in Cyprus till he was 12 years old before his family migrated to London. Though he often credits his first association with fashion to his policeman father, who wore tailored military uniforms, and his classically African-dressed mom—references that can be seen in Labrum collections today—it is his experience of different cultures that often reflects in his designs. Yet, this same migrant identity that sparked his fashion interest also constrained it; “My parents were determined I chose a more stable career,” he told Dazed. ‘.as immigrants themselves, they recognised we faced an uphill battle as it was.’

After graduating with a degree in Information Systems Design, Dumbuya entered fashion first at the ground floor, working at DKNY, then at Nike, before eventually taking courses on pattern making and menswear at London College of Fashion. This training in menswear and sportswear would come to underpin the type of designs Dumbuya built Labrum on—a mix of menswear and activewear. The same year Dumbuya started at the London College of Fashion, he launched Labrum London. 

Dumbuya’s meaning in clothes often comes through in subtle details. St. Giles Blackbirds, for instance, the Spring/Summer 2021 collection for Labrum London, draws on the histories of Black figures in the West, using details like ruffles and African motifs. The collection, which pays tribute to enslaved people, sailors, and soldiers from Sierra Leone who settled in St. Giles’ Fields in London and died in poverty, reimagines their ending by placing them in the clothes of the class that once oppressed them. It now sits in the halls of the London Museum of Art.

Over the years, Labrum London has become known not only for its community-driven ethos but also for its collaborations. Drawing from its sportswear roots, the brand has partnered with Adidas on several occasions to create sneakers and activewear. One notable project collaboration saw them design new jerseys for the Sierra Leone Olympic team.

In 2023, Dumbuya was honored with the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, an award that spotlights young designers making a difference to society. Not only did it reinforce his work at Labrum, but it also threw his name in the international market. “Places like Australia, the USA, and Japan, people that never really knew who I was, now know who I am and know the brand, the aesthetic, and the story that we tell,” Dumbuya told the London College of Fashion. 

Although culturally rooted in African influences, Dumbuya’s work also reflects the other cultures he has encountered as he moved across borders. His AW26 collection uses multiple textures and references garments from different parts of the world. For example, the textile with passport motifs that appears throughout is done on chinese silk.  

As a brand, Labrum is dedicated to presenting Blackness in ways that are rarely seen—tailored, intentional, and expansive. Through British tailoring, it tells West African stories of both past and present, bridging worlds that, as Dumbuya suggests, once felt impossible. In doing so, the brand moves beyond fashion as aesthetics to instead be seen as archive, memory, and resistance, where every stitch carries the weight of movement, identity, and belonging.

@radgalrabi

There is a scene in almost every Funke Akindele film where the audience erupts before the dialogue even ends. Not because they didn't see it coming – but because they did. Because the joke lands in Yoruba. Because the character's problem is also their mother's problem, their neighbour's problem, or what everyone was arguing about at a family dinner last week. That loud, collective and deeply local recognition is what made ‘Behind The Scenes’ cross ₦2 billion at the Nigerian box office, becoming the first Nollywood film in history to do so. It is also, ironically, what makes the global conversation about Nollywood so complicated.

The question the industry has been wrestling with is this: If the stories that perform best are the ones that are most unmistakably Nigerian, what exactly is being pursued in the name of “going global”?

The numbers do not lie. Funke Akindele has delivered three consecutive ₦1 billion-plus films – ‘A Tribe Called Judah’, ‘Everybody Loves Jenifa’, and now, ‘Behind The Scenes’. Each one of those films is built on hyper-local storytelling: the pressures of black tax, the chaos of extended family, the very specific social weight of being a successful Nigerian woman. These are not universally legible stories. They are deliberately local, and they are breaking records.

‘Behind The Scenes’, for instance, is headed to Netflix on April 3, which means the same film that packed Lagos cinemas will soon sit in the same catalogue as global productions with eight times its budget. This is not a contradiction. It might, in fact, be the whole point.

Not an identity problem, an infrastructure problem. In March 2026, a debate broke out when actor Kunle Remi compared Nollywood's award practices unfavourably to Hollywood's. Filmmaker Sunny Okonkwo pushed back, and his response was: "Comparing Nollywood to Hollywood directly is like comparing two stories written in completely different languages and expecting them to sound the same." He described Nollywood as "a survival-driven storytelling machine" – built without institutional luxury, and yet one of the most prolific film industries in the world by volume.

What Okonkwo was arguing is a distinction the industry keeps dancing around: Nollywood does not have a storytelling problem, or an audience problem. It produces an estimated 2,500 films annually, and its stars command millions of viewers across Africa and the diaspora. Nollywood’s problem is rather structural. The pipelines that carry great stories to the stages where they get global recognition – the financing networks, the distribution access, the institutional relationships – are missing.

That gap became impossible to ignore when Nigeria's Official Selection Committee declined to submit any film for the 2026 Oscar International Feature category, not because there was nothing worthy, but because the campaign infrastructure to compete at that level simply isn't there. Days later, the UK submitted ‘My Father's Shadow’ – a film shot in Lagos, written by Nigerians, about a Nigerian family –  as its own Oscar entry. A Nigerian story, travelling the world under a British flag, because access to BBC Film and BFI funding is what opened the doors that Nollywood's own structures could not.

This is not a failure of Nigerian storytelling. It is a failure of the Nigerian storytelling infrastructure, and the difference matters enormously. What does "Global" actually cost? There is a version of globalisation that Nollywood has already navigated beautifully. International distribution deals are expanding Nigerian titles into European, North American, and Asian markets. Netflix acquisitions have given films like ‘Lionheart’ a reach that no domestic release could match. Streaming has raised technical standards across the board.

But there is also another version. The one where a classic like ‘Things Fall Apart’ gets adapted with a cast that has no relationship to Umuofia, because international investors need names that travel. The one where a filmmaker softens a story's edges to fit a global format, and somewhere in that softening, the yams lose their smell and the market scene loses its noise. 

The highest-grossing Nigerian film of all time has made $853,000.  When combined, the country’s top five films have brought in roughly $2.2 million. This is not because the stories aren't worth more, but because the financing pipelines and distribution systems that convert great cinema into global revenue are still being built. Nollywood still doesn't fully have them, and this means the decision to "go global" often means giving up more than just a distribution deal. It means the story pays the price of the ticket. 

The answer that holds both? The best conclusion in this conversation keeps returning to the fact that local and global are not opposites. A film can be deeply Nigerian and internationally resonant in the same breath. ‘My Father's Shadow’ proved it – selected as the UK's Oscar entry, 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, built entirely on Nigerian vision and voice, without trading away its specificity for palatability. It showed that a deeply Nigerian story does not need to become less Nigerian to be globally resonant – it just needs access to the right infrastructure. 

Akindele's own trajectory makes the same argument from a different direction. ‘Behind The Scenes' went to Netflix not despite its local roots, but because of how well those roots translated into a story that crossed ₦2 billion.  The synergy between theatrical success and streaming distribution is becoming critical – and the most effective path to “going global” is proving, with evidence, that home already loves you.

The crossroads are real. But the choice isn't between going global and staying home. The choice is between going global on Nollywood’s own terms – with the story intact, the voice preserved, and the infrastructure finally built to match the ambition – or being absorbed into someone else's idea of what Nigerian culture should look like on export. Nollywood knows how to tell the story. The infrastructure to carry it everywhere is what still needs to be built.

Social media: Substack

Twenty-five years after the tragic death of Damilola Taylor, the BBC have announced a documentary detailing the final twenty-four hours of the ten-year old boy’s life, featuring Star Wars and They Cloned Tyrone actor John Boyega. 

The film will look back at the year 2000, when Taylor was stabbed and left to die just metres away from his home by two boys, aged 12 and 13, in south-east London.  At the time, the rate of knife crime in London, specifically in the South, was believed to be lowering. Unfortunately, those beliefs died the night of November 27th, alongside Taylor.

Only a few months after moving to the UK with his mother, Gloria, his sister, Gbemi, and his brother, Tunde, Taylor found himself walking home from Oliver Goldsmith Primary School around 4:45 PM. Despite living in one of Peckham’s notoriously tough neighbourhoods, Taylor’s family had come to the UK in search of better opportunities for the children. Tragically, Taylor’s new life was ended when two children slashed his leg with a broken glass bottle and left him to bleed out.

His death would become known as one of the most high-profile killings in London, leading to an eventual manslaughter charge for the two boys, later identified as the Preddie brothers. 

Boyega, who was eight at the time, was one of the last people to see Taylor alive. Having befriended Taylor during his time in London, he offered a private testimony during the investigation, but had since refrained from public commentary on the death of his childhood mate. 

His parents, Richard & Gloria Taylor, founded the Damilola Taylor Trust in 2001, seeking justice and progress for their son and raising awareness about the violence of knife crime. The two openly campaigned against knife crime until their respective deaths, prompting Boyega to continue their legacy swiftly.

Purposely keeping his involvement and impact from the incident private, the programme will continue Boyega’s recent decision to speak out and keep Taylor’s memory alive. In an interview with the BBC in 2024, he said, “Now that [Richard Taylor is] gone, if I don't speak up now, when am I ever going to speak up?” He, alongside other family and friends, will speak about Taylor, his death, its impact, and the current state of knife crime in the UK. 

Knife crime in the United Kingdom has continued to rise in the last 10 years, with a 54 per cent increase in police-recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument. Since Taylor’s death, other notable killings have made their mark on the country’s fight against knife-related violence, particularly among the youth. Recent statistics have found that 83 per cent of teenage homicides are caused by sharp instruments, and London is the top UK city by knife crime rate. 

The programme, currently titled Damilola Taylor: The Last 24 Hours, will be directed by Alex Thomas, whose goal is to continue raising awareness about the dangers of knife-related violence and to keep the memory of Damilola Taylor alive.

Confidence is not an unusual virtue in the music industry. Nigerian singer, songwriter and producer, Omah Lay “born Stanley Omah Didia, in Port Harcourt” initially began his career working behind the scenes as a music producer before transitioning fully into recording under his own name. Now that name, has found itself  at the center of conversations across the Afrobeats scene following a recent interview with http:NandoLeaks.In.  In the interview, where  he made a bold statement about his place in the Nigerian music industry. 

Omah Lay came into the limelight in 2020 with the release of his debut EP ‘GET LAYD’, which featured songs like ‘Bad Influence’ and ‘You’. The project quickly gained popularity across streaming platforms and introduced listeners to his emotionally driven songwriting style. He has collaborated with several artists within and outside Nigeria, with appearances on projects connected to figures like Davido, Wizkid and the international pop-star artist, Justin Bieber. These collaborations contributed to his reach to an audience beyond the African continent. 

“When it comes to the art and making music, I’m the best for the last 20 years”, he said during the interview, a remark that many fans and music commentators interpreted as a confident assertion of his artistic ability. The interview also generated debates after Omah Lay commented on the structure of the Afrobeats industry. 

According to him, the genre’s cultural and commercial power is vested in Lagos, which is believed to be Nigeria’s entertainment capital. He went on to suggest that the sound and direction of Afrobeats is shaped historically by the Yoruba cultural influence, a statement that sparked mixed reactions. 

As clips from the interview continue to circulate online, reactions remain polarizing. Some commentators interpret the statement as an example of artistic confidence and an honest observation on his part while others question how the claim fits within the broader history of Nigerian music as well as  the oversimplification of the diversity of voices that have contributed to Afrobeats evolution. 
The conversation arrives at a time when Afrobeats continues to expand globally with artists like Davido, Wizkid and Burna Boy being widely recognized for pushing the genre into the international space in the past decade.

Within this landscape, his comment about being the best artist of the past two decades has drawn comparisons with established figures who built global fan bases and long-standing careers within the industry. 
The singer’s remarks have added a new layer to the ongoing conversations about identity, influence and recognition within Afrobeats, a discussion that shows no sign of slowing down. The Afrobeats conversation has once again proven one thing: in music, everyone would have an opinion, but history would decide the legacy. 

With his latest release, “CLARITY OF MIND,” now making its way to listeners, the conversation around Omah Lay shows no signs of slowing down. Whether his remarks are seen as confidence or controversy, the conversation reverts to music and whether it lives up to his claim.

(Ig: anuhola_)

South African Menswear Week (SAMW) has officially evolved into The Week of Fashion South Africa, signaling a major shift in the country’s fashion calendar. The platform, once focused exclusively on menswear, now embraces a full-spectrum approach including womenswear, retail showrooms, and industry talks.

Over the past three years, South African Menswear Week has gradually grown beyond just menswear, bringing in womenswear, expanding its cultural influence, and adapting to the changing needs of designers in a fast-moving global industry. What we’re seeing now is the official version of that growth: a more unified platform that brings different sides of South African fashion together under one clear structure.

The decision to pivot was largely fueled by persistent designer demand. For years, designers on the platform inquired about showcasing womenswear, a need that became critical during the pandemic. When SAMW became the only South African fashion week able to return to physical programming during that period, it naturally evolved into a broader umbrella for the industry. This experience provided the foundation to authentically introduce the Womenswear Collections to the catwalk while ensuring SA Menswear Week remains the cornerstone of the event, protected, preserved, and elevated within the new structure.

According to founder and creative director Simon Deiner, on the evolution, “The expectations of designers have changed. Fashion weeks must now work alongside designers’ marketing efforts, integrate with their direct-to-consumer strategies, and adapt to a changing media landscape. The decline of traditional fashion media and shifting front rows has reshaped the value platforms must deliver. The Week of Fashion South Africa responds to this shift with a smarter, more aligned ecosystem.”

The platform will maintain its biannual rhythm to provide a consistent schedule for designers, media, and buyers. The Autumn/Winter 26 Collections are set for April 23 through 25, 2026, followed by the Spring/Summer 27 Collections from October 12 to 17, 2026.

This pivot seeks to position South African fashion as a self-sustaining industry. By providing a unified platform for both emerging and established talent, the event aims to foster better connections with global buyers while addressing the modern marketing needs of local designers.

The first dual-season showcase under the new branding is set to begin this April, marking a definitive new chapter for the South African fashion scene.

The Week of Fashion South Africa has really been shaped around a clear, bigger-picture idea. It’s not just about showcasing one side of fashion anymore, it’s about creating space for both menswear and womenswear, while opening the door for the entire industry to be part of the seasonal conversation.

At its core, the goal is straightforward: bring everyone onto one unified platform. When that happens, people start to see just how rich, diverse, and accessible South African design really is. And in doing so, it doesn’t just elevate creativity, it also strengthens the business side of the industry.

There are moments we rarely pay attention to, the seconds just before sleep, when thoughts loosen their grip, and the mind just wanders without direction. It is in these quiet spaces without boundaries that memories and imaginations start to overlap. They are referred to as hallucinations and can appear in the form of sight,  sounds, or even feelings of movement. 

This moment is sometimes diagnosed as a medical condition. But Blossom Oyeyipo builds her work from this space, bringing viewers into an introspective state. Inviting them to ask the questions that matter and also exploring their depths, which is the gateway to becoming. At the opening of “Hypnagogia,” her solo exhibition at Wunika Mukan Gallery on April 4, 2026, Oyeyipo invites viewers into a meditative state through her paintings, drawing them into her reality. “Art is an awakening,” literary scholar Domnica Radulescu once said in an interview with Works (of Fiction) in Progress (WIP). And what Oyeyipo is doing with her body of work is the real awakening.

Blossom Oyeyipo, born in 1998 in Lagos, Nigeria, is a Lagos-based visual artist. Her work explores the liminal space between wakefulness and dreams, where intuition, memory, and the subconscious begin to surface. Through her paintings, she navigates the journey of becoming, shaped by the inner world and shifting landscapes.  Her practice also engages deeply with culture, weaving elements of identity, heritage, and lived experience into her visual language. She has participated in several group exhibitions, including “The Noire Art Exhibition” (2020), Art at Ouidah (2022), Kleinformate (2025), and the Irudika Illustration Festival (2023), among others, both in Nigeria and the diaspora.

Oyeyipo’s mind is a space to wander—an invitation to witness the beauty of her process through her lens. Her exhibition with the Wunika Mukan Gallery is her first solo show. The exhibition space itself mirrors this quiet introspection. Soft tones, layered textures, and recurring figures create an atmosphere that feels both intimate and deep. Each piece makes viewers take a pause, inviting them to linger, reflect, and confront their inner world.

Stepping into Wunika Mukan Gallery, one cannot help but see it beyond being an exhibition. It’s an immersive experience that captures the viewer's attention before it is even fully understood. For many viewers, the impact is immediate. Alabi Boluwatife, an art enthusiast who attended the exhibition, said, “It was a new experience and so encouraging. It’s my first time seeing such a body of work, and those pieces are gorgeous”. 

It is this first emotional drag, followed by a subtle unfolding of meaning, that defines Hypnagogia. From the blend of colors and the strokes, the works have a dreamy atmosphere. The figures also appear in pairs and suspended as though in a quiet conversation, blurring the boundary between the physical and non-physical. There is a sense of movement, yet stillness. This liminal quality is central to Oyeyipo’s practice. Drawing from Yoruba philosophy, particularly the concept of Ori as an inner guide, the works become the link between self and spirit, memory and becoming. In our interview with her, here is what she has to say.

Can you tell us about your background and what influenced your style of art and the themes you work with?

I wrote a narrative. It follows a protagonist named Irin through a conversation with her Ori, her inner head, that takes place entirely within her subconscious. That story is the spine of everything in this exhibition. My work is rooted in Yoruba philosophy and how it intersects with dream logic and magical realism, specifically this idea of a living, dynamic relationship between the corporeal self and the incorporeal self. I'm drawn to what I think of as mythical consciousness: the belief that this relationship can be made visible, that you can walk someone through it. My practice leans toward the surreal because myth doesn't operate by the rules of waking reality. It operates by feeling, by symbol, by the logic of dreams. Literarily, I was looking at Ben Okri's The Famished Road for the way the seen and unseen leak into each other, Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard for his non-linear dream logic and the sheer originality of his interior world, and Alice in Wonderland as perhaps the oldest blueprint for the subconscious journey and the necessary return from it. These weren't references so much as permissions.

You spent four months in residency with Nchedo Art Residency before your first solo exhibition with Wunika Mukan Gallery. What was the most intriguing thing you discovered about yourself while working on this body of work?

Nchedo was a defining moment in my practice. What it gave me most was real, substantive conversation, about how to shape my visual language and draw clear lines through the layered thought processes that go into world-building and myth-making. My mentors were incredibly generous with suggestions and critiques at every stage, and I was encouraged to do deep research that fed directly into the work. Nchedo was founded by the artist Chidinma Nnoli and opened its doors in August 2025. I was the first resident, working through to January 2026, and I was surrounded by visiting artists genuinely invested in what I was building. The residency is dedicated to radical care for the artist, and I felt that in everything. What I discovered most intriguingly about myself was how much my environment dictates the pace of my internal world. Nchedo gave the work room to breathe, and in doing so, gave me room to fully inhabit it.

You use the idea of "Ori" as a guide in your art. How does this spiritual belief actually show up in your work, in the colors you pick, the way you layer your paint, the textures you choose?

I think of my core practice as drawing, because that is where the work's essential quality lives. My pastel works are fully realized in their own right, rich with a dusty, dreamy quality that sits somewhere between atmosphere and memory, and that sensibility is what informs everything else, including the paintings. Ori manifests in the work in several ways simultaneously. As a character, a mirror being, the incorporeal self made present. As a place, the liminal space that exists between the material and the non-material is the territory the entire body of work inhabits. And as a material logic. The choice of pastels is deliberate; the medium itself is porous, dusty, never fully fixed, which mirrors the threshold state I am trying to evoke. The process of constant layering enacts the same idea: each layer is a conversation, something added, something partially obscured, meaning accumulated through repetition. Even the semi-abstracted forms in the painting backgrounds operate this way, reminding us that we are not quite in waking reality.

You often paint figures that look like reflections of each other. What is the thought process behind that?

The figures are in constant conversation, sharing space, sometimes holding one another, other times simply watching. There is often a grieving quality to the compositions, a tenderness that coexists with the weight of transition. In Held(2025), the painting directly references the Pietà: the corporeal self, Irin, is caught by her Ori in the aftermath of a fall. It isn't a literal reflection so much as a relationship, two versions of a self in negotiation, neither fully resolved, both necessary. The narrative gave these figures their emotional logic. They are not symbols of duality in the abstract; they are characters with a shared history, moving through a subconscious landscape together. The space between them is where the work really lives.

How do you feel this body of work speaks to young persons navigating their own "liminal" identities today?

We are living in an age of constant, frantic transition, where technology and the relentless speed of the world are in a permanent battle for our attention. This has led to what Joseph Campbell described as a crisis: the erosion of threshold points. Historically, indigenous cultures acknowledged life's great transitions through milestone rites, the passage from girlhood to womanhood, for instance, that signaled a necessary pause before entering a new stage of life. Today, those thresholds are being actively eroded, leaving many in a state of perpetual, ungrounded motion. My work serves as a reminder to sit with the discomfort of the in-between, to appreciate a multi-layered existence that doesn't require immediate resolution. I hope it validates the liminal state as a vital, creative space to be inhabited and not merely a corridor to rush through on the way to somewhere else.

Your first solo exhibition— “Hypnagogia”—with Wunika Mukan Gallery explores the state between wakefulness and sleep. What specifically about this "in-between" state fascinates you?

For me,the hypnagogic state is less an abstraction than a feeling, one that can be triggered by very specific things: sheer fabric, corridors, verandas, spaces that signal temporary occupancy within a larger whole. I am drawn to places that don't fully belong to any one moment. The hypnagogic state is the same: it is where the logic of the waking world dissolves, and the surrealism of sleep takes over, where biomorphic forms surface and deep atmospheric tones feel most at home. It doesn't require permission from reality. My palette of dark blues, greens and occasional reds exists to put you there, in that specific quality of light that feels familiar and untraceable at once.

If someone leaves your exhibition with only one feeling or one thought, what do you want that to be?

Dream work, in its oldest sense, is not passive. You enter, you wrestle, and you return changed. I want the viewer to feel that. To walk out not just moved but subtly different, asking questions of themselves they weren't asking before. I want them to feel as though they have just stepped out of a dream they weren't quite ready to leave, held in quiet immersion but sitting with a slight discomfort. That discomfort is an invitation. If they leave, turning their gaze inward, toward their own inner world and whatever messages may be waiting there, then I have succeeded in sharing my world with them.

‍@adedoyinadeoye
Image: Wunika Mukan Gallery.

With My Ego Told Me To, Leigh-Anne invites listeners into an exhilarating era of self-discovery and artistic reinvention. Emerging from her celebrated journey with Little Mix, she steps boldly into the spotlight—fearless, authentic, and ready to share her unfiltered story. This album is more than a debut; it is a declaration of independence, a celebration of heritage, and a testament to the power of trusting your own voice. As Leigh-Anne uncovers new layers of herself, she promises not just to introduce us to who she is, but to inspire us to embrace our own evolution.

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Could you describe when and how your inspiration for this new chapter as a solo artist first began?

It's been a journey. I went solo three years ago, always knowing I wanted to make music inspired by the genres I love—R&B, Reggae, Danchell, and Afrobeats. I thought about how to incorporate those influences and add my pop stamp to create something that's truly mine—who is Leigh-Anne. When I launched my label, there was so much expectation. Given our group's success, people expected me to achieve the same numbers on my own. It's so unrealistic, and that pressure was overwhelming.

I needed time to figure out who I was and what I wanted, and taking time for myself was necessary. Going independent felt right—I needed to do things my way and make music true to my soul, not to what others wanted —and I’m not compromising my sound anymore. Everything that happened brought me to this album, and I feel so proud to have found my sound, my thing, and my lane—I love it. I'm so happy and excited for people to hear it. Now, I'm no longer thinking about what others say I need to sound like or who I should be. I'm going to be me, and this album represents that—this is who Leigh-Anne is.

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How did your approach to creativity change when you began making independent artistic decisions?

At the time, it was scary. I started my solo journey, released two singles and a strong EP, then leaped to go independent. I was scared and uncertain, but the moment I committed, telling myself and my manager, 'That's it, we're going independent,' my inner confidence returned—my younger self telling me to stand up for myself. I didn’t hesitate. I embraced the decision and felt a wave of confidence. Eliminating doubts has been necessary on this journey.

You created parts of the album in Jamaica, so how did being there influence the creative process you had for the album?

The first writing camp  I did was in Jamaica; it was unbelievable, it was such a special experience. Being home, writing music that resonates with me and is honest, was an amazing experience. There was something about being in that environment, which is my second home, that allowed me to write from the heart. I got some great songs from that trip, some of which are already on my EP and others on the album. Being out there and writing was truly special.

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The album is very much rooted in multiple genres, from R&B, pop,  reggae, and dancehall, all of which you bring together in your own way. How did you bring all of these sounds together in a way that felt really spoke to what you wanted this sound to be?

I’m proud of the way in which I was able to blend these genres into a cohesive album. For me, it is the perfect blend of these genres with my pop style, and I’ve carved my own lane. This is my representation of pop—I don’t want to be boxed in or labelled. I wanted to show my Jamaican and Bajan heritage and my many layers. There is real versatility, and I’m excited for people to hear it and understand who I am. Even things like having my grandparents on the album, I hope people understand why the album is rooted in Reggae and how that is really a part of who I am as a person and see who Leigh-Anne is.

Opening up the way you have, I know there's a difference between being in a group and speaking your own truth. How did you find that process when sharing your personal experiences and vulnerability in your solo work?

Being in a group, you write music together, and it isn't always personal to you, per se. So, having this independence, I can write whatever I want, pouring my heart out honestly. I’ve always wanted to do that with my songwriting, and for me, it feels like therapy, and also, I want my fans to know me and relate if they’ve had similar experiences. Being open felt natural since I wear my heart on my sleeve. Still, I sometimes wonder if I’m being too honest. I trust my fans; they support me, and I want to support them in return. I’ve enjoyed having creative control, doing what I want, and going independent. Every creative decision—the visuals, track list, writing—comes from me. I feel proud to have finished this album on my own terms and in my own way.

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Can you walk us through your process for choosing the album title and creating its overall theme?

I wanted a strong, creative concept for this next era. I kind of thought about an ego some years ago, or maybe like a year ago or something, but I think she really came to life in my sessions. When I did “Dead and Gone”, “Revival”, and “Look Into My Eyes”. I was working with Coffee and Owen Cutts right after I was going through all that label drama, and I felt so frustrated. It felt like I was running into a wall and not getting anywhere with them, and I just wanted to go into the studio and do what I wanted, with no brief, no opinions, nothing. Those sessions produced my best music and felt true to me. “Dead and Gone” is about letting go of the part of me that wouldn’t stand up for herself. You need thick skin in this industry, and I feel like I did have this version of myself, which was my younger self, who was this bold, fearless and determined girl. I kept thinking about her and asking myself, 'Where did she go?' Why have I hidden the bold side of myself? That people don't know.

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With all of the struggles from last year, I wanted to revive her. I wanted to bring her back, and almost add to my protection, and take over. With the title "My Ego Told Me To," I guess she is a bit of an ego, because she feels like a force. She told me to make an album that I'm 100% proud of. She told me to get the hell out of that old label, go independent, and do her thing. I think it's just such a relatable concept as well. You could be in any situation where you wish you'd said something to someone or stood up for yourself. Everyone's got that side to them, the fire that they can bring out when they need to, and sometimes, like, we're made to feel like we can't be loud or take up space. And I feel like no, that's not the case at all. Let us be confident. Let us express ourselves and be who we want to be. So I think that it's just such a relatable thing.

How do you feel now, compared to when you first started creating the album?

I'm in the best place I could imagine, happy and relieved from pressure. I’ve loved all my music, but this feels like a body of work without compromise, which is amazing. I feel much more fearless. I can feel my ego filling me with confidence, assurance, and stability. That comes from being proud of my work. This is so freeing—even if it’s been scary, it’s the best thing that could have happened.

What has been the most fulfilling moment so far in making this album?

Just finishing the album. I think that was the most satisfying part. But I know the most satisfying part will be when it's out.  I already know, in my heart, that my fans are going to love it. I know they will, because I love it. And they're with me. My fans are with me. I hope this album opens more doors for me, grows my fan base, and achieves big things.

As somebody who has been in this industry for a long time, with all that you have been through and experienced. How have you been able to maintain your excitement and joy whilst also protecting your boundaries as an artist?

I'm someone who throws myself into everything, so I'm probably not actually that good at protecting my boundaries sometimes. Like, if I'm feeling like exhausted, or if I'm not feeling great, or whatever it is, I'll probably still push myself to do something, but I think that's like the grafter in me, like I'm just, I've just, all I've ever known is to work hard.

I think having really good people around you is really important, just in general, not having yes people, because yes people like, I think that's when it just all goes downhill. being just humble and normal, and I think just having people around you to bring you back to Earth sometimes, or to keep your feet on the floor, and that's so important.

I am very much a family person, so like, in terms of protecting my boundaries, if I feel like I've been online too much, because social media can be so intense. I think protecting myself is often as simple as putting my phone down, and then I'm with my family. I'm, like, in the living, in the present, like, some people love me and know me.

We've spoken about your heritage and how it's shown in this album. In terms of how that has formed you as a person and just formed you as a creative, talk to me a bit about that. How has that impacted you and your life's journey, even in becoming a singer and getting to this point?

Being able to go to Jamaica every year and see my granddad, knowing my heritage, was always something. Both my parents are mixed race; my mom's dad is of Middle Eastern descent, and my dad's dad is Jamaican. So being in a household, rich in culture and knowing what my heritage is, and knowing who I am, in that sense, I think, has really shaped me for sure, and I feel very grateful that, like, I have such a strong sense of identity in that sense. Being Able to go to Jamaica, be with all my cousins, and, like, be in my culture was just amazing and important in terms of shaping me as a person.
Even in terms of bringing it into my music, that is why it's so important to me. My heritage means everything to me, and even when people like me might not understand, because they just know me as Leigh-Anne from Little Mix and think I should just do pop, it's like, but why? I've poured so many more layers and so much of myself into this album. It's me. And that is where it comes from: actually going, spending time with my grandparents, my Bajan granddad, all our Sundays, and always going up to London, having proper Bajan food as well. And just being in my culture, yeah. And like, like, down to music, just everything. I feel so proud of the strong connection I have to my heritage, and how could I not want to incorporate that into my career and what I'm doing?

If you told me, like, I could only listen to one song, what would that song be?

Regarding the message, I really hope people resonate with Best Version of Me. I think it's, yes, it's such a relatable concept. It's not running from yourself anymore, facing up to who you are, stepping into who you are, and not being afraid to be who you are. And blocking out opinions and just again expectations and whatever else people throw at you, it's like just, do you be you, and the best version of yourself is the most authentic version of yourself.​

Finally, ​what do you think this album says about Chapter right now?

This album is all about following my gut, trusting my instincts, and reclaiming the power I might have lost a little along the way. Stepping into myself, unapologetically, taking up space, being me. It is all about being me, going back to the ego and my younger self, and just bringing back that fearlessness, like not being afraid to be bold. And I think there's just such an amazing message in that. It's an album where you can listen to it and really understand who the artist is and their point of view, like where I'm coming from. There are different things that I would like people to take away from this album. I really want people to feel inspired. Like, things aren't always plain sailing, like journeys that can be rocky up and down, but ultimately, you're always going to find yourself where you need to be. Never give up on anything. Never give up on your dream. Just keep going, literally keep going.

Credits
Photographer: Maya Wanelik
Creative Direction: Kwamena
Producer: Seneo Mwamba
Creative Producer: Whitney Sanni
Styling: Kwamena
Assistant Stylist: Khalifa Antwi
Hair Stylist: Gaia_maua
Makeup Artist: Taisha Sherwood
Nail Tech: Sasha Walters
BTS videographer: Shirin
BTS: Michael Sonaike
Design: @margokatesmith & @shalemalone
Studio: @stu22.io
PR: @satellite414

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At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art stages a confrontation between fashion as adornment and fashion as disturbance, assembling over 400 objects into a retrospective that feels, at first glance, almost too coherent. The exhibition proposes Elsa Schiaparelli as the definitive bridge between couture and avant-garde practice. Moving through it, a more complicated question emerges: what does it mean to canonize a designer whose work was built on resisting coherence altogether?

The galleries open with familiar anchors — the 1938 Skeleton Dress, its raised ribs pressing outward through black crepe with a grotesqueness; the Tears Dress, printed and slashed into illusionistic wounds; the Lobster Dress, developed with Salvador Dalí, placed in dialogue with his Lobster Telephone. These works are framed as surrealist artefacts, evidence of Schiaparelli’s proximity to the avant-garde. But reading them only through surrealism softens their impact. The skeleton dress does much more than reveal. It imposes, reorganizing the body into surface, flattening interiority into something visible, stylized and strangely controlled.

That tension between exposure and construction threads through the exhibition. Trompe l’oeil knitwear mimics bows and tailored details that don’t exist, embedding illusion into the everyday. The Shoe Hat collapses function into absurdity with unsettling precision. Even the smallest details, buttons shaped like insects, peanuts, and miniature objects, interrupt the visual continuity of garments, forcing attention onto elements typically designed to disappear.

As the exhibition expands, so does Schiaparelli’s world. Evening jackets sprout gilded sculptural forms; jewellery mimics body parts and symbolic relics; archival letters and sketches trace her exchanges with collaborators like Jean Cocteau. Artworks by Man Ray and the portrait of Nusch Éluard by Pablo Picasso position her firmly within a surrealist network, while also risking a certain stabilization.

There is a subtle, more revealing narrative embedded in the exhibition’s margins. Garments produced for her London salon in the 1930s speak to a transnational practice spanning Paris, London, and New York. Photographs of her in the Place Vendôme studio construct a persona as deliberate as her designs. Costume work for performers like Marlene Dietrich and Mae West extends her reach into cinema, where clothing serves as a narrative device filled with character. Across these contexts, Schiaparelli emerges not just as a designer, but as a strategist of image and someone deeply attuned to visibility and circulation.

The exhibition occasionally leans toward coherence, smoothing over the contradictions that make her work most vital. The messiness of collaboration, the asymmetry of influence, the calculated construction of her own myth — these are present, but not interrogated as much. What gets lost is the sense of Schiaparelli as fundamentally unstable. 

This instability feels especially charged in the final section, where the house’s present-day evolution under Daniel Roseberry is framed as a continuation. His couture, worn by figures like Dua Lipa and Ariana Grande, translates Schiaparelli’s surrealist vocabulary into sculptural, highly controlled forms. With gold lungs, anatomical corsetry, and face-shaped jewellery, each piece is engineered with precision, designed to register instantly and to circulate seamlessly within a contemporary image economy.

When placed in proximity to Schiaparelli’s original work, the differences are sharpened. Where her garments feel unruly and almost accidental in their strangeness, Roseberry’s appear exacting, almost fully aware of their reception.

This is the exhibition’s most compelling tension, and also where it pulls back. It gestures toward the question without fully inhabiting it: when surrealism becomes a house code, what happens to its capacity to unsettle? And when disruption is institutionalized, can it still function as critique?

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art ultimately positions the house as an ongoing project, a lineage that stretches cleanly from past to present. But the more interesting reading resists that smooth continuity. It lingers instead in the fractures, between object and body, art and fashion, disruption and spectacle.

Schiaparelli’s legacy was never just about merging fashion and art solely. It was about making that boundary unstable, difficult to locate and impossible to fix. Her garments don’t resolve into meaning. Instead they hover, unsettled and unresolved. That is precisely where the exhibition is most successful, in the moments where it falters and where coherence slips.

Picture the scene. A filmmaker stands in a festival lobby, still electric from watching their work projected on a screen to an audience for the first time. The film and all seven minutes of it have just received a standing ovation. Within the audience are echoes of discussions of a certain shot, the film’s score, and its theme’s refusal to collapse in on itself.  Suddenly, an industry expert approaches, shakes their hand warmly, and asks the familiar question: “So, what are you working on next?” in a way that indicates that the thing they’d just seen didn’t count.

This is the quiet indignity at the heart of short film culture.

It’s not hostility or even irrelevance, but something more insidious than that. It’s a kind of institutional impatience that is rooted in the general historical appreciation of the short film.  Due to how they are created, short films are typically funded by film grants or NGOs, and are now increasingly funded by filmmakers. As a result, short films are seen, appreciated, and applauded, only to be immediately treated as evidence of potential rather than proof of achievement. A demo reel dressed in festival laurels. 

What the short film demands is no less than a feature film. In many ways, it demands even more. For a form characterized by its brevity, there is nowhere to hide.  There is no second act to develop character, and no third to resolve the first. Every frame is a heavily weighted decision with consequences. The opening shot cannot afford to be throat-clearing, and neither can the ending afford to be explanatory. Every element visualized is there because it has to be, and nothing is there because the filmmaker ran out of discipline to cut it, nor because it simply could be. 

‍Matthew A. Cherry understood this when he made “Hair Love” in 2019. The animated short — seven minutes, Kickstarter-funded, built on a creative vision that studios hadn’t asked for — told the story of a Black father learning to style his daughter’s natural hair. In seven minutes, it told a precise, warm, and structurally immaculate story. It said everything it needed to say and stopped. The film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2020. More importantly, it sparked a mainstream conversation about representation in animation that longer, more expensive films had spent years failing to ignite. The brevity was not a limitation. That was the point. Matthew Cherry didn’t need ninety minutes to make you feel something permanent. He needed only seven. 

Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh’s Academy Award-winning 2024 short, Two People Exchanging Saliva, also consolidates on this essence of the economy of intention. Not in seven minutes, but in thirty-six, constructing an entire dystopian world from the ground up. The film presented a meticulously woven story and a layered world rooted in reality, drawing inspiration from the real-life occurrence of an Iranian couple jailed for dancing in public in 2023. Beyond its acclaim, it proved, rather decisively, that the short film can carry complexity as well as it can carry economy. That the field is a container capacious enough for any kind of expression, and not just a platform for more reach. 

Still, the economic argument against short films is real and shouldn’t be romanticized away. The truth is, the infrastructure for making a living from short films alone remains thin. Festival prizes rarely pay rent. Streaming platforms that commission short content are still the exception. Fortunately and unfortunately, for many filmmakers, the short form is genuinely a financial stepping stone, whether they want it to be or not. The reason being that the industry worldwide has not yet built the mechanisms to reward the form on its own terms adequately, and that is a structural failure worth naming.

However,  the solution to that failure is not for independent/amateur filmmakers to lower their ambition. It is for the culture around film, that is, critics, programmers, audiences, and publications, to begin insisting on a different standard. To review short films with the same seriousness and dedication as features. To platform them with the same editorial commitment. To ask, after watching something extraordinary in seven minutes, not “what are you working on next” but “ what brought about that decision, right there, in that shot?” The sort of conversation that the question starts is the one that actually builds a short-film culture worth having.

Back in that festival lobby, the filmmaker smiles at the industry expert’s question. They mention something about a feature they’re developing. The conversation moves on, and the crowd disperses. Later, alone, they think about the film they just showed. The specific problem it solved, the specific thing it proved they could do. They know what it is. They made something complete, and whether the room recognizes that yet is a separate question, and finally, a less important one.

To put a pin in it, the short film doesn’t need permission to matter. It simply needs more people willing to pay attention on its own terms. Because, as it turns out, seven minutes is more than enough time to change the way you see.

African fashion is taking up more global space than ever before. From Lagos to South Africa, Rwanda to Kenya, designers such as Thebe Magugu, Lisa Folawiyo, Kenneth Ize and Christie Brown are being spotlighted on global runways, stocked in international concept stores and featured in Western fashion publications that only recently discovered what has always existed. But the more space it occupies, the more complicated it becomes to understand who it's actually for; the local consumer, the global luxury buyer?

In many ways, African fashion exists in a kind of duality. Before its current global attention, it primarily functioned within local contexts–ceremonial wear, everyday clothing and community-based production shaped by culture rather than export. Over the last decade, however, increased digital visibility, social media and global fashion interest have expanded its reach. What was once locally grounded is now increasingly globalized, curated and stylized for consumption through diaspora audiences, international buyers, and luxury fashion systems that determine what is considered valuable from afar.

African fashion often carries a sense of luxury not only in design but in pricing. For many brands, the cost of a single piece can sit far beyond the reach of local consumers, even when production and materials are sourced within the continent. Designers have often pointed to small-scale production, high-quality craftsmanship, import costs for certain materials, and limited manufacturing infrastructure as key reasons behind these price points. While they position the brands for international recognition and upscale markets, they also create a quiet disconnect at home. Local audiences are often excluded from the very cultural expression the clothing draws from, limiting growth within domestic markets and pushing designers to rely heavily on diaspora clients and Western buyers for sustainability.

Across the continent, however, African fashion is also building its own internal languages of prestige. Designers such as Lisa Folawiyo in Nigeria exemplify this layered reality, transforming Ankara into intricately embellished contemporary silhouettes that sit firmly within luxury fashion systems. Likewise, Christie Brown in Ghana operates within a similar tension, producing structured, feminine silhouettes, while in Rwanda, Moshions continues this trajectory with tailored menswear rooted in heritage storytelling. Across these labels, pricing generally falls within a shared luxury bracket of approximately $200 to over $2,000, depending on design complexity and fabrication. And as you'll notice there's a consistent pattern emerging: African fashion is increasingly positioned as luxury, but that luxury is often economically distant from the communities that inspire it.

This tension is even sharper in how success itself is defined. Designers such as Thebe Magugu from South Africa represent a generation of African creatives who have achieved global acclaim–most notably winning the 2019 LVMH Prize, one of the fashion industry’s most prestigious awards. His collections, such as ‘African Studies’ and ‘Counter Intelligence,’ explore themes of identity, history, and post-apartheid narratives through sharp tailoring and research-driven storytelling.  While his success is undeniable success, it also highlights how validation often depends on how well African creativity fits into external systems of taste, value, and prestige, whatever that means.

This is where Western attention continues to shape the trajectory of African fashion. Runways in Paris, Milan, and New York still function as unofficial gatekeepers of legitimacy. Editorial coverage, celebrity endorsements, and luxury collaborations often act as the final stamp of approval. As a result, African designers frequently find themselves navigating a system where success is measured externally, encouraging subtle aesthetic translation; where design decisions are influenced not only by local context, but also by global market expectations.

This dynamic becomes even more visible when looking at the infrastructure surrounding African fashion’s rise. Events such as Lagos Fashion Week, Dakar Fashion Week, Nairobi Fashion Week, and others across the continent have become essential platforms for visibility, offering designers entry into both regional recognition and global industry networks. Yet even within these celebrated spaces, deeper questions remain. Who is actually in the room?

Behind the runways sits a layered ecosystem of corporate sponsors, international fashion partners, luxury brands, media houses, and cultural institutions. Their presence is not incidental. It actively shapes what is shown, what is funded, and what is amplified. Even spaces built to celebrate African creativity are structured through external capital and global partnerships, subtly influencing which designers are prioritized and which narratives are framed as commercially viable or export-ready. In this sense, these fashion weeks are not just cultural showcases–they are curated systems where visibility is negotiated through funding, access, and global approval.

Alongside institutional influence, diaspora audiences have become a major force shaping African fashion’s direction. For many designers, the diaspora represents both emotional connection and economic survival; a market driven by memory, identity, and cultural reconnection. Clothing becomes more than design; it becomes a medium of return. But this also reshapes production itself. Collections are increasingly designed for mobility, global shipping, and cross-cultural readability, meaning African fashion is often imagined for circulation rather than rooted, everyday local use.

This raises a more fundamental question of what actually makes a brand “African?” Is it simply the nationality of its founder, or does it require active engagement with African materials, aesthetics, and cultural storytelling? A minimalist global-facing brand owned by an African designer is often accepted as African fashion within international circuits, while a brand deeply rooted in African textiles may be framed as niche or overly ethnic depending on the audience. Yet in this contradiction is a deeper truth. The continent’s fashion is not defined by a single design element but by the perception of who's looking and from where.

At the same time, diaspora influence continues to blur the category further. It expands demand and creates vital economic pathways, but it also shifts design intention outward. Fashion becomes something that travels before it belongs. Something shaped as much by global legibility as by local meaning. In this sense, African fashion exists in constant translation: between continents, audiences, and expectations.

Ultimately, African fashion exists in a constant state of negotiation–between price and access, heritage and translation, local belonging and global approval. Its expansion is undeniable, but so are its contradictions. The question is no longer whether African fashion belongs on the global stage, but what is reshaped, excluded, or redefined in the process of getting there. Because in the end, African fashion is not just about who owns it; it’s about whose stories, materials, and aesthetics are amplified, and whether the continent itself is at the center or the periphery of that conversation.

In a world where consumerism feels increasingly impersonal, markets remain among the last places where exchange is human. In the United States, retail spaces are often streamlined and saturated with advertising, selling an idea as much as a product. The goal is mass satisfaction rather than breathtaking creation. African markets operate differently. They are not just sites of transaction; they are sites of memory, craft, and cultural continuity. Each item carries the imprint of hands that made it, histories that shaped it, and communities that sustain it. 

The Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market is one of those rare spaces. It has long served as a cultural artery connecting Africa to the African diaspora in New York. Opened in the 1990s, the market was founded by Masjid Malcolm Shabazz in response to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s campaign to remove sidewalk vendors from 125th Street, the majority of whom were new immigrants. Since then, it has served as more than a shopping destination—a meeting ground, a living archive, a celebration of African presence in a neighborhood globally recognized as a Black cultural capital. As the market prepares to shut its doors, its absence threatens to leave behind more than empty stalls; it risks erasing a tactile connection to African heritage in Harlem’s daily life. 

Walking through the market, color announces itself first. Rich indigos, sun-warmed oranges, deep crimsons, electric yellows. These hues were not chosen for mass appeal. They are unapologetic, intentional, and alive. In contrast to a world that often feels gray and digitally saturated, these fabrics offer brightness as resistance, as adornment, as declaration. 

African textiles are never just decorative. From Kente to Ankara, from mud cloth to Adire; each fabric holds symbolism, regional specificity, and meaning. Patterns speak to lineage, spirituality, celebration, and survival. When worn, they communicate identity. In a high fashion context, these textiles do not lose power. Instead, they expand it, occupying spaces that have historically excluded them, asserting that African design is not a trend but a foundation. 

The proximity between maker and wearer is deeply personal. There is no separation from the origin by layers of branding or corporate distance. You can speak to the vendor, learn where the fabric comes from, how it is worn and why it matters. You can find a garment made with passion rather than a calculated trend cycle. This intimacy reshapes consumerism into cultural exchange. In contrast, many US retail spaces function as visual noise, billboards disguised as storefronts selling desire without depth. Here, you are invited to slow down, to touch, to feel. 

Harlem has long been a sanctuary for Black expression, creativity, and political thought. The Malcolm Shabazz Market fits seamlessly into that legacy. It reflects Harlem’s diasporic identity, where Africa is not a distant concept but a living influence. For many, it is a first encounter with the textures, colors, and craftsmanship of the continent right in the heart of New York City. 

Fashion in this space becomes storytelling. The garments move differently because they carry weight in their history, pride, and intention. Styled against an urban backdrop, the contrast is striking. Ancestral fabrics are set against concrete, and tradition is illuminated under city light. The message is clear: African culture does not exist in the past. It adapts, travels, and thrives.

Markets like the Malcolm Shabazz market matter because they allow for culture to be experienced, not archived. They offer an alternative to hollow consumption and remind us of all the things that can still feel sacred, communal, and alive. In the brightness of these fabrics, there is warmth. In their patterns, there is memory. In their presence here in Harlem, there is proof that even in a dark world, color endures.

On Lagos, Longevity, and a Voice Meeting the Music Halfway

Have you ever asked a friend to recommend  to you an artist with a velvety, feathery, silvery voice?  These were my exact feelings when  listening to Nora for the first time. July being the first song listened to;  started with an euphoric, crescendoing beat , then followed Nora's velvety voice which fits the song title perfectly.

Chidiebere Felicia Anyiam-Osigwe (also known as Nora)  was born on April 26, 2002, in Lagos. Her love for music started forming early, influenced by her parents, even if it didn’t look like something serious yet.

She started singing at the age of 7, and her parents were encouraged in church to support her if this was something she wanted to pursue .

‍"I started singing in church and it blossomed. Our pastor told my parents: 'If this is the career she wants to take, encourage her. Don't try to make her a lawyer or doctor. Let her do it.' So I was really encouraged. I attended Ayo Bankole College of Music and MUSON."

At 13, her devotion to music became so strong that she was getting bullied for singing too much, “I kind of, uh, but it never really stopped me, you know, I just kind of knew that I was talented to do. Entered  a competition, I got to meet ICE , Shout out to ice.” 

Her career really started at 17 after she joined the Eko Hotel Tropical Christmas  in 2019 .
One of the judges said something very simple “get her into the studio” and that was the starting point for her. 

She has collaborated with artists like  Tim Lyre for OMD,

Ronehi and Aylø for July ,

and now her single Chidi’s Heartbreak sits as part of where she currently is, still building, still figuring things out in real time.

She’s also learning how to produce, which she actually enjoys, because it lets her connect to her sound in a more personal way, and the interesting thing is her process always starts the same way, with a beat, not pressure, not trying to make something perfect, just a beat, and then she lets it grow from there, almost like she meets the music halfway instead of forcing it.

She talks about her support system in a way that feels very grounded, especially her mum, who is her best friend, her manager, her confidant, and then her siblings, her friends, and her mentor ICE NWEKE, people who are around her not just for the music but for her as a person, which is something she clearly holds onto.  

“ First of all, I consider myself extremely lucky with the type of family and friends I have .They see me for who I am and just want the best for me. They were there you know in every performance, every show, especially my mom who is my manager and quite thankfully my best friend. 
She is my rock.
She has been not just there for me emotionally, but also physically. 
She would cancel things on my behalf just so we could go for a meeting, just so that I could pursue my dreams. 
You know what I mean? And I’m very  grateful for that. And my sister, my brothers, I feel like me saying my family are my biggest fans. 
The rest of everybody else is just gonna be like, well, I'm here  because that's how much love I have.”.

Her inspirations stretch across different sounds and eras, Tems, Sade, Michael Jackson, and ABBA, and when you think about it, that mix makes sense with the kind of softness and control her voice carries.

She also spoke about being nominated for Leading Vibe Initiative  founded by Tems, and the way she described it didn’t feel rehearsed, it felt very in the moment,

“Honestly, I sent my application on the day of the deadline, I was at my best friend’s house, I used my phone to record, I wasn’t even thinking too much, I just said let me do it and see what happens, boom I got an email saying I got selected”

and then having Tems acknowledge her voice, that part sits quietly but it means a lot, the kind of validation that doesn’t need too much noise around it.

And through all of this, one thing she keeps coming back to is learning to love herself and accept who she is, which sounds simple but clearly isn’t, especially when you think about the different phases she has moved through in the last six years, growing, adjusting, staying with it.

She also mentioned, almost casually, that she does soprano, and it feels like one of those details you don’t fully sit with until later, because when you think about her tone, her range, the way everything is still forming, it starts to feel like you’re watching something take shape in real time, not rushed, not forced, just becoming what it’s meant to be.

Open any book-focused corner of social media, there you'd find BookTok netizens crying over romantasy author Sarah J. Maas and contemporary romance writer Colleen Hoover, hauls and fantasy series ranked in elaborate tier lists. While Bookstagram is built around the visual aesthetics of physical books, Goodreads turns reading into a numbers game — novels logged, challenges completed, shelves filled. #BookTok, #Bookstagram and #BookTube have collectively gained over 170 million users, representing one of the most sustained and passionate reading communities the internet has ever produced. Though the platforms differ in format, the subject is almost always the same: prose fiction is celebrated loudly and publicly. 

Scroll through all of it and you will find one conspicuous absence: comic books. Manga gets a seat at the table, but Western comics, graphic novels and everything in between are largely invisible in that conversation. The readers are quiet. The communities are smaller. The cultural validation and sense that what is being read counts as serious reading, something that is largely withheld. Yet, the numbers tell a story that the social media feed does not.

The global Comic book industry reached a valuation of nearly $17 billion in 2024 which is forecasted to nearly double by 2033 to reach between $31 and $37 billion according to Grand View Research.. Right now, ifty million people worldwide read Comics every month according to Electroiq. The average Comic reader reads four Comics a week–sixteen a month,  which at the average price of four dollars per issue amounts to roughly the same monthly spend as buying three hardcover novels. These are not the numbers of a niche. They are the numbers of a mainstream reading culture that gets excluded from necessary conversations These prejudice has a history. 

Comics arrived in popular culture as children’s entertainment  as colourful, disposable, morally suspect. In the 1950s, American psychologist Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, arguing that Comic books were corrupting the youth. The US Senate held hearings which led to the establishment of the The Comics Code Authority in 1954, self-censoring the industry into timidity for decades.

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The fight for legitimacy has been slow and hard-won. In 1978, Will Eisner published A Contract with God and deliberately called it a “graphic novel.” In 1992, Art Spiegelman’s Maus - a Holocaust memoir told through anthropomorphic animals won the Pulitzer Prize. Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis brought the Iranian Revolution to global readers through hand-drawn panels. Alan Moore’s Watchmen deconstructed the superhero genre with the philosophical rigour of a literary novel. Every one of these works proved what the form was capable of. And yet the prejudice persisted - not in outright dismissal, but in something quieter and harder to argue with. Comic books are still absent from most school curricula. They are shelved separately in bookstores, physically distanced from "real" literature. Literary prizes rarely consider them.

Book clubs do not typically select them. The cultural infrastructure that validates reading - the awards, the syllabi, the recommendations, the conversations - was not built with comic readers in mind, and has not been rebuilt to include them.

Consider The Adventures of Tintin - 24 Comic albums created by Belgian cartoonist Hergé, first published in 1929 and translated into more than 70 languages, with sales exceeding 200 million copies. Tintin has been adapted for radio, television, theatre and film. He has his own museum in Belgium. Scholars have written academic studies comparing Hergé’s panel work to that of Renaissance painters. This is not a children’s book that got lucky. This is one of the most widely distributed narrative works in human history. And yet in the current online reading conversation, it barely registers.

The one place where Comic culture has broken through the social media wall is Manga, and the numbers there are extraordinary. As of 2023, Manga accounts for 53% of the entire Comic book market share. East Asia holds 41.2% of global Comic book sales, with digital manga already accounting for nearly 80% of revenues in that segment. Among Webtoon readers, 40% are aged 18 to 24 and over 90% access via mobile. Manga has a visible, vocal, passionate online community that does not apologise for its enthusiasm. The question worth asking is what Manga did differently.

Part of the answer is serialisation - the weekly or monthly chapter release that creates ongoing investment and community discussion in real time. Part of it is genre diversity so broad that there is a Manga for every conceivable reader -  horror, romance, sports, cooking, philosophy, historical drama. And part of it is the absence of literary gatekeeping. Manga was never told it needed to justify its existence as a serious art form. It simply built an audience and let the audience speak.

Western Comics and graphic novels have largely not had that freedom. In 2024, 40.7% of children aged 8 to 18 reported reading Comics or graphic novels at least once a month - making sequential art one of the most significant gateways into reading broadly. The form is not a stepping stone to real reading. It is a reading of a different and equally valid kind.

The numbers say comic books have a massive, committed, global readership. Social media says prose readers are the only readers worth celebrating publicly. That gap is not about quality or seriousness. It is about whose reading culture gets treated as culture and whose reading culture gets treated as something you did before you graduated to real books.

But the community exists, and it is building its own infrastructure quietly and without apology. CBR - Comic Book Resources is one of the largest comics-focused communities on the internet, with over 27,000 members, 141,000 threads and 7 million messages exchanged, numbers that dwarf most BookTok accounts. League of Comic Geeks offers a community-driven database of over 500,000 comic books where readers catalogue what they own, what they have read and what they want next - a Goodreads for comic readers, built by comic readers. Comic Book Club - a live weekly talk show and podcast has been bringing together comedians and comic book creators every week to do exactly what BookTok does for prose: talk about stories with genuine passion in public. And for readers who want something more intimate, Webtoon's vertical-scrolling format has taken over mobile reading globally, with even DC Comics partnering with GlobalComix to distribute 400 titles optimised for smartphone reading - meeting comic readers exactly where they already are.

The panels are waiting. The readers are already there. The communities have been built. The only thing missing is the noise, and that, unlike a $17 billion industry, is something that can change.

IG: @ffeistyhuman
Cover Credit: Chinaprinting4u

Nomenclature 

To name a thing is to offer it up for a specific kind of public dissection. There is a particular, heavy pressure that comes with christening a sound, because once a label is applied, the sound no longer belongs exclusively to the hands that sculpted it. It becomes public infrastructure, subject to the arguments of archives and the rigid categorizations of digital town squares. 

Thabang Mathebula, known to the world as Thakzin, understands this weight with a weary intimacy. He removed a single kick drum from a four-four house bar, and named the resulting form "3-Step". The space left behind became the most contested piece of real estate in African electronic music immediately the genre exploded. The debates began immediately – about who invented it, who perfected it, who it truly belongs to. Thakzin, meanwhile, mostly watches from a careful distance.

He is a product of Ivory Park, a township on the north-east edge of Gauteng, shaped by a household that treated music as a primary necessity, by sangoma rhythms absorbed as ambient noise before he understood their weight, and by a formative production constraint that taught him to think in whole stories rather than loops. All of that predates 3-Step. 

"I remember when people started catching onto 3-Step. I was stressed, for real." 

He recalls approaching his management during that time, not with the typical swagger of a pioneer, but with a deep-seated anxiety about the future of his craft. The worry was the one every high-level creative dreads: sounding monotonous. For an artist whose practice is fundamentally rooted in the act of exploration, becoming synonymous with a single, repeatable sound felt like a trap rather than a triumph. He has spent the years since then clarifying that his artistic identity predates this specific rhythm. He insists that his ability to survive in sonic spaces unrelated to 3-Step is the real story, suggesting that the genre itself is merely a chapter in a much larger, ongoing volume.

Imprinting 

The Thakzin origin story is sometimes reduced to the standard narrative of a young DJ discovering a DAW, but the roots are far more archival. He was born in Ivory Park, a township situated on the north-east edge of Gauteng, in a household where music was treated as a primary necessity for survival. His father was a musician and a dedicated collector of sound, a man who possessed a hoard of CDs and instruments and an inability to throw anything away. In this environment, the household ran on a steady diet of music ranging from Stevie Wonder to Fela Kuti. Thakzin describes this as a "bug" that caught him early in life. Even when he was focused on soccer, he suggests there was a persistent internal pull toward music that felt innate, a biological imperative that he recognized from a very young age.

However, the sonic imprinting went deeper than the records playing on the stereo. Growing up in proximity to sangoma rhythms, the drumming and trance traditions of Southern African spiritual healers, Thabang Mathebula absorbed these patterns as ambient noise long before he understood their cultural or technical weight. When he first began recording music at home, the percussive elements of the sangoma tradition often felt like a disruption or an intrusion into whatever he was attempting to build. It was only after he moved out of his childhood home that distance produced a necessary clarity. He suggests that he eventually began to consciously incorporate those rhythms into his drum patterns, viewing it as a vital connection to home and a spiritual exploration of the meaning behind those specific frequencies

This is where the Thakzin narrative departs from the purely technical. For him, spirituality is not an aesthetic choice; it is structural. When he discusses production, his language is consistently centered on the idea of channeling rather than constructing. He argues that modern software is effectively a vessel for ancient rhythmic energies and that these energies are intrinsically connected to the nuances of human behaviour. In this framework, the notion of imperfection is actually the highest form of perfection. He actively resists the "quantize" button, viewing it not just as a tool but as a philosophical position he finds increasingly sterile. He reasons that because human beings are inherently imperfect, the most effective way to connect with them is through music that retains those same human flaws. Music that is too tightly locked to a digital grid loses the connective tissue that makes it feel alive.
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"My hurdle of not being able to save made me learn how to tell a story from start to finish – you need to take people on a journey. We need to start from somewhere and end up somewhere."
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Thakzin’s technical proficiency was forged in a period of significant production limitations. During his early years, he worked with software that could not save his sessions, a handicap that would have deterred a less disciplined artist. This meant that every track he worked on had to be built in real time, from start to finish, requiring him to hold the entire song's architecture in his head simultaneously. What should have been a crippling hurdle became a masterclass in narrative structure. He suggests that this forced him to learn how to tell a complete story from start to finish without the safety net of revisiting a project. It instilled in him a sense of narrative urgency, ensuring his music always feels like a journey that begins in one specific emotional place and ends in another.

This version of Thakzin is far more interesting than the simplified 3-Step pioneer narrative. The spirituality he describes is deeply rooted in the sangoma tradition of South Africa, where the practitioner acts not as the generator of healing energy, but as a conduit for it. When he claims that the music speaks to him, dictating the direction of an arrangement or revealing its own emotional needs, he is operating from that same ancestral ontology. He is effectively bridging the gap between the ancient and the modern within DAW interfaces.

The Manifesto And The Ensuing Debate.‍

His debut album, God's Window Pt. 1, serves as the most complete expression of this philosophy. Developed over an intense three-year period, the 18-track project is an exhaustive mapping of his influences. It draws on ancestral drum patterns, the string traditions of the uhadi and the house style of collaborators like Sun-El Musician and regular suspect Morda. During its listening session at Johannesburg's Kwa Mai Mai, a space thick with inner-city heritage and traditional medicine, Thakzin knelt before a bowl of burning impepho (ancestral incense) before a single note was played. The spiritual facet of this project was neither subtle nor meant to be.
As the music traveled, it inevitably sparked a conversation regarding the origins of 3-Step that took on a life of its own. High-profile artists like Heavy K and Prince Kaybee have publicly debated the sound's invention, while scene veterans and fans have spent years picking sides and contesting the timeline. Thakzin, however, has maintained a studied, almost monastic indifference to the entire conflict. 
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"The focus on origin can sometimes turn into a distraction…for me, it's more important to stay grounded in the feeling, the innovation, and the cultural exchange, rather than just the title. I want the music to lead."

This indifference is not a form of false modesty; it tracks with how he describes 3-Step as a "disposition" rather than a rigid genre. He views it as a space of fusion, a way to survive amid the noise while remaining true to one's own cultural identity. He argues that the sound didn't just appear out of nowhere, but was adapted from the genesis of other sounds, bringing different worlds together through a focus on rhythm. He admits that there is no single, fixed description of 3-Step because the sound is still evolving and practitioners are still defining it.

Lagos

Thakzin headlined the February 2025 Monochroma edition at Shiro. His set coincided with a heavy downpour. In a city where the weather often dictates the end of an outdoor party, the crowd’s refusal to leave was a significant moment of connection. They stayed in the rain, dancing to unreleased material, and Thabang Mathebula responded by playing for hours. 

‍“...at first, when the rain started falling at Shiro, I wasn't thrilled when the rain started, but once I took a step back, I realized rain is often seen as a blessing. If ever there was a sign of spiritual presence, that was it.”
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Courtesy of Group Therapy, Thakzin returned in October of the same year to headline the Spotify Greasy Tunes opening night at Fired & Iced, where dining culture and electronic music attempted a merger and succeeded. By his second visit, the Lagos scene had already built an entire vocabulary around his sound — 3-Step remixes of Afropop tracks, DJs like Blak Dave, Proton, and Naija House Mafia who had studied and extended the form, and a crowd that knew the unreleased IDs from the February rain set. Thakzin shared the Greasy Tunes stage with Aniko, WeAreAllChemicals, FaeM, and RVTDJ, and he recalls that set being another eureka moment for him. 

“...being in Nigerian life brought out three things for me: colors, pace, and rhythm – it took me back to something real, something from my childhood with my father and Fela Kuti."
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Thakzin speaks about the potential this reconnection holds, these elements waiting for the right moment to crystallise into music. He also views the Nigerian embrace of 3-Step not as a market to be exploited but as a conversation between two cultures reimagining the sound in real time. Ultimately, he looks forward to this evolution spreading to other regions, where each place honours the sound's roots while redefining the genre in ways that remain alive and ever-evolving.

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Initial Weight, Going Concern.

From an A&R and management perspective, Thakzin is a unique case study in how to scale a subgenre without diluting its spiritual core. Most pioneers of a sound spend their careers guarding the borders of that sound, ensuring that they remain the primary authority on its definition. Thakzin does the opposite – he opens space, just as he removes a kick drum and waits to see what grows in the silence. He blends a sangoma pattern with a log drum and listens to the dialogue between them, and will gladly slide in a cheeky interpolation if it feels right. 

The industry will likely continue to argue over who invented the "missing kick." They will debate the lockdown timeline and the influence of early house veterans on the 3-Step structure. But while those debates rage in the comment sections and trade magazines, Thakzin will probably be in his studio, perhaps working on a system that now allows him to save his work, but still operating with the same narrative discipline he learned when he had no other choice. He will be looking for the next rhythmic energy to channel, the next cultural state to express, and the next silence to fill.

He has successfully turned a technical subversion into a global movement, but his sights are set on the broader cosmos. He reminds us that he has the whole universe to explore, and 3-Step was just the beginning of the journey. In his world, the music must always lead, and the vessel must always remain open to whatever frequency comes next. The weight of being first is a burden he carries lightly, because he knows that being first is irrelevant if you aren't also moving forward.

Looking ahead, the evolution of 3-Step seems inevitable, especially as it continues to engage with high-energy scenes in Lagos and London. But for Thakzin, the technical evolution remains secondary to the emotional resonance. He is an artist who understands that genres are ephemeral, but the feeling that music provides is permanent. This is why he is comfortable leaving the 3-Step label behind if it ever starts to feel limiting. He is not interested in building a monument to a single sound; he is interested in the continuous act of creation.

Thakzin is now widely supported by the titans of the industry, with figures like Black Coffee, Louie Vega, Keinemusik, and Laurent Garnier all offering their co-signs. His inclusion in the Beatport Next Class of 2025 and his appearances at festivals such as Montreux and Ultra South Africa have put his music on stages across four continents. In addition, he is already set to have a wonderful 2026, as he’s billed to play at Tomorrowland and Burgess Park — both in July!

His story serves as a reminder that the best music often comes from a place of limitation and necessity. The "no-save" era taught him how to think in terms of entire compositions rather than just loops. The Ivory Park township taught him how to find beauty in the noise. And the sangoma tradition taught him that music is a form of healing that requires the artist to be a conduit for something larger than themselves.

"3-Step is just a chapter, not the whole story, and my journey is vast; it's like a whole universe. 3-Step is just one planet in that cosmos, and I'm here to keep exploring and innovating far beyond it."

He remains a figure who is fundamentally bigger than the sound he made. 3-Step gave him the platform, but his vision is what will sustain him. As he navigates the complexities of global fame and the pressures of being a genre pioneer, he stays grounded in the simple truth that music is about connection. It is about the space between the notes, the rhythm of the rain, and the ancient energies that still speak to us through modern software. He has started a journey with no clear endpoint, and for an artist who survives amid the noise, that is exactly how it should be.

By Temple Egemasi
Photography: Arthur Dlamini

What feels like a worldwide obsession with animal print came up as quickly as all trends seem to nowadays. With a swipe of a feed or the use of a nostalgic sound, ‘the next big thing’ rears its head almost every week. Yet, despite the constant change, what remains the same is the cyclical supply and demand of brands and designers jumping on the trends with sudden enthusiasm. 

Louder than brand’s interest, though, is the sharp cha-ching that rings in ears and wallets as people “invest” in these trends yet again. The erasure of seasonal fashion cycles, the quicker exchange of information, and an increased global consciousness has changed the consumer cycle, prioritising consumption over quality and longevity. 

Not all trends are made the same, though. While the term ‘trend’ has lent itself to today’s expedited society, its previous alias of consistent patterns of popularity or demand over time is still very much alive. Much longer than the weeklong lifespan of microtrends and much more inclusive of society. 

Arguably the best of these is the rise, or perhaps return, of animal print and animal hide garments. Having not only proven their worth, but shone new light on the cultural zeitgeist. 

The origin of animal print and hide fashion can be traced back to Africa’s ancient civilisations, and for the simplest of reasons: necessity. At a time when options were as slim, humans did what humans do best. They survived. Albeit Flintstone style. 

Naturally, as humans evolved, so did the fabrics, the desires, and the sociopolitical climate. The demands of time, colonialism, and the expansion of global trade turned what was once the only option into a symbol of wealth, divinity, and status. And from there, the trend started. 

Like most things that originated from the communities of colour, the Western world didn’t regard the use of animal prints or hide as anything special until their own interest was piqued. The exclusivity, regality, and couture nature of the prints and their hides brought the earliest appeal as floor rugs and entertainment in the West. Throughout the Southern Hemisphere and Eastern countries, fur maintained its power and influence, regardless of cultural influence. 

From the flashy flappers and surrealist art in 1920s America, their rise to fame after Tarzan the Apeman in 1932,  to Christian Dior’s reintroduction of leopard print into high fashion in 1947, what looked like a trend from the top of society down became common. Industrialisation led to the ease of textile printing, which led to new audiences, like punk rockers and indie artists, redefining the look and feel of the prints, as well as the conversation around them.

As the saying goes, no press is bad press and, regardless of public opinion, the value of hide and print has consistently been in its malleability and accessibility. Its cross cultural resonance has allowed it to stand the test of time, ethics, and social pressures, like any true trend. From regal to tacky to sexual to chic, today’s trending patterns capture prints and hide at their very best. 

The subtle rise of Bambi prints incorporates the chic return of polka dots with the textural appeal and exclusivity of hide. Meanwhile, zebra and tiger prints’ luxe association are slowly turning the two into staples. Never mind 2025’s stars: cowhide, tortoise shell, and leopard print, all propelled by pop culture phenomena like Cowboy Carter, retro luxury, and “mob wife” aesthetics. 

Regardless of micro or mainstream trends, prints and hides sell no matter the connotation. Considering previous changes in market value and continued ethical debates, the use of hides, furs, and prints is as versatile as the society in which it exists. The modern-day return to authentic, unfiltered living, particularly in response to global right-wing ideology, climate and economic crises, has platformed prints and hides uniquely. 

Where conservatism constricts, prints play. Where sustainability champions care, and intention, hide and print are a return to the simplest being and the roots of clothing in human civilisation. Where care is desired, and intention is required. Even its flair for controversy and public interest adds to the beauty of it - prints and hides survive.

Public desire for experiences today has driven not only consumerism but also human interest. Social media, marketing campaigns, influencers, and brands not only enthral their audiences, but they also invite them in, involve their senses, and appeal to their emotions. 

Hide tells a story. The journey to get it. The craftsmanship behind it. The very relationship between human and animal. It brings in texture, nuance, culture, and background. It asks questions and answers them. Art forecasting in 2026 indicates the same desire, with the progression of tactile art and design and the revaluation of artisan craft increased by 30 per cent year-by-year. A prediction of the kind of world that champions humanity, in all its complexity. 

From ethical bans, high fashion runways, and trending aesthetics, the impact is incomparable. Last year’s cow print may have evolved into zebra and tiger, but the influence remains the same. To put it simply, there’s nowhere in the world where humans cannot use animals for clothing. What could be more honest and authentic than that? 

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Last year, in an interview with Justin Laboy, Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) revealed that the title of his next album, ‘Bully,’ is inspired by his son, Saint West. Dressed in an all-white ensemble, and framed against the backdrop of an austere white screen projecting various merch, the 48-year-old artist shared an anecdote of his son kicking one of his peers. “This man is really a bully,” he said with a slight chuckle. On the 28th of March, one day behind its scheduled release date, Ye finally released the album to the public. 
Expectedly, ‘Bully’ arrives tainted by the shadow of Ye’s erratic past few years, which found him drifting into the furthest reaches of the far right movement, culminating in a salvo of anti-semitic statements and an ugly track entitled ‘Heil Hitler.’

In the months leading up to the album’s release, Ye began something of a slow walk towards redemption. He renounced his antisemitic statements, drove a wedge between himself and his former Hitler-sympathizing Ilk—a group including Nick Fuentes—and took out a page on the WSJ, apologizing for his unseemly conduct and expressing a desire to do better moving forward. The apology has no doubt sanded down much of the public indignation Ye has faced in recent years. Nonetheless, his latest album has split public opinion and sparked a litany of questions and conversations. In this installment of PopTakes, I share my candid thoughts on the flurry of dissonant opinions attending ‘Bully’s’ release. I also pull apart J Cole’s recent head-turning remarks and Druski’s “deeply hilarious but no less politically charged” latest skit. 

Ye’s New Album ‘Bully’ Raises New Questions About Cancel Culture

Of course, many of Ye’s critics remain steadfast and others remain skeptical of his putative transformation from the volatile and often distasteful persona he has espoused in the past few years. But it's almost surreal witnessing the outpouring of love and support Ye’s ‘Bully’ is receiving. While Pitchfork, which is increasingly being viewed as a holdout of liberal idealism, awarded the project a scathing 3.4/10—a lower score than Ye’s less coherent projects ‘Vultures II’ and ‘Donda II’—the project has found immense commercial success. It currently sits atop the US Apple Music Top Albums Chart, and is expected to make a strong overture on the Billboard Albums Charts next week. Meanwhile, ‘Father,’ a standout from the album featuring Travis Scott, has peaked atop the Global Apple Music Singles Charts. In a recent vox pop by Complex, many listeners rave about the quality of the project and award the project ratings in the neighborhood 8/10. Ye is also billed to headline the Wireless Festival for three days in July. If you told any pop culture enthusiasts a few months ago that the pendulum of the public’s opinion on Ye would swing in reverse, in such a short span, they probably would have dismissed the prediction as hallucinatory or naive. And yet, here we are. 

Amid all of these, questions regarding the efficacy and politics of cancel culture, have begun to arise. One tweet reads: “Kendrick was right about cancel culture,” referring to his ‘Mr Morale and The Big Steppers’ album where he variously calls out the hypocrisy of cancel culture: people publicly denouncing cancelled artists like R Kelly while listening to them in private. 

Cancel culture is often framed as a wholly new phenomenon, an expedient of the internet age. In reality, it’s at best a version of an ancient tradition. For millennia, humans have banished, ostracized, or sent seemingly irredeemably transgressive individuals into exile. Cancel culture feeds into this instinct; the goal is to exile certain erring individuals from society. But in place of physical estrangement, cancel culture advocates for digital pariahdom. Cancelled individuals are to be ignored except for the rare occasions when it becomes incumbent on us to denounce their actions. Crucially, in the case where the cancelled person is an artist, we similarly are expected to disengage with their art. 

Here is where the problem lies. It's one thing to publicly distance oneself from a transgressive individual and an entirely different thing to eschew their art, especially for someone like Ye, whose talent and influence on contemporary popular culture is singular. If Ye’s current ascendancy reveals anything, it’s that the latter is an almost herculean task. Despite Ye’s pariahdom on social media in the past few years, his listenership on streaming platforms remained strong, well into the neighborhood of 60 million monthly listeners on Spotify. His public apology and newfound conciliatory disposition have only given people the license to admit that their love for the music is stronger than whatever moral objections they might have. 

Druski Skewers Conservative Women in Latest Skit

In American comedian Druski’s latest skit, he plays the conservative white lady archetype. Wearing a white suit and a blonde wig, his face prosthetically altered to resemble a white lady, he prances around a stage adorned with the blue, white, and red of the American flag. The video, captioned “How Conservative Women in America act,” has now garnered a staggering 183 million views on X alone. As one would expect, it has also sparked a welter of criticism. Some have argued that Druski’s skit gives white people the pass to play white face. This argument however collapses when one considers that white face lacks the historical and political context that makes black face discriminatory. 

More interestingly, while Druski refrains from name-dropping anyone in the video, viewers have drawn comparisons between the character Druski plays in the video and Erica Kirk, the widow of late conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Earlier this week, there were reports that Erica Kirk had issued Druski a cease-and-desist letter. But this turned out to be false, Kirk has neither spoken on the matter nor sent any letter to Druski. What's real is the number of comments from conservative individuals calling for some kind of censorship of the video. It brings to mind the level of backlash Jimmy Kimmel garnered among conservatives after he made a joke about Charlie Kirk, which ultimately led to his suspension by ABC late last year. Conservatives often cast themselves as free speech hawks. This was a major part of Trump’s appeal in the last election cycle, a position that endeared him to other self-acclaimed free speech hawks like Elon Musk. Given their putative commitment to free speech, it strikes me as odd and hypocritical that they seem to have taken a liking for calling for the censorship of whatever strikes them the wrong way. 

J Cole Drops Major Bombshell In New Interview

To promote his latest album ‘The Fall Off,’  J Cole has been on something of an interview tour, sharing details about the album and his personal life. In the past few days, however, this has found him embroiled in a PR nightmare. In one interview, he revealed that he was poised to release a podcast episode about his mythologized brawl with Diddy but decided against it because at the time Diddy had just gotten arrested on multiple counts of sexual misconduct. “It felt like kicking a man when he’s down,” he says. “It would have given the news, and the world, more ammo to destroy this dude.” Hearing these comments from J Cole, who has for a long time advocated for social justice in his music, feels terribly jarring, and calls into question the persona we’ve fashioned for J Cole in our minds. We have all seen the video of Diddy brutally kicking his former partner Cassie Ventura even as she pleads and tries to escape him. So, it's beyond disappointing that  J Cole admitted to protecting a serial abuser. More disconcerting is Cole’s attempt at framing Diddy as a victim. Perhaps this is yet another reminder not to place celebrities on a pedestal, regardless of their manicured public personas of whatever politics they claim to subscribe to.