GNL ZAMBA: My name is GNL Zamba so the first three letters represent Greatness with No Limits, that’s the GNL Greatness With No Limits. And its a pleasure to be here on Limitless Africa. If alignment is a thing, this must be it.
CLAUDE:
GNL Zamba is a Ugandan hip-hop artist who lives between Kampala and Los Angeles. He’s the founder and CEO of the independent hip-hop record label Baboon Forest Entertainment. He’s been credited with popularizing Lunga Flow. Lunga Flow is a blend of Afrobeats and Luganda, the most widely spoken of Uganda’s 40 languages.
I wanted to speak to him about his career, how he’s working to build up the music industry in his home country, Uganda, and how the global success of Afrobeats in Nigeria is inspiring what he’s doing in Uganda.
ZAMBA:
Hi Limitless podcast listeners. My name is GNL Zamba. I’m an African artist, filmmaker and creative entrepreneur from Uganda.
My work sits at the intersection of hip hop, storytelling and cultural development. I’ve spent years in the US, learning the global creative industry, and now I’m returning home with a project called the homecoming, which is a movement about identity, the diaspora, and reclaiming our cultural voice. Everything I do is rooted in one belief that Africa is entering a creative renaissance, and hip hop can be one of those engines to power it.
CLAUDE:
So if we think of you as a musician who’s also an entrepreneur, how successful do you think you actually are? Because I always worry about, do musicians and creatives actually make money? What’s the yardstick of success? You define it, everyone defines their own yardstick for success…
ZAMBA:
Yes, for me, the yardstick for my success is has to be rooted in community. It’s not just about the money alone, but it’s about how, how does the wave lift everybody around us? Right? If it’s about unemployment, and I’m using my music as to make money for myself and better my family, how about the people and the community around me? It should be that shared success in community. That’s why I’m building creative ecosystems that are family friendly, that where we can tell Africans identity, and for the young kids to have confidence in themselves, to capture the whole globe, you know, so in training them, in helping them hone their skills to be ready for the global markets, that’s where my passion is, and when I see the narrative of African stories changing all over the world, if I see more people employed all over the world, and it’s through their creative arts, then I’ll measure that as the biggest success. If I inspired that, or was a part of the engine that built that,
CLAUDE:
I love the fact that you first define yourself as an African. You are very deeply rooted in your own community. For instance, we know that you decided to switch to the Luganda language, and it’s interesting that you made this choice. Can you tell us a little bit more why you did that and why you chose Luganda?
ZAMBA:
So I chose Luganda because it is my ancestors’ languages, right? Yes, there’s this saying, this thing I’m really a fan of, which says: your ancestors have been waiting for someone with your strength to carry their name, right? So that has always, like resonated with me, and I used to in my youth, I used to like really rap to NAS and Wu Tang. I was inspired by those. It’s until I discovered that hip hop is also around the fireplace in the African University, the African fireplace University of the ancestors, that’s where you have chanting like koi koi before a poet does his piece. Get me all of that is hip hop. And Hip Hop is not just borrowed from the United States. It’s just retracing its roots from where it began. So that’s I found that really to be powerful, and I found that the most authentic way to portray that was through the unfiltered language of Luganda so and as funny as the universe would have it, I never got any success when I made English records, purely English records, it was until I got Luganda, and that’s when my first album, Koi koi became successful.
CLAUDE:
It’s interesting because I mentioned earlier that you live between Kampala and Los Angeles. But if we take you back to Uganda, tell us about the music scene there. You know. We know about Bobby wine, who became a member of parliament, an activist, but he also is a musician. What is it like the music scene?
ZAMBA:
The music scene in Uganda is evolving. It is the one of the most promising things. It drives everything. One of the reasons Bobby Wine is involved in politics is because he’s seeing all the support that he has. And there’s a part of him that makes him, that propels him to want to create change, you know. So you gotta have the youngest population in the world, if not the second youngest everywhere. So there’s that power that is coming of age, right? It’s a very, very vibrant industry, very, very competitive. But it also needs to hone in its power, and that potential needs, to be honest, to drive the whole continent really. It’s so it’s so young, so vibrant. I would compare it to a wilderbeast migration like all of them, need a direction to go to. So it’s something that’s really beautiful. We all hope to have make our contributions, because it’s not just for our generation, at least for the generations to come.
CLAUDE:
We talked a little bit about Afrobeats and Wizkid and Burnaboy that we do and all the other ones. And we really have to talk about prosperity for the community as well. And if we consider that in 2023 Afrobeats generated an estimated $100 million globally, but only a fraction of that income found its way back to Nigeria. How do you think that Uganda can avoid this trap?
ZAMBA:
I think it’s about the partnerships that I think it’s not just the Nigerian, Nigerian or Ghanaian, Ghanaian trap, it is the trap of the whole music industry, and also of most black communities. You have the gold, but most of the people who live from the gold, the people who are contributing the most to it. And in the beginning, we will say it’s because of the ignorance, not reading the contracts, but it’s also a certain sense of desperateness you’re going to get to to that everybody wants the opportunity to escape poverty. Yeah, you get me. And that leads so many to rushed decisions which might not be clever. So in order for Uganda, to avoid those traps, we are pushing for independent record levels and family owned units, where, in a place where you have a lot of unemployment, it should the opportunity should go first to the people around it. But I think the people that have managed to escape that are the ones that have been able to build assistance from the ground up, involving the families in it. So you look at the Beyonce unit, and you see the dad is right there, and this is a family offers that kind of protection. And I always try to encourage the artist that I work with that, what does your sister do? What does your sister do? What does your mother see the entertainment industry say, Okay, but what could the contribution be? The whole family unit needs to lift. This needs to rise with you.
CLAUDE:
How do you think that America and Africa can work together for shared prosperity?
ZAMBA:
So shared prosperity collaboration like these are two very, very powerful powerhouse that, if they collaborate, not only money, but in terms of also in building infrastructure and community, are going to be unstoppable. America has a lot to offer. Africa has infinite, infinite resources and potential. The youngest people in the whole world. You know that population is coming up, you get me. So all of this potential, like I said at the beginning of the call, I think Africa is going to be a creative renaissance, the Africans and the Americans have a chance right now to catch up with the world, or even overtake the world with the collaboration they can form, not only in fashion, but manufacturing, in creativity, in the authentic storytelling. Some of the stories in the world out there are kind of saturated. You always have the same narrative. Africa is still untucked with stories. You get me. And America has the infrastructure. It has the storytellers that are some of the most excellent storytellers out there in the world. So with that collaboration, I think that’s where the Renaissance, which is its max.
CLAUDE:
So on that note, what is the future for GNL Zamba?
ZAMBA:
The future for GNL Zamba? I’m planning to go big. Yes, I’m thinking big. I’m going big. I’m working hard. If I did make sure that the Baboon Forest platform becomes a media powerhouse, not only Africa, but globally, mentoring people. I’m working hard on a film called infinity, which is a collaboration between my American partner and my company Babook Forest, which is coming out. it’s a mix of beats, hip hop and poetry, African spirituality and basically joy, because I’m excited about that. And I’m also working on the homecoming project. And the homecoming project is a musical project about returning home. It’s part documentary, part music and festival. We are working on those really hard. And for Los Angeles, as you know, we have the Swahili nation festival. That’s what we’re developing out here. So that’s going big. I work hard. I network hard. So I hope to have you as part of my new network.
CLAUDE:
Yes, yeah, I really do, because I can see that we have something in common beyond Wu Tang and NAS, is that we like to have a big roadmap
ZAMBA:
I always tell people hip hop is going to change the world. Because on a train, all you have to ask is, who won the beef – was it Jay Z or NAS? And that’s a conversation. All you have to say is, what’s your favorite album? Hip hop has the power to unite America, France, every village, all over the world, because it’s the language of young people. It’s the language of a youthful spirit. It’s a language that connects ancestry to true self expression. And I believe when you have your ancestor which is rooted and true self expression, you have so much love that it spills over the whole the big message here is to promote love and equality and find joy in creation. And I think hip hop has the best platform to do that. And once minds like ours connect, it’s limitless. Thank you keep building.
