South Africa’s first lady of house music, Zinhle Jiyane, known behind the decks as DJ Zinhle, talks AfriPOP! on breaking through the ‘female DJ box’ and rocking the world’s good time capital, Miami. Signed to South Africa’s premier dance music label Kalawa Jazzmee, her set in Miami has lead to an international record deal. Your track, ‘My Name Is’ rocked Miami. What did that feel like? Did you produce the [...]
Laura Seay, better known as @Texasinafrica, has a twitter TL that any African politics and policy junkie would appreciate. An assistant professor of political science at Morehouse College in Atlanta, she has been blogging about the DRC, state building, humanitarian policy and security policy since 2005 on her blog Texas in Africa. She now occasionally writes for The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor and Al Jazeera among others. Her wit with [...]
Amina Lula is a Toronto based PR and social media manager for online shopping site eLUXE. This Somali-Yemeni beauty started off her career in the fashion business as an intern-cum-employee at Rachel Roy, who Amina describes as “an incredible mentor.” She is also the second half of the Sokoni Worldwide duo (we featured her Sokoni partner-in-crime Saada Ahmed a few weeks ago) On her style, Amina says: “It’s never consistent [...]
In a parallel life, Spoek Mathambo might have been the vocalist for Popskarr, an electro-pop outfit he conceptualised with Terrence Pearce. But he had no time to be a part of as he was leaving his then Cape Town home to take root in Johannesburg before taking over the world. Instead he roped in a then teenage Yannick Ilunga whom he’d met during his Sweat X days to fill in. [...]
Nothing gets me excited quite like a good piece of cinema on Africa. I was delighted to come across two projects we’re really rooting for at the moment. The best part is YOU, us…we can all can help these budding filmmakers tell their stories. First up is Boneshaker by Frances Bodomo about a Ghanaian family that takes a trip to a tent revival church in Louisiana to cure their violent [...]
So as successful as “Today I wore” turned out with Joy Adaeze and Terence Sambo, we had to chop and screw it up a lil to get the final result we wanted. So we’ve changed the feature into “What I wore this week” where every Friday, we’ll bring all that stylish goodness in one punchy, self-contained and concise round-up of looks and styles from every day of the week gone [...]
There are some African media moguls in the making, and Zimbabwean Farai Gundan happens to be one of them. She was on our list of 30 Zimbabweans you outta know so we’ve had our eye on her for a little while now. In her day job, she is a producer & TV personality on Afrotainment Television Channel & Afrotainment Music Channel in the U.S. where she has interviewed countless celebrities and [...]
(l-r: Jason Akoi, Tobi Babajide) Born out of the campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey, Herds of the Fathers is an accessories line that blends both the old school nature of its approach to good quality leather design with the youth and vitality of its designers. Now two years old, the line created by Nigerian-born Tobi Babajide and Liberian-American Jason Akoi has evolved further with their second collection arriving in coming [...]
When Zimbabwean-born MC/singer/songwriter Tehn Diamond went to Australia, it was really to get as far away as he could from the tyranny of his parents’ wishes. Your typical middle class African family today looks like his: siblings flung across the globe (Tehn has a brother in China, a sister in UK and another in America), and parents whose professions have just about weathered economic conditions so volatile that as their [...]
(photo: Mohamed Dione and Marie Zoumanigui in ‘Maffe Tiga’) The African Movie Academy Awards take place tonight in Lagos. First time-nominee Mohamed Dione, a LA-NY based director and actor, with his first film Maffe Tiga is short-listed in the best short film category. Dione is a working actor with roles in the likes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Notorious as well as a feature in Andrew Dosunmu’s film Restless City [...]
