MASS COUNTRY

“I wanted to make an album that had an undercurrent of super South African country music,” Kiernan “AKA” Forbes told Apple Music in one of his last interviews before his sudden, tragic death on 10 February 2023. “I grew up listening to a lot of Jackson Browne and Cat Stevens, and all these weird guys that my dad played me, and it was kind of cathartic for me after my fiancée passed away. Country music is very much about heartbreak and pickup trucks and stars and stuff like that. So, I wanted to kind of get that feeling in there. But in a South African context, that would mean what? Maskandi; music from the Midlands, Pietermaritzburg. But then, with my obvious love for house music as well, and as time went on, ‘MASS COUNTRY’ just grew to mean the sound of South Africa—the sound of the country that I’m from, and the purpose of it being for the country that I’m from.” Released just two weeks after his death, AKA’s fifth solo studio album, MASS COUNTRY, is equal parts a love letter to the country and the sounds he grew up with, and a cathartic journey through grief, healing and self-rediscovery. An idea that was sparked shortly after the heartbreaking loss of his fiancée, Anele “Nellie” Tembe, who passed away in April 2021, MASS COUNTRY is an offering of love in its many forms: There’s love of country, from an artist often lauded for his pioneering efforts to commercialise South African hip-hop; romantic love, from a man navigating deep loss and finding ways to heal and rebuild; and brotherly love, as an artist who was instrumental in edifying the generations of musicians he inspired, many of whom make appearances on the album. MASS COUNTRY also cements AKA’s legacy as a producer who used an almost encyclopedic knowledge of South Africa’s most beloved hits to reinterpret them through captivating samples and interpolations. It’s a technique he famously employed on megahits like 2014’s “All Eyes On Me”, where he laid verses from Burna Boy, Da Les and Jr. over a sample o