On Sampa Tembo’s second album since leaving Australia—where she had moved to study audio engineering and launch her career as Sampa the Great—she thoroughly explores her musical and ancestral connections to her home country of Zambia. Especially of interest to her is the uniquely Zambian genre Zamrock, which arose in the early 1970s as a spirited mélange of rock, psych, funk, and traditional Zambian music. In fact, Nu Zamrock opens with Tembo interviewing her uncle, George Kunda, about his role in co-founding Zamrock icons WITCH. Integrating that genre’s energetic layering into her own diversified take on hip-hop, Tembo salutes Zamrock’s spirit of rebellion on bold cuts like “Simon Says”—essentially a declaration of war on her inner demons—and the chanted, guitar-licked “Can’t Hold Us.” Beyond that, Tembo wields her swaggering flow and more vulnerable singing to wage an ongoing battle for self-acceptance. On the closing “I Can Love,” she asserts her right to love amid swathes of personal doubt, while “Canary” sees her echo the music’s psych-rock storminess with the declaration, “I am the new king of Zamrock.” Rather than just channeling a bygone genre, she’s reclaiming its ongoing evolution and deserving place in the here and now.