Why Sampa The Great’s Never Forget wasn’t in the Movie Black Panther…
So Marvel recently released the list of music that’s in the movie Black Panther (2) and the omission of Sampa The Great brought a lot of talk and vokamba kamba amongst several Zambians- fans, critics and haters alike. The heated debates, missiles and justifications made for interesting reading.
Here’s the deal, all those songs from the boring Lead single by Rihanna, to Fireboy, Busiswa, Rema etc were specifically done for the movie. In other words, the movie producer approached these musicians and said i want you to sing a song- this will be what you’ll sing about and we will help you write and produce it. It’s our song it’ll feature on Black Panther and we will sell the music. Kinda like how Slap D is approached to do a ZICTA ad or how JK was contracted to sing “Celtel yena takwaba ati watuma yaluka…” examples abound.
Thus, all the music on Black Panther was officially released on 4th November, 2022 in a Black Panther album that’s being sold by Marvel. There are two exceptions one might want to bring up. The first is Rihanna’s song which was released some days ago. Obviously they wanted it to gain traction as the Lead single but it was also written and produced by Ryan Coogler and the Black Panther crew for the movie it wasn’t Rihanna doing her own thing. The other exception is Tems’ song “No Woman No Cry” which is a Ctrl+V of Bob Marley’s song. The song was featured on the first trailer BUT and i repeat BUT it was also done for the movie with the lyrics written by the creative Director of Black Panther.- he says he visited Mexico and some other place to inspire those sounds. According to him “if we used a song in the movie we wanted it to be the entire song and to be connected to the story”
So for Sampa that was her own song, already released on her own album so releasing it and selling it under the Black Panther album would’ve just opened a can of worms and defeated whatever the intention of the producers in releasing music specifically for this. There was no malice in leaving out her song and it’s actually a wonderful coincidence that her music was used in the trailer despite having no deliberate connection to the movie.
By Kachasu Kandy
