People who have spent their formative years moving from one place to another find it hard to pin down the idea of "home". In the most simple terms, home should be where our loved ones are. There is something anchoring about a physical place where you don't often feel misunderstood, or like you don't belong.
This is something that eludes some of us, and so we spend a lot of time piecing together an identity that borrows from a variety of traditions, sources and experiences.
Throughout artist Sampa The Great's new album The Return, this is a running theme.
Albeit decidedly hip-hop, the project is nonetheless fluid in its exploration of genre, making way for influences as varied as jazz, gospel and reggae, all brought together and consolidated into a '90s boom-bap feel made relevant and given a fresh take by the sharpshooting rapper who sprinkles her spitting with her native Bemba.
The Return came out a little over three weeks ago, a short while after the Zambia-born, Botswana-raised and Australia-based artist did somewhat of a homecoming, playing shows in Lusaka, Joburg and eSwatini.
Speaking to British newspaper The Guardian after playing these shows, the buzzy rapper said she had concerns about being misunderstood by her fellow Zambians, specifically.
"I'm based in Australia. All monumental moments in my career happened there. But I'm from Zambia. My fear was that they wouldn't get it, and their opinion matters the most."
Luckily, her return to the continent went better than expected. In Joburg, she would later post on Instagram that the audience was singing along and connecting to the music.
"All I can say is thank you so much for making my first show here amazing and bringing beautiful energy to the last show on the African leg of (the) Final Form tour."
I'm based in Australia. All monumental moments in my career happened there. But I'm from Zambia. My fear was that [my fellow Zambians] wouldn't get it, and their opinion matters the most
Born Sampa Tembo, the rapping singer and songwriter left Zambia as a teenager, eventually landing in Australia where she would begin her music career in earnest, meeting and collaborating with fellow artists she met in the clubs and other live-music and art venues in Melbourne and Sydney.
On The Return, in an interlude titled Wake Up, a friend of Sampa's tells her to realise what she's up against.
"I get what you're dealing with, 100%. It's really rough, but we're black. And you're black in the music industry no less. This is just how it is. You just have to be able to deal."
It's an unmistakably politically conscious record, and this is what Sampa has become known for, having dropped her debut mixtape, The Great Mixtape, back in 2015, and then following that up with singles like Black Dignity, FEMALE and Freedom, which also appears on the album The Return.
Last year Sampa won the 13th Australian Music prize for her debut album Birds and the Bee9, beating eight other shortlisted artists, including Paul Kelly and Jen Cloher, to take the annual $30,000 prize for best Australian album of 2017.
Critics have called her a "bright spark" and some have called Final Form, her first single off The Return, one of the best songs of 2019.
It's accompanied by video shot in Zambia and Botswana, and the artist explains that the track itself is about "expanding yourself, and calling out any negativity towards that growth process".
Having already headlined her first tour in the US, Sampa is continuing her trek around the globe with more dates in Europe and Australia for the remainder of 2019.
Her star seems to be rising fast and soon she may join the likes of Burna Boy in becoming a global mainstream African act whose sound cannot be pinned down while it finds a home in the hearts of fans around the world.
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