The South African singer has been a memorable guest artist, but the unhurried, emotional tracks on new album Some Strings Attached show she’s ready for the spotlight
From Cape Town, South AfricaRecommended if you like Summer Walker, SZA, ShekhinahUp next Some Strings Attached out now
Rowlene Bosman learned to sing in a Cape Town school choir, and the discipline never left her: she is a precision vocalist in a scene that rewards volume. Most South Africans first heard her in 2018, delivering the hook on Nasty C’s SMA – she was the first signing to his Tall Racks label – and the featured artist circuit kept her busy for years. But while South African pop stampeded towards amapiano, Rowlene held her ground as a balladeer, writing slow, confessional R&B in which heartbreak is examined instead of danced away. Her 2020 debut album 11:11, a set of aching, close-quarters soul songs, brought a South African music award nomination for best pop album, and three of her originals – Cupid, Stay and the Nasty C collaboration I Need You – landed on the soundtrack of Netflix’s SA teen crime drama Blood & Water, carrying her voice far beyond home.
Hurts 2b Reminded, from her new album Some Strings Attached, is the best argument yet for that patience. Over spare, unhurried production with a faint Afropop pulse ticking underneath, she sings about the ambush of memory: the places and small details that resurrect someone you thought you had let go. The twist is who she is mourning: not the dead, nor an ex, but friends who are alive and well yet simply elsewhere, people whose lives moved on without her. Losing them, she has said, was the price of finding herself. After 10 years of stealing the show from other artists, she sounds ready to headline her own. Mary Chiney
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