New Tony Allen Song “Stumbling Down (ft. Sampa The Great)”

Blue Note Records Releases New Tony Allen Song
“Stumbling Down (feat. Sampa The Great)”

Second Single From Allen’s Posthumous Album
There Is No End out April 30th

New Full-Length From The Legendary Drummer Featuring Guest Rappers and Singers Including Skepta, Danny Brown, Lava La Rue, and more

April 9, 2021: Today, Blue Note Records released “Stumbling Down (feat. Sampa The Great),” a new song from the legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen. It’s the second single from There Is No End, a posthumous album from Allen, who died last year at the age of 79. Featuring guest rappers and singers including Skepta, Danny Brown, Lava La Rue, Zelooperz, and more, the new full-length will be released on April 30, 2021, the one year anniversary of Allen’s death. “Stumbling Down” follows the first single “Cosmosis (ft. Skepta & Ben Okri),” which was co-produced by Damon Albarn.

“Stumbling Down” features Zambian-Australian rapper Sampa The Great, whose flow and lyrics live up to the four Australian Grammy’s she’s won for her breakout debut album The Return, released in 2019 via Ninja Tune. The sound draws together the musical lifeblood of Melbourne, Johannesburg and Gaborone, all locations where parts of the track were recorded. As Sampa puts it, “Uncle Tony was involved in changing the way African Music was heard and felt, and he has constantly inspired me to learn and to expand my music.”

There Is No End was produced by Tony Allen, Vincent Taeger, and Vincent Taurelle — Allen had produced and written all the album’s beats back in 2019 alongside Taeger. In thinking back on the process of finalizing There Is No End without Tony physically present to guide them, Taeger remarked that his friend and mentor “was a teacher without speaking… a drummer and a guardian, with a great artistic vision and that vision filled the songs even after he had left us.”

Tony Allen’s singular talent didn’t end when the music stopped. For all those who knew him, he was a deeply spiritual man whose life’s mission was not just to create a new musical language, but to pass it on to subsequent generations. As he put it, “I’m just doing my best to please the universe. Life’s a boomerang, you know? You create bad or good [and] it comes back to you.” Right up to this, his last album, his thoughts were for the younger artists who continued to flock to him, especially in the fraught historical and political moment in which we live. “I want to take care of youngsters; they have messages and I want to bring them on my beat. The idea is to transmit to the young generation, to mix different universes – the hip hop world to the Afrobeat world.”

Tracklisting:
1. Tony’s Praeludium
2. Stumbling Down (feat. Sampa The Great)
3. Crushed Grapes (feat. Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon)
4. Très Magnifique (feat. Tsunami)
5. Mau Mau (feat. Nah Eeto)
6. Coonta Kinte (feat. Zelooperz)
7. Rich Black (feat. Koreatown Oddity)
8. One Inna Million (feat. Lava La Rue)
9. Gang On Holiday (Em I Go We?) (feat. Jeremiah Jae)
10. Deer In Headlights (feat. Danny Brown)
11. Hurt Your Soul (feat. Nate Bone)
12. My Own (feat. Marlowe)
13. Cosmosis (feat. Ben Okri & Skepta)
14. There’s No End

Photo Credit: Bernard Benant & Navire Argo

Missing Piece Group