Add to playlist: the heartbreak post-mortems of Cape Town’s Rowlene and the week’s best new tracks

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 Africa
Recommended if you like Summer Walker, SZA, Shekhinah
Up 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.