Lady Zamar reclaims her identity with new album Rainbow
Nearly five years after the release of her last LP, Monarch, singer/songwriter Lady Zamar is back with a 2024 release dubbed Rainbow.
From multiple vocal surgeries to starting again from scratch midway through the process – that journey saw Lady Zamar tackling a number of challenges. But even with that, she’s now ready to emerge from the shambles more colourful and more empowered as she introduces Rainbow to the world.
Read the interview below.
Enjoy!
How does it feel to be Lady Zamar today?
It feels crazy! It feels quite unreal. Most of the time I have to remind myself that this really is MY life and I get to live it. It is challenging, extremely challenging, for the most part though but it is a career that allows me to be as open and free as I can be. As an artist, it is refreshing not to be exposed to the rigidity of the corporate world. There’s a lot I am grateful for but yeah, that’s how it feels to be Lady Zamar: Unreal.
It’s been a whirlwind over the past few years and now you return with new music. Tell us a bit about the journey to this point.
The journey to Rainbow started around 2020. It was Covid, I had just released my previous full-length album, Monarch and it had performed extremely well. I got back to the drawing board, and I started with a lot of tracking. I wanted to figure out what I wanted to sound like, how I wanted to reinvent myself, trying to deal with drama on social media simultaneously, I needed to do this to be able to tune in my self-awareness. So that was the start.
I did a lot of vocal training around this time, looking to find the strengths and weaknesses in my own voice. In 2021 we created an entire album, but it was just not where we wanted it to be, so we started the entire project again! We worked and worked, tried more things that didn’t work until eventually we created the song that would become Castles. It then became the cornerstone of the album and now we had a clearer direction of where we were going. Since then, it’s been work work work every single week.
What does the process of creating an album do for you as a person?
What a lot of people don’t know is that it’s a really cleansing process. You go through a physical cleansing of your environment and the people around you. As a singer-songwriter, you write based on how you feel. So if the environment and people around you are toxic, the music will come out toxic. So I underwent a cleansing, I made sure there was the right energy around me so I could truly channel what I want to say on Rainbow. It’s been so empowering because I feel like I’ve taken back my identity.
In nature, a rainbow represents hope and renewal after the storm. What does the album title Rainbow represent for you?
I think making the album has been an empowering process because I feel like I’ve reclaimed my identity in this process. As for the title, it wasn’t initially called Rainbow, actually! I knew I wanted a very personal album, but we tried a lot of titles that just weren’t fitting. I even thought about using my first name, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. But when we landed on Rainbow, I knew it was the one.
How would you say you’ve evolved as an artist and what will we hear on Rainbow that we might not have heard before?
I think my vocal range on this album will catch the listeners’ ears, if I do say so myself. On this album I’ve tried to create a really great balance with my voice. I’ve played around with some lush and beautiful tones, it goes from husky to angelic. I really feel proud of the versatility I showed with my vocals. I had to undergo several voice operations in the past few years which added a lot to the challenge of making this album, but it resulted in my voice being so much better, so much brighter so I hope people will enjoy that. As for the writing, my process now and how I articulate myself is so much simpler. There aren’t any double meanings or hidden messages, literally what you hear is what you get.
You mentioned that Castles became the cornerstone of the album. What other songs can you highlight?
I think one of my favourite tracks on the album is Blame Game. If you know my discography, this song is the mirror image of Charlotte (my 2016 hit with Prince Kaybee). In Charlotte, the song was about the main chick – but in Blame Game we hear the story from the side chick’s perspective! The girl who comes in and destroys something that was already there. The first line is “I agreed to let you have my body, and there was never anything I said I wanted from it”.
Mind explaining what Work For It is all about?
Work For It is really about, you know, the girl who carries the Burberry, Louis Vuitton bags, dressed to the nines, – those kinds of girls. The ones who want the money, the material, it’s really simple – but the message is you’ve got to Work For It.
Now songwriting – are there any songs that still bring out the conceptual Lady Zamar we’ve come to know?
There definitely are, I think I have just given listeners a broader offering this time around. For example, Sweet Fire and Party In Heaven are both written quite thematically. The former would be something that listeners who have always enjoyed my maze-like lyrics (where you have to decode the meaning) will enjoy, while the latter is also another song where on the surface it seems simple but when you dig deeper you see that the story is actually quite complex.
Are there any names you can drop that you worked with on Rainbow?
The people I really want to give credit to are the Mega drums duo, they’ve been incredible to work with and very easy to work with. As a person who is also a producer, it can be a bit hard to work with other producers, but they made it super easy. It was really an eye-opening experience because it showed it’s about finding the right team.
Boskasie is incredible. A lot of writers were invited to this project, but Boskasie stood out tremendously. I think she really got me and understood me, which helped us just develop a synergy. Everything she touches turns to gold and I really enjoyed having her on board.
What do you believe the ultimate outtake from Rainbow will be?
Overall, it is a very fun album when you listen to the lyrics. There’ll be great stories, sensational vocals and some memorable tracks for everyone. You’ll also hear some Lady Zamar on amapiano beats on this album and if you know my roots, you’ll know it’s a sound I’ve always been close to. I had fun on this album.
The album can be pre-added on all streaming platforms ahead of its release on Friday 2 February 2024
LISTEN HERE