Genesis Owusu Returns With Third Album ‘Redstar Wu & The Worldwide Scourge’

Genesis Owusu’s third album, Redstar Wu & The Worldwide Scourge, arrives as a 15-track confrontation with a world on fire. Recorded in a repurposed church in South Wales, the release follows two ARIA-winning records and a grueling international touring schedule that brought the artist face to face with resurgent far-right movements, corporate greed, and the suffocating noise of digital life. Owusu channels Nina Simone’s edict that an artist must reflect the times, and the result is an eclectic, aggressive body of work that maps social collapse onto personal endurance.

The album opens with ‘Pirate Radio’, his first solo music in two years. A distorted, lurching bassline carries lyrics aimed directly at tech-billionaire ego and social media’s grip: “Mind been burnt by blue check mania,” he raps. The track’s underground broadcast energy bleeds into ‘Stampede’, where twitching synths and pounding drums push a call to action that does not hide its targets. “Giving my reply with a bat, find an oligarch get him taxed,” Owusu barks. That anti-establishment streak runs through ‘Big Dog’ and the ambitious ‘Death Cult Zombie’, sharpening the record’s central argument. Across the project, Owusu swaps the chameleon’s camouflage for a direct line to a crumbling present, making clear this is no exercise in passive observation.