Dawuna Signs to True Panther and Returns with New Mixtape African Family Laptop Musick

Baltimore experimental R&B visionary Dawuna has announced his signing to True Panther Records, marking the news with the release of his deeply personal new mixtape, African Family Laptop Musick. The project is Dawuna's first new release since 2024's acclaimed Naya and follows his breakthrough 2021 album Glass Lit Dream, hailed by The Guardian as "a masterpiece." Continuing to blur the lines between lo-fi soul, glitched neo-soul and experimental R&B, African Family Laptop Musick offers another intimate glimpse into the singular world of the Ugandan-American artist.

Created while recovering from a traumatic head injury that later resulted in an amnesia diagnosis, the mixtape carries an emotional weight unlike anything Dawuna has released before. "I was healing from a traumatic head injury that gave me a later amnesia diagnosis, so I don't remember more than a couple small flashes of memory from the recording and construction of this project," Dawuna explains. "I wanted to make a low-fidelity concept piece about my family life at the time... This is the last little offering from a very personal side of myself before I give y'all something big."

Across 11 tracks, African Family Laptop Musick explores memory, family, identity and healing through hazy production, ghostly vocals and stripped-back compositions that further cement Dawuna as one of experimental music's most compelling voices.

Alongside the digital release, a strictly limited run of just 500 vinyl copies is available exclusively through Boomkat, offering fans the only physical edition of the mixtape. Since emerging with Glass Lit Dream, Dawuna has steadily built a reputation as one of alternative R&B's most innovative artists, taking his hypnotic live performances to venues and festivals including London's ICA, Café OTO, Le Guess Who? and Manchester's The White Hotel.

With a new label home at True Panther and more new music already promised later this summer, African Family Laptop Musick feels less like a standalone release and more like the beginning of an exciting new chapter.