I remember sitting at my kitchen table one night in spring when someone sent me Melanchronica, a collaborative album by Sudanese American rapper Bas and London-based duo The Hics. I took a listen and immediately knew that this was a special project. By the time I had reached "Sometimes," the 7-minute-long outro, I had dissolved into feelings of nostalgia and joy, playing the song on a loop.

Bas and The Hics, a duo comprising Roxane Barker and Sam Paul Evans, have cultivated their shared creativity over the past decade. They collaborated on tracks for Bas' sophomore album, Milky Way, as well as The Messenger podcast after Bas heard The Hics' "Cold Air" on GTA 5 Radio and DM'd them while passing through London on tour with J. Cole.

"I always try to seek out people who bring me out of my comfort zone and inspire me to achieve a different level in my artistry," says Bas. "Whenever I work with [The Hics], there's just a lot of emotional depth to the music. Their writing is very poetic, and they're intentional with their wording."

Melanchronica began in 2017 with "Four Walls," a song about heartbreak and longing for lost love. It was too chronically melancholic for Milky Way's summery vibe, so Bas held it back. But the world and soundscapes they had created begged to be explored further.

"The song was like one of those vulnerable moments and thoughts that you might not share with others or might not even like to admit to yourself until you get that sonic landscape that evokes that emotion out of you," says Bas. "At least in our culture, music is a bit devoid of emotion right now."

They continued working on what would eventually become Melanchronica, a cinematic, textured invitation to feel it all. At the intersection of Bas' New York-cool rap style and The Hics' genre-bending sound, which blends elements of soul, electronic, jazz, and alternative R&B, effortless chemistry has birthed to one of the rare projects that you can listen to from start to finish without skipping a single track, and then repeat.

"To have that much time making music in this day and age is [a privilege]," says Bas, echoing musicians like Morocco's Stormy and Small X. "We're stuck in a music consumption rat race and trying to stay relevant. But we had the time to really cook this." Melanchronica comes right on the heels of Egyptian rapper Marwan Moussa's prediction that rap music was changing. "I think we'll hear music that feels like more time has been spent making it," he told OkayAfrica in May.

Track five, named after the standout Black Mirror episode "San Junipero," is one of the album's more energetic songs. Evans' grungy bassline immediately drew Bas in. "It's emotional, but aggressive and has a bounce," he says. "Black Mirror is one of the most culturally relevant media, filled with so many warnings of the human condition and society that we're heading into."

My favorite songs as of now are "Erewhon" and "Sometimes." "Those are solid choices, I think I'd agree with you there," Bas says. Both tracks were written at Harbor Studio in Malibu, which was lost to the LA wildfires this year.

"Erewhon is the most LA of LA grocery stores," Bas says with a grin. "$20 smoothies and you might get an avocado sandwich and have to take out a loan. But it's good, though, I'm not gonna lie."

The track confronts artistic progress and, as a result, the improvement of one's material comfort levels — from London's Aldi to LA's Erewhon — which is one of the album's central themes. After attaining a higher lifestyle, one often realizes that it does not guarantee greater happiness or fulfillment. "Every time you reach those moments, you're not content. You're trying to find the next glass ceiling to shatter," says Bas.

Dualities, self-reflection, and longing resound through Melanchronica and are felt as the timeless and existential conditions they are. For Bas, longing specifically took on a more complicated dimension with the outbreak of war in Khartoum, Sudan, in 2023.

He used to spend every December at his family home in Bahri, which had become a base for the Rapid Support Forces until the Sudanese Armed Forces recently recaptured the city.

"When things get as dire as they have, you understand the value of having those roots, traditions, and that piece of history," says Bas. "To be in a hometown where all the families in the neighborhood go back centuries, having a cemetery I can visit with generations of my family buried there. To have all that ripped from you is depressing. Nothing's been the same."

In his writing, Bas personifies longing and desire to make the sentiment more relatable. "You might not have lost a country, but the emotion at the core is the same," he says. "It's just like, damn I miss you, I want you back."

Even though Bas agrees with me on my favorites, his is "Roxane's Interlude." "I like when Roxanne takes front and center and we get to, kind of, pepper around that," he says. "I like those songs that remind me of those classic R&B summer records I grew up on. This dominant female lead, and then a cool rap verse to throw in there."

Melanchronica is his first collaborative album; it takes patience, trust, and compromise to put a project like this together. "Professionally and creatively, I grew a lot," he says. "I am maturing as an artist and as a man. I've gained the confidence to shed a little more of the bravado that's expected of us in our genre, really tap into the depth of my artistry, and see where I can go."

If he could, he would like to go home. To Sudan. Practice his Arabic, restore the family house, and nurture a connection that was weakened when his mother passed away.

It might be this shared longing for our parents' home that touched me so deeply when listening to Melanchronica. But whatever it is you are longing for, reflecting on, and feeling melancholic about, this album will hold and nurture you in the process.

Sudan's bid to sue the United Arab Emirates (UAE), alleging that the UAE is providing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) with weapons that are being used to commit genocide in Darfur, has been dismissed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

On Monday, May 5, the United Nations' top court in The Hague announced that it "manifestly lacked" the authority to continue the proceedings. Sudan had requested emergency measures to prevent genocidal acts against the Masalit tribe, which has been subject to ethnic-based attacks by the RSF and its allied Arab militias.

Since April 2023, the RSF has been in armed conflict with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), plunging Sudan into the world's worst humanitarian crisis. While both parties stand accused of committing war crimes, the RSF has explicitly been inflicting widespread sexual violence on women and girls and terrorizing communities across the country.

On March 5, Sudan filed the case with the ICJ, asking that provisional measures be taken and for the UAE to do all it can to prevent the killing and targeting of the Masalit people in Darfur. On April 11, the RSF descended onto Zamzam camp in West Darfur, home to half a million displaced persons, killing at least 400 people, looting and burning homes.

People are voicing their anger over the ICJ's dismissal on social media. "Lack of jurisdiction? It's the INTERNATIONAL court of justice; their jurisdiction is the whole globe," wrote one user on Instagram.

However, lack of jurisdiction refers to the fact that, even though both countries are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the UAE made a reservation against Article 9 of the Convention. Accordingly, other states cannot sue it over genocide allegations. The ICJ rejected the request for provisional measures by a 14-2 vote and ordered the case removed from its docket by a 9-7 vote.

"The Court concludes from the foregoing that, having regard to the UAE's reservation to Article IX of the Genocide Convention, this Article cannot constitute, prima facie, a basis for the jurisdiction of the Court in the present case," the court said in its order.

Amongst Sudanese, the UAE's relationship with the RSF is a well-known, undisputed fact. While there is no direct evidence of the UAE's involvement in the RSF's warfare, Sarah Nouwen from the European University Institute tells DW that Sudanese claims are based on suspicious activity.

"Flights are going from the United Arab Emirates in that direction," she says. "One cannot really explain what else would be there. The United Arab Emirates says it's humanitarian aid, but there isn't much humanitarian aid coming in. Many Sudanese say this must be arms. Otherwise, we can't explain how the RSF has been so successful militarily."

While online users doubt that the ICJ holds any actual power or significance after it failed to stop the genocide in Palestine, the court's decision to abstain from the horrors being committed in Sudan deals another blow to its fragile reputation and closes another pathway for Sudan to leave its hellish war.

When U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in April that President Donald Trump's administration had revoked visas for all South Sudanese citizens, citing South Sudan’s failure to accept deportees “in a timely manner,” it sounded like South Sudan was being punished for refusing to cooperate.

But the reality was far more ridiculous and unfair.

The problem centered on a single passenger: a man on a U.S. deportation flight whom South Sudan refused to accept because he was Congolese, not South Sudanese. Yet America didn’t care.

Even after South Sudan capitulated days later and agreed to take in the Congolese man, “in the spirit of friendly relations,” the U.S. has kept the visa revocation in place. Friendly relations, it seems, are one-sided.

Across social media, South Sudanese described it as American bullying. South Sudan’s Information Minister, Michael Makuei Lueth, told the media that the U.S. was “attempting to find faults with the tense situation” in the country.

“No sovereign nation would accept foreign deportees,” he said.

South Sudan is the world’s youngest country and is on the brink of renewed civil war, threatening over 11 million people.

And yet, from the African Union and other African heads of state? Silence.

That silence is telling and extremely dangerous.

South Sudan’s visa crisis came amid rumors of a draft U.S. travel ban list in which most of the countries are African.

This is just one example of how Trump’s second-term “America First” agenda has hurt Africa, with little pushback from leaders. Since returning to office, he has frozen billions of dollars in aid, ended Power Africa, and imposed new tariffs that threaten African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade and jobs across the continent. His policies are also threatening African students studying in the U.S.

Even South Africa, already punished after Trump suspended aid and controversially offered asylum to white Afrikaners, stood alone as it expelled the U.S. ambassador. There is no solidarity from neighbors. No AU statement.

Some may see America stepping back as a push toward self-reliance or simply wish to avoid Washington’s ire. And the African Union may still be adjusting under new leadership. The newly elected AU Commission Chairperson and commissioners took office in March.

But history shows the AU can speak up. In 2017, then-AU Commission Chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma condemned Trump’s travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.

“The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries,” she told the AU summit in Addis Ababa. “What do we do about this? Indeed, this is one of the greatest challenges to our unity and solidarity.”

Today, the challenge remains, but unity and solidarity seem missing.

If Africa’s institutions won’t stand up for their citizens, who will?