Sabina Ddumba

Sweden’s Sabina Ddumba is a soulful, gospel-influenced vocalist with a bent toward contemporary pop and R&B. Making her debut in the 2010s, she issued the platinum singles “Scarred for Life” and “Effortless,” which appeared on her first LP, 2016′s Top Ten hit Homeward Bound. Following her appearance on the Swedish reality show Så Mycket Bättre, she issued a steady string of singles in the lead-up to her third album, 2021′s The Forgotten Ones.
Born in Fisksätra, a suburb of Stockholm, in 1994, Ddumba grew up in a religious family with parents who emigrated to Sweden from Uganda. Subsequently, some of her earliest musical memories were of hearing her mother sing Ugandan nursery rhymes. In her teens, she joined the Tensta Gospel Choir and performed with the ensemble for six years. Also during this period, she began listening to a mix of modern and ’90s R&B, including The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which inspired her greatly. In 2012, she briefly competed on Sweden’s version of The X Factor and made her professional debut singing on Adam Kanyama’s track “The Golden Child.” The following year, her career gained another boost when she supplied backup vocals on Katy Perry’s single “Walking on Air,” from Prism.
In 2014, Ddumba released her debut single “Scarred for Life,” which helped land her a recording contract with Warner Music. Following her signing, she released the singles “Effortless” and “Not Too Young” in 2015; the latter achieved platinum status. That same year, Ddumba performed at the Swedish Grammy Awards. In 2016, she released her fourth solo single, the Wolf Cousins-produced “Not Too Young, Pt. 2,” as well as her debut full-length, Homeward Bound, which entered the Swedish charts at number ten. After starring alongside Icona Pop and others on the eighth season of the Swedish musical reality show Så Mycket Bättre (So Much Better), the songs she sang were collected on Så Mycket Bättre 2017: Tolkningarna. The set peaked in the Top 40, while her cover of Uno Svenningsson’s “Vågorna” peaked in the Top 20. In 2018, she issued the single “Small World” followed in 2019 by the Mr. Eazi collaboration “Blow My Mind.” Additional singles kept her busy through the end of the decade, with a handful later appearing on her 2021 album The Forgotten Ones. ~ Neil Z. Yeung & Matt Collar