Genesis Owusu doesn’t do quiet reinvention. He detonates eras. With the announcement of his third album REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE, arriving 15 May via OURNESS, the Ghanaian-Australian artist doubles down on the kind of genre-warping, world-facing songwriting that has already reshaped the local landscape and rippled far beyond it.
This is not just another record. It reads like a dispatch from the edge. Across its tracks, Owusu builds a restless, shape-shifting body of work that threads neo-soul into alt-pop, synth punk into deep funk, Brit rock into something far more volatile. The result is an album that feels both fractured and unified, a record obsessed with duality: ecstatic and desolate, intimate and confrontational, personal and political. If Smiling With No Teeth cracked something open and STRUGGLER pushed it further into abstraction, REDSTAR WU sounds like the moment it all spills out.
Owusu himself frames it as necessity rather than choice. Writing in response to a world that feels increasingly divided, he leans into the idea that artists should reflect their times, echoing the lineage of voices like Nina Simone. It’s a statement that lands in the music itself: urgent, unflinching, unwilling to look away.
The rollout has already hinted at the scale. “PIRATE RADIO” burns hot with agitation, “DEATH CULT ZOMBIE” drags Brit rock through something darker and more unstable, while “STAMPEDE” surges forward with a kind of controlled chaos that feels built for the stage. It’s the kind of run of singles that doesn’t just preview an album, it sketches its atmosphere.
And the stage is where this material will fully mutate. Owusu will take the record across Australia throughout May, launching at Newcastle’s Bar On The Hill before hitting Canberra, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. His live shows have long operated less like concerts and more like collisions, theatrical, unpredictable and physically charged.
Backseat Mafia has long been in his corner, having caught his set at Harvest Festival in Adelaide last year, where the same intensity translated into something immediate and communal. That connection between artist and audience feels central to this new era. Whether sharing unreleased tracks in living rooms or inviting fans into something as disarmingly simple as a game of UNO, Owusu continues to build a world around the music rather than just releasing it into the void.
Few Australian artists are working at this level of ambition or with this sense of purpose. REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE doesn’t just arrive into the conversation. It sounds ready to drag it somewhere else entirely.
REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE
IS OUT FRIDAY 15 MAY VIA OURNESS
PRE-ORDER / PRE-SAVE HERE
TICKETS
PRESALE AVAILABLE FROM 12PM LOCAL TIME FRIDAY 20 MARCH
TICKETS ON SALE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC FROM 12PM LOCAL TIME MONDAY 23 MARCH
GENESIS OWUSU ‘RED STAR WU’S PIRATE RADIO’ TOUR 2026
Thursday 14 May – Bar On The Hill, Newcastle
Friday 15 May – UC Refectory, Canberra
Sunday 17 May – Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane
Monday 18 May – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Thursday 21 May – Forum, Melbourne
Saturday 23 May – Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide
Tuesday 26 May – Ice Cream Factory, Perth
