Sudan Archives’ third album THE BPM is out October 17th via Stones Throw Records. Today, she releases freewheeling track “MS. PAC MAN” along with a music video.
“MS. PAC MAN” embodies THE BPM’s raucous spirit and freeform sense of expression. A family affair, the album was created in Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit, with Sudan working with a close circle of people she knows intimately and taking up the role of executive producer.
Despite the album’s party-starting energy, much of THE BPM tackles serious subjects, from mental illness to self-love and heartbreak, but “MS. PAC MAN is pure profanity and irreverence. Sudan says, “My cousin Taylor was like, all you write about is love, sometimes I want to be toxic – I want to hear stupid shit. Eric, her husband, was playing this beat, and Taylor was like ‘PUT IT IN MY MOUTH’ and I was like, oh God, that’s so funny – ‘AND MY BANK ACCOUNT!’”
On THE BPM, Sudan Archives embodies the idea that following your own muse is the surest route to artistic and personal fulfillment. If her last two albums looked to the past – she was both goddess and muse on 2019’s Athena, and wrote a punky coming-of-age tale for 2022’s Natural Brown Prom Queen – THE BPM imagines a dazzling, chrome-plated future in which we’re all tapped into our own sense of rhythm. As she sings on the album’s title track and thesis: “The BPM is the power.”
The album also introduces a more clarified Sudan Archives – a writer, producer and performer moving with grace and confidence through her most fun record yet. “This album just feels really homemade,” she says. “It felt really wholesome to be able to have fun and use my family members’ lyrics and work together. We used to write songs together all the time when we were younger, we used to praise dance together in church…so it was really cute to be able to do this now.”
Previously released tracks from THE BPM include “DEAD”, called a “shape-shifting, maximalist, ultimately unstoppable track” by the New York Times and used by Chanel in their Fall/Winter 2025 Haute Couture show at Paris Fashion Week; “MY TYPE”, “an especially clever and funny banger” according to The Needle Drop; and “YEA YEA YEA”, described by Paste as “impossibly dramatic and divine… a fucking bop.”
Sudan Archives plays select shows in the US before heading out on tour in the UK & Europe. See below for all dates and buy tickets here. | 
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