Mshongozi

I tend to stay away from music that overtly attempts to tackle political themes. Usually, it’s pretty shallow stuff. More often than not, it leaves me thinking the artist is a dumbass.

“Good luck with voting next year. That’s always been our story with you - good luck with voting.”
Siya Mthembu said this in closing of the ten-year anniversary show for this album. Before the curtain, Are and I were annoyed because we hadn’t managed to get enough drinks. Afterwards, ... read more

I played the hell out of this in my last year of high school. More than anything else, actually. I sang and empathised with Dijon's crooning long before I even knew love and its untimely shutting. A few years removed and some experience later, I've been playing this a lot this week. I get it now. Much better than I did then. The pleading and screaming. It sounded like passion.

Absolutely is an album of punched walls and mountain-top confessions. He's so overwhelmed by his ... read more

Drake spoke about everything everyone wanted again. They love it and they love to hate it

I love how she kisses her teeth at 0:40 on He Can Only Hold Her. That's my favourite song by her

I DM’ed Bongeziwe a few months ago to ask whether what he spoke about on this album was true.
“🙏🏿”
That was his response.
His sincerity isn’t in question here, but his honesty is. I still can’t understand how a person can be so utterly naked about their love, and so precise about grieving its end. Honesty requires a kind of self-exposure that I’m not sure I’m capable of. Especially when it comes to love. Listening to iimini now I feel a profound ... read more

I heard Love's Light for the first time around 10 years ago on the way back from church. The lights around the N3 are so beautiful at night. Those drives with my dad were cool. We didn't say much so I appreciated the music a little better. As I get older the meditation this album guides me through has been something I cherish greatly.

What is a man supposed to be to a woman. What does that even mean anymore.

Amy interrogates masculinity. She keeps circling the question of what a man is supposed to be. Stronger. Steadier. Someone who doesn’t need to be carried emotionally. he’s looking for a man who can actually hold the weight of a room. I've had a kind of quiet self-inspection the last few months. Thinking about the women I’ve known and the way I’ve moved through those relationships. Whether ... read more

Wow. The ambition. Imagination.

This is a gospel album. It’s a series of desperate, sweating prayers from a man trying to find god through the body of another person.

It’s sound terrible when you say it out loud. But it’s honest.

There’s a restlessness running through this record. Marvin isn’t indulging desire so much as chasing something it seems to promise. He’s blurring the line between devotion and need, collapsing the distance between the sacred and the physical, hoping the closeness ... read more

I remember having this conversation with a girl a few years ago. Somewhere the chat circled on Voodoo. She didn’t just say she liked Voodoo; she spoke about as if it explained something essential about her. I bit my tongue. I never actually told her that I was more of a Brown Sugar guy.

To me, D’angelo’s debut is a suit. It says, I dressed up to impress you. I’m here to recite the right lines and worship at your feet. It’s a performance of devotion.

But watching ... read more

Hip Hop, at its core, is an affirmation of self. A voice declaring itself into existence. You play it when you need to feel larger than your surroundings, when you need to believe you’re destined for something more.

This mixtape is where is Drake claiming the summit of the genre in real time. Not with flashy victory laps or hollow bravado, but with a colder, more unsettling certainty. On most of the songs, he narrates his life like it was prewritten, like success wasn’t a surprise ... read more

Desire has never sounded this tender. The album plays like a worship of desire. Not the tidy kind you can confess to, but the one that consumes you, body and soul. It moves with the pulse of two people who know each other too well, a closeness that turns time into touch.

I’ve felt that before. A rush that’s both surrender and control. When everything between you blurs until it’s just rhythm, breathing, heartbeat. I Want You sounds like that space, and the aftermath, too, when ... read more

My friend Arthur. We love music. We loved it together. The way young people do, without needing a reason. Somewhere between curiosity and the obsession it became, we decided to explore South African hip hop. Shane had left a good impression on us, so we ripped yellow off the walls of the dark web and studied its hues. We’d rap it religiously. Six years on I still return to it. Not for nostalgia, but for meditation.

I’ve never been one for needing to relate to art to understand it, ... read more

Grief and I crossed paths again this year. I didn’t feel broken, not even sad really, just confused that I wasn’t. Instead, I just felt... off. Suspended somewhere between guilt and relief. Dunya found me around that time.

When I heard “Let's go my soul, I die for love,” in Mustafa's tiny desk I didn’t think of death, but of surrender. How Mustafa gives himself over, to people, to God, and to pain, as if he’s found no safer place to put it. ... read more

The notion that a piece of art, particularly music, has to be timeless in order to be regarded extremely highly is honestly rubbish.
I think it’s perfectly fine for something to sound like it’s from 2014 and remain there. Music that’s representative of the period it’s from, that’s even more cool.

This right here… wow… this is my Carrie & Lowell. A proper period piece. There’s a string of smallish films that were being made by South ... read more

Is it not anger? Is it not anger that defines my youth? An anger at the confusion I feel, at the newness of my thoughts and emotions. Anger that makes me swing at invisible evils like a madman. The familiarity of joy, present and old, makes me weak to these new obstacles I come across. So perhaps anger doesn’t just define my youth, it is my youth.

And then comes Tuff Times, holding a mirror to that anger, that confusion. Be weary of anything that makes you look twice at yourself and ... read more

I touch you and find my voice. My eyes blanketed when we embrace. You just press closer, and I let myself breathe again. Dance with me, lover.
The music breathes with a kind of sweet exhaustion, an outpouring of laughter with a sore stomach. It’s the sound of living fully even when it stings. The ache is proof of laughter and of longing and of love. Proof that I’m still here, exactly where I’m meant to be

A summer afternoon driving in traffic on the golden highway and something like this plays on the radio. Peak

“Everything I’m not made me a brand new man”

The pattern among my favourite rappers is simple: they are men who talk about themselves. At the most intimate, micro level, yet always shaped by the world pressing in around them. Whether extremely dramatised or depressingly plain, they build entire universes out of their lives. They project their voice and become vessels of something close to divine.

“Rain, rain, don’t go away”
Chance’s plea is desperate. ... read more