With ‘it really isn't what it is,’ the South African singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist turns inward, making an album built around a refusal to chase attention.
Tšeliso MonahengTšelisoMonahengJohannesburg-Based Southern Africa Correspondent
Manana’s new album, it really isn’t what it is, is out now.courtesy of Manana
Manana wears a denim two-piece, sitting on one of a set of chairs outside a hotel overlooking Sandton, Johannesburg. It's a media day. Standard Bank is unveiling its latest round of Young Artist Award recipients, and Manana — a producer, a songwriter, a vocalist, an instrumentalist — has been selected in the music category, whose recent winners include Msaki and his fellow band member Zoë Modiga. But more about that later.
For now, the artist is relaxed: locks neatly tied up and faded on the sides, denim that looks like he fetched it from the tailor that morning, and the signature prescription glasses that frame his face, letting a metaphysical tunnel vision hold its place.
A few months on from that day, he holds a listening session for it really isn't what it is, the album he's made with the help of the prize money, at a vinyl bar in Parktown North, Johannesburg — a cozy, offbeat affair that invites you in from the moment you step through the entrance. Promotional images wrap around the decor, the drinks menu is inspired by him, and the music selection, courtesy of Mamthug, speaks to the range of the city he's called home for a few years now. It's all very intentional, thoughtful, and mindful.
The last time we spoke was when he released his debut album, In The Beginning Was The End, in 2021. We discussed his work with Seba Kaapstad — the band he co-founded with Modiga and German musician Sebastian Schuster while they were students at the South African College of Music in Cape Town, his knack for songwriting, which he'd until that point been doing mostly for other artists, and his love of live performance, specifically Hugh Masekela's unforgettable antics on stage. It's been a joy watching him self-actualize. He then released 2022's But could the moments in between and 2024's Our Broken Hearts Mend, which took him into the stratosphere and signaled his moment of arrival in many ways. That album got its extended version, OBHM: Full stop, in 2025.
At the listening session are members of his band and production team, who stand off to the side, sharing jokes and making conversation before the event begins. Lusanda, who features on the album, is also there, as are a few hardcore followers and members of the media sprinkled about. He plays the album from start to finish, fields a few questions, then plays the music again. It'll be a full week before the album reaches everyone else.
"I'm more particular about drum grooves now — or let me say I'm able to express it better than I was on the last few projects,” says Manana.courtesy of Manana
"Look, typically we do a lot more fanfare around an album release, but now, because we've got these tour shows, strategies and things have changed. It used to be that you had to put all your energy into the pre-release rollout," he tells OkayAfrica over a video call a few days after the listening session.
Not much else feels different from the other times, he says. "Obviously the music climate is changing, in the sense that as the years go on, the advice people are being given — and are giving — is that you need to fight for people's attention. So it means you have to do more content and more dramatic things to capture attention. I don't necessarily think that's the route I want to go down, to be honest."
This disarming honesty doesn't only exist in his songs; it seeps into conversation as well. He drops knowledge chasms like they were crystal balls, opening canals that further complicate what artists today are expected to do. He's bold without being blunt, direct yet courteous, and possesses none of the airs an artist in album promo mode is told he must have. There's no performance, and perhaps that's the performance — that it feels so natural, all of it. Then again, life is a stage, and we're all performing on it while standing tall and short on this giant rock we find ourselves upon.
We put it to him that this, more than any solo work of his until now, sounds like a producer's album. It's all in the drums; the album opener, "No!", has ones that knock like they're going to collapse the fourth wall and grant him access to your very soul. It's long over by the time he sings, "two-by-two/ it was me and you/ thought we were playing together, how did I lose."
See, the rhythm gets you; the boom and the bap, doubtless inspired by hip-hop greats, reaches the essence before the words even narrate it. "Calendar," the second single, carries a distinct D'Angelo influence, as though the musicians had been in the room taking notes during the Voodoo sessions. There's also a lot of space for everything to fit in; a song like "Don't Say The Words" — "I can promise you that I'm not leaving/ no, it's not a want yeah, this is needing/ you got me out of breath and I am wheezing" — has the elements sparsely laid out: a kick here, a percussive touch there, a drum roll, cymbals for the crescendo effect. Texture overload that doesn't take away from everything else, but adds color to the output.
"I'm more particular about drum grooves now,” Manana tells me, “or let me say I'm able to express it better than I was on the last few projects. So a lot of the drum grooves are stuff I programmed in. I was particular about the grooves, because as I've developed my production style and my ability to produce, I've been more intentional with holistic production," he says. "I don't write on beats, for example. We don't do this thing where someone has to send me beats, and then I sing on top of that. I don't do that either."
D'Angelo, we discover, is his favorite artist, and that feel of "Calendar" returns on "What a Woman," where he sings: "I think I know why/ you've been running circles in my mind/ I was hoping some days you'd get tired/ what a woman."
"For me, what happened over my life is that I think D'Angelo has had the most perfect music career, in the sense that he's got three albums I listened to top to bottom, without a doubt. So he is my favorite artist. I don't think I've ever made music that was similar to him until 'Calendar' […] and 'What a Woman Is' too, I think. So he's an inspiration. But I will say that a lot of the inspirations I have in my life and my music, in my music career, I don't necessarily refer to in my music. They just live in there," he says.
Manana’s new album features Nasty C, Kali Claire and Lusanda.courtesy of Manana
Alongside Lusanda, who appears on "No More" and joined him at a State Theatre show in Pretoria at the end of August, he features Kali Claire ("Talking Stages") and Nasty C ("Alright").
"[The] hundred percent honesty is that I'm genuinely a fan of all three. I listen to a lot of Kali Claire and a lot of Lusanda. As much as she's released, I'm a fan of their work. So with Lusanda, she was the first person. It was like, hey man, we'd love to get in the studio and see if anything works out. And it ended up working out," he says.
"Kali, funnily enough, when she came to South Africa, she was here to work with other artists. And we'd been listening to her stuff for the last two or three years before she arrived here. So when they initially told me she was here, it didn't click. I was like, ‘oh.’ And then when I saw her, I was like, ‘dude, we'd love to’ — I literally had all of thirty minutes with her, bro; it was crazy. And she put the verses down, because there's another song that's going to be on the deluxe that was with her. She's amazing. And then Nasty C, I think, is genuinely the best South African artist of all time. His approach to melody, his brain, how he puts music together. I think he's the best African artist, especially in the studio, bro. It's crazy," he says.
Back at the listening session, people respond positively to the songs. Some sing along to the singles that are already out; others to tunes as yet unheard by everyone else. It's a capsule of joy, a moment we miss when we're all sprinting against time. What Manana offers — at the listening session, at the live show, in his video content — is an opportunity to slow down, to exist in the moment, to savor the words, to be impressed by the musicianship on display, courtesy of co-producers MODIKA, Christer, John Lundun, and his Seba Kaapstad bandmates, Seba and Pheel.
"I think everyone agrees that a listening party is where you go and there's a lot of talking, and everyone's trying to explain every song. I'd rather have the listening party be a celebration of the project. So we'll play it, maybe have a moment where people can ask questions, and play it again, just so people can hear it and chill. Because at the end of the day, it is a little bit of industry. But we invited some fans into the space as well, so they could hear it for the first time.”
