South African Artist Samthing Soweto Is Exactly Who He Thinks He Is

"I think it's just luck and favour, and the audience deciding, okay, we're gonna keep you around. We like what you do, we're gonna keep you around," he says, responding to OkayAfrica's question about what it is that has sustained him for so long without releasing a full album. There were singles in between, however. "Amagents" arrived in 2022 as a cautionary tale to his daughter about the trappings of romantic love. "Ayafana amagents, ayafana amajimbozi," he sang, essentially letting her know that the game is rigged and that all men are the same – in how they set you up, in how they lie to you, in how they steal your heart.

"Songs are more valuable now than they were before. It used to be entire projects. If you have a really good song, you're good for at least six months," says the artist. "If you make music that people like, they'll remember you," he says.

There's a certain ease that comes with knowing, like knowing the sun will rise and set, as it has since time immemorial. Ease also comes in trusting that your favorite artist will deliver stunning work, no matter how long they take between projects. Samthing Soweto is one of those rare artists—a soothsayer of song, a titan, and a juggernaut who holds our hands through chaotic times. Since emerging with The Soil nearly two decades ago, he has left his mark on at least four distinct South African genres and done so as a singular, genre-defying force.

With The Soil, he helped popularise a cappella music for a new generation, infusing it with street-corner harmonies and township soul. He carried that melodic instinct into his early solo works – cult classics like This N That Without Tempo (2010) and Eb'suku (2014), which blended folk sensibilities with poetic introspection. As a member of the alt outfit The Fridge, he crafted sweet, searching love songs that defined the Johannesburg underground for a time. The Fridge was part of an ecosystem that included acts like The Brother Moves On, Impande Core, and Blk Jks – all of whom helped write the script for an alternative cool that still echoes through today's generation of bold, Black musicians.

Then came the turning point. Between late 2017 and early 2018, a collaboration with Sun-El Musician changed the trajectory of both their careers. "Akanamali," which first appeared on SoundCloud, became a runaway summer anthem. What followed in 2019 was a string of hits – "Lotto," "AmaDM," and "Akulaleki" – all within the space of a few weeks. Isphithiphithi, which arrived in September of that year, cemented his place in the mainstream, proving him not just a genre chameleon but a pioneer. Samthing Soweto became one of Amapiano's most soulful and definitive voices. And that's not nearly it; he's done incredible work in hip-hop with Stogie T, and also helped produce Makhafula Vilakazi's earlier poetry outings.

Isphithiphithi thrust him into popular consciousness, which was a welcome relief from all the years he'd spent toiling in the underground circuit.

"It's nice, because that was the point. I was always an artist," he admits. "Even before I made money, I was an artist. As an artist, I've always done art, and I do as much as I can. But when my daughter was born, I had to make money. Then I started being a commercial artist, someone who would make money from the art." He says the process has been "crazy humbling."

"It changed for the better in the sense that I was able to make ends meet. If it weren't for that, I would have stayed the artist that I was and played for whoever needed to hear me play. I was shy, and kept myself away from people's eyes," he says, and ends with a gratifying "I am happy."

The album recording process started in earnest in 2021, but it was a start-and-stop process that tested the limits of his artistic resolve. The arrival of "Amagents" signalled that an album was coming, but there were just too many false starts for that to materialise. Relationships were tested, but he still found himself back to the matter at hand: making another groundbreaking album that would shift the paradigm yet again, because that's just what he does. "I just kept on giving up. I probably gave up five times," he says.

He takes time, lets ideas percolate, re-visits, and edits until it feels right. Something he did before the album release was announced was to leak snippets online as a way to gauge public reception. "Deda," the second single, was first released in August 2023 and has garnered over two million views on YouTube to date.

"I was trying to figure out what to do next. In 2021, I had the idea that this was the type of music I wanted to make. But I wasn't sure that people would like it," he says. So he read Ryan Holiday's book, Growth Hacker Marketing, about how multinationals grow their market share without using traditional marketing approaches. "When I read that book, it emphasised that instead of using big budgets, you can use what you have – from social media and stuff – to figure out what to do next. So you can ask your actual audience, and you'll find out exactly what they want based on the comments."

"This is all I have," he reveals amid our conversation, referring to the album. It's serious work to him, spirit work that requires him to reach within to pull out songs like the head-nodding kasi epic, "325", a reference to the BMW 3 Series 325i, otherwise known as a Gusheshe in South Africa. It's a song for the hood, for lovers, for those whose hearts haven't been made cold through contact with a harsh world.

"Ama Get Down," with Blxckie, is an instant hit. The harmonies at the beginning, Samthing Soweto's vocal inflections, more jazz than kwaito, are imbued with ancient spirits – the likes of Miriam Makeba, Victor Ntoni, and even Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Production duties shift and blend seamlessly between a cast of three producers: Christer ("Ndandatho," "Ama Get Down," and "Don't Wanna Let Go"), J Smash ("325," "Yebo," and "Come Duze") and John Lundun, who produced "Deda."

"I kept on giving up. Every time I would have a setback, I'd just be like, It's fine, I'll find something else. But I had to go back to the music," he confesses. Time and space did help, but he'd always run into the same set of problems. "The last time was in March. I thought, 'Let me try one more time.' It came together, and I was like, okay, it's done now."

What he learned from this trial-and-error process was that life doesn't always happen the way we plan for it to. "But the point is to do it. You have to not stop, per se. You have to do what you need to do, and some of the solutions will find you as you do it. But you should not stop. It's one of those things where it's like, if you can't fly, you run; if you can't run, you walk; if you can't walk, you crawl; if you can't crawl, you roll. You do something," he emphasises. "I missed every deadline you can imagine. I didn't even think it was gonna be released. At this point, I'm just happy it's gonna come out."

For now, Samthing Soweto is happy that people outside his immediate circle are listening to his work. "For a very long time, just a few people and I knew it existed."