South African singer-songwriter and record producer Mthunzi Ndimande, mononymously known as Mthunzi, is no stranger to the industry. With seventeen years of experience in his belt as a musician, the soulful crooner has carved for himself a jumping-off place within the afropop scene, making a stunning launch with his debut album Selimathunzi (2020), which boasted singles such as “Insimbi”, “Uhlale Khona”, and “Ngibambe La”.
Before the hits with Sun-El Musician and scooping all major awards at the 2024 Metro FM Awards, Ndimande traced the origins of his journey as a singer-songwriter all the way back to his childhood, the memories so distant they were no different from a fossil almost impossible to date.
Living under the attentive eye of his mother and with the music-inclined heart of his father, Mthunzi grew up a boy unaware of his gift. Believing that singing was as common a thing that could be done as kicking a football, it was only after the age of reason and with gentle prodding from his mother that he came to realise that he was a gifted vocalist.
“Music is something I could say has always been stored inside me, but I never realised that when I was still young. Growing up, I thought that singing was something anything other kids could do like playing soccer. This was until as kids we all turned around 7 and 8, the age where it became apparent who could play soccer better and who could sing at a higher level than others. During this time, the one person who made me realise that I could sing better than my peers was my mum.
“And I hated the fact that she picked up on this before I did. I believe she caught up to it because she knew my father was a musical guy who could sing and play the keyboard and the guitar. I think from there she thought to herself that there was no ways that I couldn’t do any one of those things.” he said of his beginnings.
Stepping off the afro-pop scene, Mthunzi had already established himself, having worked alongside Azana and Sun-El Musician. Known for his heartfelt yet understated vocal performances and neighbourly spirit in his songwriting, Mthunzi was already one of the country’s most relatable vernacular singers coming into the making of Isimo.
Hooking up with the godfather of amapiano, Kabza De Small, for their first collaborative EP breathed new life into Mthunzi’s artistry which had plateaued.
Mthunzi and Kabza De Small
Speaking of Isimo, the Durban native recalled how the album almost never came to be, how it germinated from a one-time meeting that he himself felt would not come by again sometime in the near future.
“First of all, I went to Kabza’s studio, Piano Hub, along with two other guys who had called me earlier to let me know they were hitting the studio. The moment they mentioned that there’d be Kabza – mind you, I was bushed and wanted nothing more than to just sleep – I decided to get up. I had already seen a lot of artists posting in the past about how they were at Piano Hub, and that’s when it hit me that this was a door that was always open. But I didn’t want to force anything and DM Kabza about my desire to work with him. I’m way past that stage in life. As an artist, I let energies align instead because I’ve found that things are easier when it’s the producer approaching the singer rather than the other way around.
“The two guys became a bridge to me because Kabza didn’t know what I was capable of and how far I could go with the music. When I got there, I made sure. Kabza played me a lot of songs he’d already made with other artists and they were all dope. So I made three songs while I was there. I wanted to leave something with my name on it because I wasn’t sure if I was going to come back to Piano Hub after those three songs. But it turned out that those three songs were the best ones of all the songs that had already been recorded up until that point, according to them.
“He loved the songs because they played like a series, which gave him an idea of how it would sound like as a full project and who to put on it if were to go that far. Kabza sent me a DM and proposed that we convert the songs into an EP,” he said.
Isimo EP Cover Art
Sitting with over 23 million streams on Spotify, “Imithandazo” has emerged as the most commercially successful singe from Isimo. With additional contributions from Young Stunna, DJ Maphorisa, Sizwe Alakine and Umthakathi Kush, the prayer-inspired hit single went on to win Song of the Year, Best Amapiano, and Best Collaboration at the 2024 Metro FM Awards. Mthunzi took us through the process of the creation of the song.
“I am one person who likes to understand how my contribution will fit in a song so I can know what to do with it. I try to find the missing piece within the song, but this isn’t to say that the song is incomplete without it. Sometimes the missing piece is just me whistling in the background. I think more like a producer than a singer in that sense. That’s what I did with “Imithandazo”.
“To make the song blow up, I thought about what I could do or say that would make the song catchy and easy for people to get. The national anthem came to mind as something that I knew for sure everybody knew. So I decided that we should tweak it here and there and see who says what in the song between myself, Kush and Sizwe, and it just worked. Young Stunna came in at a later stage and added his flavour after he heard the song and asked for a spot on it,” he said.
Listen to “Imithandazo”:
For the KwaZulu-Natal singer, versatility has been at the forefront of his growth as a musician. Without handpicking personal favourites, he acknowledged the importance of everybody’s artistry in building his especial palette.
“A lot of artists are my influence. From amapiano to afropop and everything else in between, I dabble in every genre imaginable. I like keeping myself a versatile artist. I don’t want to lose that about my identity as a musician. So, if one genre pops, for instance, keeping myself in shape makes it easier for me to be able to jump in and prove a point. That’s what I’m all about. And that’s something I believe I’ve shown a lot of people with Isimo, that, at the end of the day, music is music,” he said.
With his humbling beginnings going all the way back to 2008, Mthunzi recalled with fondness the days when his music existed exclusively within the minute world of Samsung E250 phones and datafilehost sharing. Before streams and DSPs were an actual thing, the songbird was already making songs and memories, some of which have went on to be his most treasured items.
“There’s this song, the very one I ever released in my life, that a lot of people don’t know. I love it because it was the first song I ever put out; I could compare it to my first love romantically. The song is called “Aw’kaboni Lutho” – I dropped it under Mapsit Entertainment. I wrote and produced the song entirely. With it making it to radio stations, that song made me realise that I could do this. Everything came naturally with the song, from the writing to the producing. My other two favorites are “Ngimbambe La” and then “Imithandazo”,” he said
Listen to “Ngibambe La”:
As much as he admitted to harnessing the ability to camouflage musically and move with the flow of any genre, Mthunzi revealed that his desire was to venture into the 3-Step turf next.
“I want to try 3-Step because I feel like it hasn’t been established long enough to have its own specialty vocalists. It’s great from the production side of things, but there hasn’t been a vocalist who has owned the genre to the point of inspiring the industry to jump into the movement as a collective,” he said.
Stream Isimo:
