On the 28th November 2025, the South African hip-hop fraternity lived long enough to witness the birth of a long-awaited posse cut. Released alongside his album Anomy, living lyrical icon Stogie T’s “Four Horseman” dropped to much anticipation, with the song featuring labyrinthine verses from Nasty C, A-Reece, as well as Maggz, with the first-mentioned also delivering the hook to the near seven-minute treatise.
Produced by Derek Connor Simpson, “Four Horseman” is a traditional hip-hop joint and features a minimalistic sonic composition that conjures up the skeleton and tempo of Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 DAMN. centerpiece “FEAR.”. Sporting a ruminative bass, hypnotic sirens of varying pitches, and silky electric guitar strums to temper the song with rock influences, the song is aerated with sparse instrument arrangement, giving the men, named after the four feared agents of God during the Apocalypse as written about in the book of Revelation, space to flex their respective penmanship without having to compete with a busy background that threatens to steal the spotlight.
Stogie T | SUPPLIED
Stogie and Maggz handle the first leg of “Four Horsemen”, with the former opening the collaboration with a sumptuous yet par-for-the-course poly-syllabic performance that chronicles the wordsmith’s life. Hearkening back to the struggle days and being a child born to freedom fighters to ascending the pecking order of street poetry, the former counterpart of The Volume’s preening verse sees the rapper flaunt the shine of his talent on the mic (“Every sweep of the pen is a brainteaser, you won’t relate”) if not casting himself as the saviour of the game by equalling himself to the prophet Moses in his ability to lift up the hip-hop community and bring them a step closer to the promised land. Fuelled by a braggadocious air of superiority coupled with lyrical competence, the first verse has a few digressions, but the aperture of his pen is focused enough for one thing to be clear about the picture shown in it: Tumi is an all-time great and unlike the others, he’s just built different.
Sliding in with a gapless transition, Gift Magubane appears more than Maggz, with the rapper wearing his heart on his sleeve with what is the most simplistic yet masterly contribution on “Four Horsemen”. Sparing the listener the frills of poetic finesse from the likes of Stogie and A-Reece and the unorthodox musical creativity of Nasty C, Maggz serves as the elder who has seen much and whose plateau of knowledge far exceeds the scope of what he addresses with cool maturity. From understanding his place as a senior authority (“The rhymes quoted, I’m goated, I show it”) to understanding the ruthless fickleness of the game (“At my lowest, y’all gloated, I noticed”), Maggz extends the controlling Biblical references, citing himself as “God’s child” while also reaffirming his status as an influence, calling himself a “lighthouse that guided kings”. A story of betrayal, rising from the ashes, and still emerging as an unbroken victor, Maggz’s verse is a fitting cap to the first half the song, a stamp of authority that serves as a reminder that before SA hip-hop took off, there were countless men who paved the strip, allowing the next generations to take to the sky smoothly.
A-Reece | SUPPLIED
Representing the “new kings”, Baby Boy delivers the penultimate verse with signature ease, finessing the monkey bars of the beat with the frolicking vigor of a child still approaching the peak of their agility. Touching on Death Note anime references and paying homage to multi-Grand Slam-winning Serbian tennis superstar Novak Djokovic, A-Reece writes himself into the pinnacle of the game, likening himself to mythical characters both in the real world and fictious landscapes, names that are either head-and-shoulders above the rest or are altogether capable of making their closest competition a memory of the distant past. Reece’s writing, in a sense, mirrors Stogie’s with the theme of being the greatest compared to others rearing its head once again, exposing potential ghosts of indignation that could emanate from the desire to be widely recognised in this light beyond his core audience.
Nasty C | SUPPLIED
The arguable highlights of the song follow Nasty C’s trail, who stablises the song with a reggae-influenced hook and a closing verse packed with slick wordplay, niche and pop culture references, and the ire he inherits from A-Reece’s verse and amplifies. With the bold proclamation “I am rap”, Nasty’s performance is wholly different than his hook, with the rapper’s persona about-face drastic enough to confuse an ignorant ear as to when he even begins. Gluing the flow switches in his verse with his signature musicality, Nasty runs the gamut of bragging about his financial strength to sharing the comical frustration with being approached by older women because of his “old soul”. Summarising the ideal of being a great, an extended theme that trickles from the first verse all the way through to his, Nasty’s greatness is found not only in his facile lyricism but his money, streams, and the love he continues to get – things he isn’t shy to speak about with candour.
Check out “Four Horsemen”:
