Gqom Classics by Citizen Boy
As I’m working on my album with so many collaborations so I decided to go back to my roots to the days I started making music. I need to know where I came from, you need to know “Imvelaphi” yakho(know where you are coming from). My upcoming album is about knowing where you come from!
“Knowing IMVELAPHI yakho” knowing yourself, who you are and where you come from as a person, especially as I’m in this music industry it’s easy to lose yourself and start being a people pleaser doing what the people want and not doing what I want.
When I started I was doing what I want what I enjoy and people were listening to me and connecting to me because I was doing me. In these collaborations I’m working on, on my album. I’m finding myself, I’m doing what I want trying my best not to lose myself in the process because when collaborating with people, it’s a mixture of energy’s just make sure you don’t lose your energy, don’t lose yourself and also it’s not only about you when collaborating. You have to accommodate someone else’s energy aswell. When the people listen to the song, they need to feel my energy and the person that I’m collaborating with also.
So I decided to release some of my old tracks on Bandcamp so y’all can hear my journey. I think this is important to see my growth and for y’all to see my growth/evolution, where I’m coming from. I was quite fortunate to still have some of the files so I can have better masters than what I have done before everything was just clipping(distorted lol) because I didn’t know much and I was just getting started in the music industry. A little explanation about the tracks:
[The BONUS TRACK] 2012 - this is when I started making music. I started producing when I was 14 y/o. when you start making music you start off by making dry music haha but as time went by I started to get the hang of this music production with the help of my uncle “Mxolisi Msomi” he was a producer and engineer who studied Sound Engineering at Damelin. I can say he paved the way for me and taught me the basics he couldn’t teach me a lot because we were into different styles of music, I was into Gqom and he was into house music.
[Mak’dlala leNumber] 2013 - Dj Sbucardo made a song called Bhenga libala. I think he recorded his own vocals, he said something on the song and the whole of Durban that love Gqom went crazy! We started chopping his vocals and made our own remixes. This is my version that I’ve never had a chance to release it.
[Wolves in the Jungle] 2014 - This was around the time Durban was going wild with snares, we had DJ Lag - Snare Shot, Da Soul Boyz - Chaos a lot of producers using the snare to their own taste and this was my taste!
[Nightmare] 2014 - This was the time when we were doing a subgenre of Gqom called Core Tribe. The sounds were raw and mostly tribal in a Gqom way with drums and chants. We had Blu Ice he was doing mostly core tribe stuff, NavySoul from Infamous Boiz was doing some of the core tribe stuff. This has a bit of Core Tribe and a-bit of modern gqom because I had the file and was able to tweak it a bit but I didn’t want to change it I wanted to keep the same energy I had in 2014
[A Classic] 2017 - I had no direction on this song I was just going I just wanted to move and bang. The drums are knocking and they are hyper active. Sometimes you get in the studio with no direction but you just want to make music, that was me on this song. I was quite fortunate to still have the file of this song I was able to tweak it a bit also mixed & mastered it a bit better but I didn’t want to lose who I was. Each song has character and I didn’t want to lose this songs character by doing a lot of modern stuff.
I hope you’ll enjoy! I tried remastering the tracks, I didn’t want to do too much I didn’t want to change the energy I had back in the days.
Please support me thru my bandcamp 🙂❤️
For Sync & Licensing: gavin@syncsmith.com
Gqomubhenga@gmail.com
Curated by Francesco Cucchi
Mixed and Mastered by Sboniso Luthuli
Tracklist
| 1. | Nightmare | 3:39 |
| 2. | A Classic | 4:06 |
| 3. | Wolves in the Jungle | 3:51 |
| 4. | Mak'dlala leNumber | 3:35 |
