Interview – South African house pioneer Karyendasoul serves up his debut album ‘WL4OM (We Live 4 Our Music)’ on Mayonie Productions

Hello Bonga and welcome to Music is 4 Lovers! Where are you joining us from today?

Back home, Durban, South Africa.

Since your production debut in 2016 you have shot to the forefront of the afro house scene, collaborating with Black Coffee and appearing on Defected’s Sondela Recordings. Tell us about your journey into music production. How do you feel you have progressed as an artist since then?

My journey has been nothing short of amazing and full of blessings. I’ve achieved goals I did not expect to achieve in the 8 years I’ve been doing this music thing professionally. I have made great progress since then. I’ve managed to have a team around me that shares a common vision as I do in establishing myself as an artist competing on a global scale.

What artists have inspired your sound most throughout your career?

I’d be lying if I said there’s anyone specific. I’m really inspired by the dance music genre in general – I’ll listen to bits and pieces of any style/sub-genre of dance music and try to borrow from each or what resonates with me within that sub-genre, but give it my interpretation.

Congratulations on your debut album, ‘WL4OM (We Live 4 Our Music)’. What inspired the LP and how long did the entire process take?

Thank you! 2022 saw me release my ‘Imizamo’ EP and that project came with a lot of blessings and achievements, achieving my first top 10 track on South African radio – which climbed to number 2 – first award nomination, first platinum plaque, all of this inspired me to achieve more and give more and immediately I started to work on the album. In fact, I already knew I wanted to release an album, but the release of the EP inspired me further and got me straight into it. I’d say it took me about 6 months, some of the songs I had already in the vault, but I got stuck in and managed to finish it within that 6 month space.

On the album you work with various artists and musicians. How did these collaborations come about and how did you work together in the studio?

Yes I did, and a huge shout out to them. Most of these collaborations, if not all, are really with my friends and people I hold dear in the industry. I reached out to them and some of my team at Mayonie Productions assisted with that. For ‘Jacaranda’, my current radio single off the album with Msaki, we are both from a very small village in The Eastern Cape, Ngqamakhwe – which is very rare to have people in the industry doing what we do at the level we are doing it at, so it only made sense for us to do this one and the time was just right. ‘Umoya’ with Zakes Bantwini – we work together quite a lot, and we just get each other musically. He arrived in the studio, loved the beat, took him about 15/20 minutes, and he had the best idea. The rest of the songs were me commuting between Durban and Johannesburg to be present in studio with the artists except for the 2 songs with Mici – she’s based in Amsterdam so we sent projects back and forth, funny enough ‘Fragile’ was the last track in the album, but the oldest one. We had done the song last year, Lucky – who’s A&R at Mayonie Productions – shared the vocals with me and I loved that one, did the song, she hated it, hated how she sounded, so much that she asked that we do a completely new song rather, that’s how ‘Waves of Mercy’ came about. I then needed one more song on the day of submission because of licensing issues with one of the songs and asked her again if we could use ‘Fragile,’ which took some convincing, but she eventually agreed, and it is now the people’s favourite of the two.

Is there any track in particular that resonates with you the most?

Jacaranda.

Do you plan to tour the album at all?

Yes, we are busy with those plans with my team.

Thank you so much for joining us today! Finally, what local South African talents have caught your eye recently?

I’d say BokkieULT & Drega.