Quietly radical: Zee Nxumalo occupies a rare position in South African music, both a product of a digital
moment and a shaper of it. Photo: Supplied
After running around all morning, I am finally settled by my laptop, going through the questions I prepared the night before.
I do not get through the first five when Google Meet asks me to admit my guest.
Zee Nxumalo’s manager asks that we cap the meeting at 20 minutes. I don’t hesitate — she is a star and she is busy.
“Zee has a quick question for you,” he says.
A question for me? Panic sets in briefly but I am open.
“We are working on titles for my upcoming EP. Do you think it should be in English or Zulu? I am sitting with my team and we are trying to figure that out. What do you think?” she asks.
Suddenly, I am part of the team, not that my opinion matters but it is an unexpected entry point into a conversation that refuses the stiffness of a traditional interview.
It is disarming. It is generous. It is perhaps also indicative of the kind of artist Zee Nxumalo is becoming: one who is not only building a catalogue but actively negotiating identity in real time.
At 23, Nxumalo occupies a rare position in South African music, both a product of a digital moment and a shaper of it.
Her rise from viral breakout to cultural mainstay has been swift but not accidental. There is, in her trajectory, the unmistakable imprint of a generation that understands the elasticity of genre, the currency of relatability and the necessity of reinvention.
Her sound, an intuitive blend of Afropop storytelling, amapiano’s rhythmic elasticity and contemporary dance sensibilities has allowed her to move between spaces with ease: the club, the radio, the algorithm.
But more than that, it has allowed her to remain legible to a young audience that recognises itself in her, not in perfection but in process.
That process, she insists, begins internally.
“I don’t think I’m that spiritual,” she says, almost reflexively, when I ask about the emotional and philosophical underpinnings of her upcoming EP.
“But I would say I’m a person who listens to their mind a lot. Like, I listen to my thoughts. Most of the songs that I do, it’s internal conversations that I have with myself, then I just put it on the mic.”
There is something quietly radical about the refusal to over-intellectualise what many would readily label as “depth”. Nxumalo does not position herself as a vessel of meaning as much as she does a translator
of feeling. The distinction is subtle but important.
“Maybe it’s in the feeling of the song,” she concedes. “Even if someone doesn’t understand what I’m saying, they would feel — they would know.”
It is this instinct to prioritise feeling over form that has underpinned a career marked by both commercial success and cultural resonance.
In 2025, Nxumalo became the most streamed female artist in South Africa, surpassing global heavyweights and signalling what many have described as a generational shift: the re-assertion of
local sound is dominant within its own ecosystem. More than 100 million streams later, the numbers tell a story. The atmosphere, the virality of a track like Aweh Mah, the ease with which her music travels across TikTok, taxis and terraces tells another.
For all the metrics, there is a negotiation happening beneath the surface, one that played out at the beginning of our conversation. The question of language, of naming, of who an artist is allowed to be as they scale.
“I want an English name,” she says of the EP. “Shingai is saying: ‘No, that’s not authentic to Zee.’”
There is laughter in the room but also a tension that feels familiar
in contemporary South African music, the push and pull between global accessibility and local specificity. Nxumalo listens. She asks.
She weighs.
“I don’t see it happening,” I said. “It’s a little far left for Zee and her brand … you’re the sister from the hood. That’s how people connect with you.”
It is a loaded phrase, “the sister from the hood” but Nxumalo does not reject it. Instead, she folds it into her understanding of self, even as she pushes against its limits. There is no singular direction here, only a series of possibilities.
The EP itself, planned for release sometime in April, she reveals, is compact with just four tracks but expansive in theme. “Sixty percent of the EP is very motivational,” she says. “The first song is about protection, then there is prayer and then the last one is about love.”
It is a structure that mirrors, in some ways, a personal arc, from safeguarding the self, to seeking guidance, to arriving, tentatively, at intimacy.
While Nxumalo might resist the label of “spiritual”, the language of the project suggests otherwise. Or perhaps, more accurately, it suggests a redefinition of spirituality — one that is rooted less in doctrine and more in introspection.
Her collaborators on the project reflect a similar openness. Contributions from collectives such as Shakes & Les signal a willingness to move between sonic worlds.
“I’m very intentional,” she says of her approach to collaboration. “Because I feel like when I stick to one thing … I try as much as I can to explore. It takes out bits and pieces of me that I never knew existed.”
Exploration, for Nxumalo, is not a side note; it is central to her practice. It extends beyond music into fashion, where she treats clothing as an extension of mood, of energy, of narrative.
“Fashion is how I express myself most of the time,” she says. “If I’m feeling very happy, you’ll see pink, orange … If I want to feel chilled, you’ll see grey. Lately, I’ve been into red.”
There is a synaesthetic quality to the way she describes it, colour as emotion, outfit as sound. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that brands have taken notice.
Partnerships with global names like Puma and Nivea position her not only as a musician but as a cultural figure, one whose influence extends into lifestyle, youth identity and visual language.
And yet, even as she expands, there is a clear commitment to remaining in motion.
“I was in an Uber last week,” she says, laughing, “and I was like: ‘I want to do maskandi.’”
It is said casually but it speaks to a deeper impulse to refuse stagnation, to remain porous. Gospel, R&B and maskandi are not strategic pivots so much as they are curiosities waiting to be explored.
Her writing process mirrors this ethos. It is, at once, disciplined and instinctive.
“When I get into the studio, I listen to the beat … and I don’t want to hear what other
people think,” she explains. “Because immediately, I’ll start following your direction.”
There is a lesson here, one she learnt, she admits, through failure.
“There was a point where I couldn’t write a song at all,” she says.
“I was trying to be deep like other writers … and it wasn’t working. Then I just did me.
Authenticity, then, is not a fixed state but a returning again and again to one’s own voice, even when it falters.
As the conversation draws to a close, I ask the inevitable: How does she want the EP to make people feel?
“I want them to feel like them,” she says, simply.
“I want them to dance … but also, I want them to feel uplifted. I want to encourage them to spend more time with themselves.”
It is a modest ambition, on the surface. But in a cultural landscape increasingly defined by noise, by speed, by spectacle.
There is something quietly radical about an artist who insists on feeling, on reflection, on the self as both source and destination.
Somewhere between the question of language and the insistence on individuality, between the dance floor and the interior life, Zee Nxumalo is building something that resists easy categorisation. Not quite global, not only local. Not entirely spiritual but deeply felt.
And perhaps that is the point.
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