Picture this: the year is 2014, and Johannesburg’s Maboneng Precinct has organized a special event for 4/20. Downstairs, live from one of the makeshift stages,Moonchild Sanelly is performing her heart out. It’s an electronic set that features “Rabubi,” one of her standout songs from that era.
It’ll be three more years before she appears onDJ Maphorisa’s gqom-heavy compilation album,Blaqboy Music Presents Gqom Wave. On the compilation’s standout track, “Midnight Starring,” she, alongside Rude Boyz, Distruction Boyz, Busiswa and DJ Tira, creates the perfect song for the summer. When the firstBlack Panther movie was released the following year, her and Busiswa’s voices soundtracked one of the action sequences. It feels right, but it took forever to reach a point where her art could sustain her.
Over a Zoom call in late November last year, Moonchild Sanelly spoke to BlackCosmopolitan about her come-up. It’s a journey that’s spanned three South African provinces — she was born in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape, studied in Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, and hardened in Johannesburg, Gauteng — and one that has led to her current path, as well as her brand new album Full Moon, out today via Transgressive Records.
Sanelly has worked with everyone from Gorillaz and Diplo to Beyoncé. She is renowned in the Johannesburg underground circuit due to her work with Tshepang Ramoba of the Blk Jks. “I was doing me. I strategized how to maneuver the inside, which is home, and then I wrote, ‘I’m gonna make it bigger outside,'” says the artist. She didn’t want to be a one-trick pony, big at home and unknown elsewhere, or vice-versa.
Everything that has come to pass, she wrote in her diary. “I remember I wrote in August 2016, ‘I’m gonna have three commercial collaborations in South Africa,'” she revealed. It all happened the following year with the above-mentioned “Midnight Starring,” “Makhe” with DJ Maphorisa and Shimza, and “iWalk Ye Phara” with DJ Maphorisa, DJ Raybel, K.O and Zulu Mkhathini.
“My next mission after that was to take whoever is takeable and to introduce them to my world outside because that’s where my art lives in its fullest form,” she says.
Full Moon represents a new layer to the artist’s ever-expanding universe, a cacophony of sounds she has come to label ‘future ghetto-funk.’ Produced by Johan Hugo and recorded across Malawi, the U.K., and Sweden, the album has twelve songs representing the artist’s heart, mind and soul. With her 2022 album Phases, Sanelly wanted to showcase her versatility across multiple genres. For this new album, she says, she wants to, “express the parts that it takes for me to fight because I fight for myself first before I fight for the world.”
Sanelly is familiar with having to fight. From losing her mother at an early age to experiencing sexual assault, being homeless with newborn twins, and having her entire earnings stolen by an associate, she has experienced cycles of pain that have only made her a better person and a superior artist.
“[With Full Moon], a level of comfort shows up. You pick it up in how I’m not fighting the same way anymore because my diary brought me from a dark place to here. It was my channel. The diary liberated everyone, but I won’t die from the diary. Being able to create and still evoke emotions, and still empower, not operating from a dark base, which was [people’s] introduction to this space, is one of the things that secure longevity. With every legend I’ve watched, I’ve seen them die from their diary — overdose, etcetera — and as a legend, I will not die the same way,” she confesses.
The songs glide seamlessly from one to the next. There’s the beautiful violence of gqom (“Gwara-Gwara”), the haunting soundscapes of melodic pop (“Mntanami”), and the gravelly grit of electronic music (“Scrambled Eggs,” “Big Booty”). The album is imbued with an attitude reflecting its maker’s instinctual creative freedom — sure-footed, self-empowered, and daring to go over the edge. She even re-visits her poetry side on the steamy and near spoken-word “I Love People,” reciting, “his love is a Math so I / tell him to subtract my clothes, divide my legs / he adds himself and multiplies my wet.”
Sanelly has been consistent with her message of sexual liberation for all women, irrespective of career choice. “Strip Club,” featuring regular collaborator, the British emcee Ghetts, washer love letter to “the hustlers, the strippers, and the twerkers — a celebration of the continuously judged.”
Coincidentally, producer Hugo had worked with Ramoba, which made for a good base to begin working with Sanelly. Full Moon was recorded in 2023, and the multi-country recording sessions were organized to fit into Moonchild Sanelly’s touring schedule. She got the idea of working with Hugo after seeing a performance from Self Esteem, with whom she’salso worked.
“When I went there, my manager was like, ‘I think you are going to love her [Self Esteem]!’ By the time we were done [watching her], I said, ‘Look, I love her, I love her mind, I love her writing, I love her performance.’ It’s very rare for me to love everything. Because I’m so great at what I do, I’m not fascinated by just whatever,” she says.
“Johanworks with three people a year. And it’s not how much money you’ve got; it’s him connecting with your vibe. And on top of that, he also wanted to work with me,” says Sanelly. “This album is definitely one of those that show you that I’ll not die from my diary because I chose to find a therapist; I chose to want to move better. I don’t have to live in a dark space and toxic relationships to be able to write the content that liberates. I have always been intentional about wanting my mind to be right because this is a lifetime for me; it’s not a one-hit-wonder moment.”
Far removed from the darkness that used to occupy her world and moving closer to the light that she wishes to reflect, there’s nowhere else but upward for the artist, whose trajectory can inspire the hard-headed, talented superstars of the future.
Want to make a statement?
Leave a comment about this here!
_________
Disclaimer:
For Education and discussion purposes. Please note no copyright infringement is intended, was recorded on BlkCosmo’s own equipment, and we do not own nor claim to own any of the original recordings used in this video and intend to use this as ‘fair use’.
As BET prepares for its 25th anniversary, the revival of 106 & Park feels like the perfect way to honor the past while moving into the future. Details about the new format remain under wraps, but fans are hopeful that the essence of the original will remain intact. With today’s evolving media landscape, there’s also speculation about how the show will adapt to meet the needs of a social media-driven audience while still catering to its core fanbase.
Social Media Hypes Her Up
