Local music legend Oscar Mdlongwa, known to many as ‘Oskido’, premiered the visuals to his latest single Banky Banky, which features Nigerian-based singer Niniola Apata, on July 7.
The Midrand-based musician shared some insight on how the track, taken from his recent EP, came about. He said that he had always wanted to work with Apata after noticing her through her hit track Maradona, which was released three years ago.
“After that, we spoke about a collaboration, however, we were waiting for the right moment, which was now. I started working on the song, I sent her the beat, she recorded her side and sent it to me along with her ideas. We then rearranged the song, added my vocals and finally the song was done. She then came down to South Africa for the video.”
As an artist, who has been in the music sphere for many years, Mdlongwa’s versatility can be heard once again as he tapped into the new sound of amapiano.
“I think what we must acknowledge is that kwaito is the foundation of amapiano and I have always done that type of music. If you listen to the sound it has those old basslines which I used to play. But right now when you play the sound people think it is an amapiano thing, which is good because it shows that kwaito will never die.
Mdlongwa added that spreading our South African music was important. “The good thing about our sound is that it is original and authentic music created right here in Mzansi, similar to why kwaito was big. It was the youth culture that made it big, and amapiano has become the facelift of our youth culture. When you listen to it, you know it is from Mzansi, and when you trace its origins, it is from kwaito.
“This means we are doing something right, and it is good if it can spread all over the world because we need to export our music. This collaboration which I have done with Nini, actually also makes it easy for us to export our music, which is also good in terms of us as Africans collaborating and making music together.”
Details: Follow Oscar Mdlongwa aka Oskido on all social media platforms.