In common parlance, the two producers who make up Native Soul would be considered "ma2000"-or, born after the onset of democracy, having never experienced Apartheid-by virtue of their age. Kgothatso Tshabalala is 19 years old and Zakhele Mhlanga (DJ Zakes) is 18. Their 12-track debut electronic music album, Teenage Dreams, is not easily dismissed as a project that shows their age, though. Teenage Dreams presents a youthful, experimental sound, but the arrangement of each song and how each of the project's composite parts are put together demonstrate an artistic maturity beyond the two producers' respective ages. A cousin of Tshabalala introduced the two in 2016. Native Soul was formed in 2019. Until then, each of them had been producing music in a variety of styles including hip-hop, different types of house as well as amapiano. They decided that with Native Soul, their focus would be on amapiano-an electronic music movement which, by then, had begun to dominate both mainstream and underground music scenes in South Africa. Amapiano is an el...
