This sixth studio solo album is a 12-track soundscape of the artist’s style, influences, depth and range. It was a work in progress for three years before being released at the beginning of 2021.
Black Coffee said: “With this album I was very intentional about what the end goal was. I actually received so much backlash from the locals about how international the album sounded, which was something I was ready for. But I knew that I wanted it to sound that way. I knew that I was happy with the album without anyone telling me otherwise.”
During the album’s making, Black Coffee was in the middle of a very public divorce.
“I was touring while the album was being made,” he said, “and in the end it didn't come out as an album of someone who was going through a lot. It came out as a very beautiful album and I love that.”
For close to a decade, Black Coffee’s travel-for-work schedule has read like a pilot’s. With international travel restrictions eased, he’s billed to play mega-festival Coachella in California and headline a show in Tulum, Mexico’s newly minted global dance and electronic music shrine, both this month.
Black Coffee’s first DJ set in Ibiza, the island 150km from the Spanish mainland and a cardinal point of dance and electronic music, punctuated a breakaway moment. He arrived in 2013 with three albums under his belt, two as a solo artist.
His most recent work at the time, Home Brewed (2009), had cemented him as a favourite in South African house music circles. He admits that he hardly knew who some of the acts playing at DC 10 club’s CircoLoco event he’d been booked for were.
In the nine years since he cued his first song for an international audience, Black Coffee has become sought-after by some of the world’s biggest festivals including Sonar and Tomorrowland, a friend and collaborator to dance and electronic music deities such as David Guetta and Diplo, and a standalone artist increasingly concerned with how restrictive the “African” categorisation can be.
“In the past we’ve see African artists always categorised among themselves,” he explains “We are always grouped and we always compete against each other. That creates disadvantage — we also deserve the world stage.
"We also want to compete with the best because that’s how we can be better. I was intentional about doing this album fighting for that spot. I knew which artists would sound good on the album without it being called 'African'.
"What we lack as a country, as a continent, is equal opportunity to present ourselves. I was fighting for an opportunity and this Grammy means that I was given one.”
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