If the hit song "Sondela" (featuring Yumbs, Raspy, Blxckie, Riky Rick and Tshego) was up your musical alley, then expect to discover more gems in that sonic direction on the talented musical duo Venom and Shishiliza’s debut album "Love is Pain".
"Love is Pain" is the first full-length collaborative project uniting Zambian South African hip-hop DJ, radio host and entrepreneur DJ Venom and Sebastian “Shishiliza” Jameson, the Zimbabwe-born, Botswana-raised multi-instrumentalist, producer, visual artist and music industry maven.
The 13-track album released on Friday, September 2, ushering in the spring mood among music lovers.
On its release weekend, the tracks from the album were topping charts; “Cold Outside '' featuring DBN Gogo and Blxckie, made its debut at number one on Spotify’s new Music Friday chart.
The songs on "Love is Pain" were born out of a three-day writing camp that Venom and Shishiliza hosted to bring together pre-eminent and emerging talents in April 2022.
When it comes to the artists the duo worked with, there is a balance between established artists and those still on the rise to whom they wanted to give a platform.
Coming out of the “#LetsOperate” writing camp, Venom and Shishiliza had 21 songs and deciding on which tracks made the album was a really difficult process for them.
As such, they turned to their record label Sony Music for advice.
“They just advised us to keep it around 12/13 songs. Rather stick with this one theme for this project, the other theme you can release in future,” Shishiliza told IOL Entertainment.
“Love is Pain” is a blend of melodic smoothed out sounds, which Venom and Shishiliza have dubbed the sound “sondela”, a fusion of hip hop, amapiano, afro-pop and R&B. Shishiliza describes it as “easy music that can be listened to anywhere and something that almost any can relate to.
The songs have messages aimed at anyone in any kind of “ship”, be it romantic or platonic or past experiences related to matters of love. At the writing camp, everyone was super focused on making the magic happen, with emotions running high during studio sessions, leaving everyone in awe.
Venom said the album title “Love is Pain” comes from a video of the late Riky Rick’s, where he said something along the lines of, “You have to go through the pain to get through to the happiness.”
“We got into the studio, and a lot of the songs we were making were love songs. Love has so many different sides to it, and just around what the year has been for us, it just made sense to call it ‘Love is Pain’...We just resonated a lot with “Love is Pain” from how we felt, from the signs God gave us,” Venom added.
Not only did the late Riky Rick, who passed away just two weeks after “Sondela” was released in February, inspire the album title, but he also inspired the sound of the album.
“The sound of this album was heavily inspired by him and the music that he was making before he passed. A lot of the songwriters and producers were introduced to us by him.
“It's almost as though he showed us the route that we need to take in our music,” shared Shishiliza.
Another thing Riky Rick inspired Venom and Shishiliza with is their love for luxury African brand Maxhosa. They have become synonymous with the brand.
Even at their performance at the SAMAs, they were dressed in Maxhosa as with their cover art. It’s really hard to not think of the duo and for Maxhosa not to come to mind.
“It’s just that since he’s (Riky Rick) passed, Laduma has taken it upon himself to be there for us, the same way Riky was there for him, and he was there for him. It’s a friendship that we’ve built around Riky.
“It's just a very pure thing. Even when we are not wearing his clothes, we are parting together. It’s just something that came naturally,” shared Shishiliza.
At the 28th South African Music Awards, (Samas) Venom and Shishiliza got to pay tribute to their late collaborator through a fitting performance that honoured the rapper.
The awards ceremony hasn’t been without drama, with several artists such as Zakes Bantwini, Makhadzi, DJ Maphorisa and Lady Du slamming the awards.
Venom and Shishiliza, on the other hand, steered clear of it and chose to highlight their amazing time in Sun City.
“We enjoyed our performance. Everything was dope. It was a beautiful tribute to Riky. We were just happy Blxckie won. That was the most important thing of the night for us; that Blxckie won an award,” said Shishiliza.
While the performance honoured the life of the late cultural and music icon, it also celebrated the evolution and revolution of SA hip hop.
In recent weeks, SA hip hop has found itself a hot topic on social media, thanks to all the diss track craze sparked by Big Zulu, which has seen OG rappers K O, Kwesta, and Cassper Nyovest deliver some heavy bars in response.
Shishiliza remarked that hip hop has always been an experimental sound sampling from other genres, such as jazz. The genre in Mzansi is in an experimental phase as artists try to discover what is the authentic South African hip hop sound.
He does predict that in the next year, the genre would have rediscovered its authentic sound.
“Love is pain” is streaming on all digital platforms.