SA: Scorpion Kings makers and Tresor announce new album, release Funu

The song is available for streaming and download here and is off the trio’s upcoming 14-track album Rumble In the Jungle, set for release in February 2021.

‘Funu’ features uplifting and dance-rooted vocals courtesy of Tresor, while Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa delivered the instrumentation. With the single, the DJs cement their status as the country’s premiere amapiano artists and further lead the culture into the mainstream.

“I have known Tresor for quite some time and we’ve been promising each other that we have to go to the studio, but we never had time,” DJ Maphorisa said. “We’d meet in Zambia at gigs, I’d play him some stuff and he would vibe, but we never did anything. Since I heard him on another project, which he did during COVID-19, I told Kabza that ‘we need to work with this guy because I think he’s great and he brings a different kind of texture and is really authentic’. I felt like his sound can go with amapiano, its French, Lingala, Zulu and Swahili, which for me to have all those languages in one project I knew the music would go in.”

Tresor said: “Initially Maphorisa and I were working on a brand campaign and he reached out to me like ‘hey man let’s do an album’ and we’ve known each other for a long time but this will be the first time we actually work together on a full project. We started around June and from this 14-track album, 12 tracks were written in the first month and the entire project is less than three months old. It’s a very beautiful magic, authentic and organic because the whole thing worked out beautifully.”

Apart from being an amapaiano heavyweight, DJ Maphorisa is credited for producing a number of SA club bangers like Uhuru’s ‘Y-Tjukutja’ and Mafikizolo’s ‘Khona’. He’s also produced gqom hits such as ‘Oncamnce’ and ‘Midnight Starring’, among others. The powerhouse producer previously collaborated with US group Major Lazer on ‘Particular’, which topped charts across 17 African countries. Meanwhile, Kabza De Small is arguably the king of amapiano and has produced hit tracks like ‘Sponono’ and ‘iLog Drum’, which heightened his fame. His 2019 debut offering I Am The King of Amapiano: Sweet & Dust became the first album on Apple Music to have all 26 tracks in the Top 30 of the Top 100 Music Chart.

Tresor is well known for his distinct sound and is credited for playing a pivotal role in growing the SA Afropop scene. His 2015 album VII (Repack) earned him the Best Male Artist and Album of the Year awards at the SAMAs, while The Beautiful Madness, an album he co-created with Da Capo, saw the singer walk away with the top honour in the Best Male Artist category of the 2018 AFRIMMAs.

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