From The Curator at BlackFM
There is something almost contrarian about an artist choosing the title Take Time in an era when the prevailing wisdom of the attention economy insists that everything must arrive faster, louder and with rather less patience than the previous release. Yet it is precisely this unhurried confidence that has come to define Kane Keid, the Thembisa-born artist otherwise known as Lonwabo Nkhoesa, who has just announced his new single, Kane Keid Take Time, a collaboration with Sino Msolo and Ficz that is scheduled to drop on 9 October.
According to South African Hip Hop Magazine, which first reported the announcement, Keid revealed the news on social media with characteristic brevity, writing simply, “‘Take Time’ 09/10 Pre-save in my bio.” It is a modest way to introduce a record that brings together three quite different sensibilities, and one suspects the understatement is deliberate; Keid has never been an artist inclined to oversell himself, preferring instead to let the work accumulate its own quiet authority.
A Meeting of Three Distinct Voices
What makes “Take Time” an intriguing proposition on paper is the sheer variety of craft being assembled under one roof. Keid himself has spent his short but eventful career cultivating a reputation for introspective writing and the kind of detailed, novelistic storytelling that rewards a close listen rather than a passive one. Sino Msolo, for his part, arrives with soulful vocal instincts and a growing body of work within the Amapiano and Afro-pop space, genres that, between them, have done more to reshape the sound of South African popular music over the past decade than almost anything else on the continent. Ficz completes the trio, lending a melodic sensibility that Keid has drawn upon before, notably on the pair’s earlier track “BIG.”
The combination, then, is less a novelty pairing than the continuation of an existing musical conversation, one artist adding brushstrokes to a canvas that another has already begun to sketch. It is this sense of accumulated rapport, rather than any manufactured chemistry, that tends to distinguish collaborations with genuine staying power from those assembled purely for algorithmic convenience.
Building a Broader Musical Palette
“Take Time” arrives as Keid continues what might reasonably be described as an expansion of his musical vocabulary. His previous outing, “Brown Sugar” with Xowié, alongside his Not Famous EP, demonstrated an evident appetite for moving fluidly between rap, R&B-inflected melody and the sort of atmospheric production that rewards headphones over car stereos. This is, in other words, an artist unwilling to be pinned to a single lane, and all the more interesting for it.
The new single also lands amid the ongoing rollout of Keid’s Son of Soil album, a project whose accompanying visualizer, “Son of Soil (Reset),” has already brought the streets of his Thembisa hometown vividly to life, situating the personal and the geographical at the very centre of his artistic identity. There is a long and honourable tradition, in hip-hop as in jazz before it, of artists returning to the streets and neighbourhoods that shaped them as a kind of creative anchor, and Keid’s evident attachment to Thembisa places him comfortably within that lineage.
From Sportscene Platform to International Recognition
At just 23, Keid has already managed to attract admirers considerably further afield than one might expect for an artist at such an early stage of his career. Timbaland, will.i.am and Pusha T have all previously shown support for his music, a roll call that would turn the head of artists twice his age and with considerably longer discographies behind them. His path to this point, beginning with the Sportscene “Put Me On” platform and progressing towards his current standing as an increasingly recognised independent voice in South African hip-hop, has been marked less by sudden leaps than by the sort of steady, deliberate accumulation of craft that tends to produce artists built for longevity rather than mere virality.
A Fitting Continuation
If “Take Time” proves anything before it has even been heard, it is that Kane Keid remains an artist unafraid to let his collaborators shine alongside him rather than around him. Bringing together his own reflective songwriting, Sino Msolo’s vocal warmth and Ficz’s melodic instincts, the single reads as a natural extension of everything Keid has built thus far, patient, considered, and quietly assured of its own worth. Fans keen to hear how these three distinct voices settle into a single record need not wait terribly long; 9 October, as Keid himself has made clear, is the date to mark, and on the evidence of his output so far, Kane Keid Take Time looks set to reward precisely the patience its title demands.
Source: sahiphopmag.co.za. Keep listening on BlackFM Amapiano radio.
