Last year, Texx And The City named Moonchild Sanelly’s “Scrambled Eggs” one of the best indie music videos of 2024, and the track featured amongst our Top 30 Best Tracks of 2024 playlist.
In our own words, “it felt like a joyous return to Moonchild’s singular creative vision – one defined by the future-ghetto-funk sound that catapulted her onto the global scene.” It was the first single from her then upcoming album Full Moon, which now proves itself to be an ambitious and brilliantly unconventional body of work.
Out via Transgressive, Full Moon is a club-ready manifestation of Moonchild’s unique sonic fingerprint. She finds new ways of experimenting with genre, exploring the fringes of electronic music, afro-punk, hyperpop, hip-hop and even kwaito, a sound that’s closer to home for the South African-born musician.
The title draws metaphorically on the changing phases of the moon, and what that might represent for Moonchild as an artist, and as someone who is creatively multi-faceted.
“Full Moon is me, lit up in my entirety. The arrival of my whole self.”

Since the very start of her career, Moonchild Sanelly has always done things her own way. A visionary, her drive to succeed is fuelled by an innate creativity, and an extraordinary confidence for self-expression.
In the early days she would often spend time writing for reggae bands and freestyling against other rappers, forced to overcome misogynistic attitudes that still dominated those spaces at the time. She now spreads her message unapologetically. A message of female sexual empowerment, of liberation for women in the bedroom and in the boardroom, as she puts it.
“Big Booty” exemplifies this ethos, flaunting Moonchild’s fearless bodily autonomy both sonically and lyrically. In fact, her approach to lyricism is quite a simple one, and it feels all the more effective as a result.
“I don’t want no head in my house, I just want it in between my legs and between my thighs.”

With a hard production style that takes inspiration from rave and gqom, tracks like “Gwara Gwara” and “Sweet & Savage” are unrelenting dance-floor heaters, playful like bubblegum yet simultaneously dark and heavy.
Texture is everywhere. Vocal processing and layers of synth paired against rhythmic intricacies make for a listening experience that is consistently surprising. Moonchild never wants you to know her next move. Her unpredictability is all part of the allure, and Full Moon successfully puts that to the test.
And yet there is softness here too. A pale white light that just lights up the rooftops, singing a deep sensitivity for the human experience. Bare of all technical tools, “Falling” is honest and open, underpinned by a harmonic strength that we’ll hopefully hear more of from Sanelly in the future.
With the intuitive foresight of someone who has the power to shape cultural trends, Moonchild Sanelly is more than just a songwriter. She’s an enterprise; a symbol of Africa’s progressive, ever-growing musical landscape, and she’s operating entirely in a league of her own.
All images courtesy of Grace Pickering.