There’s a particular kind of magic that happens when two people who grew up in the same streets decide to make sense of it all through music. For K.Keed and Orish, that magic started almost by accident. “We’re all from the same area,” K.Keed explains when asked how they first met and started working together. “We connected around 2018, first on Facebook. Then I went to record at his house. We took each other’s numbers, stayed in touch, and we’ve been inseparable since.”
Their latest album Umgaranto II has landed with the kind of reception artists dream about, sold out energy at listening parties and gigs in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, and a Parktown crowd in particular that — put simply — lost it. “The reception was insane in both cities,” K.Keed says simply. “Very, very positive.”
But what’s striking isn’t just the noise around the project, it’s how deliberately built it is. Asked how the album evolved from their first outing together, K.Keed doesn’t hesitate: “The first project was spontaneous. We didn’t really have a full plan. This one is intentional, cinematic, we’ve grown, we’ve got the resources now, and we can actually execute the ideas fully instead of chasing them.”
That growth didn’t come free. When the conversation turns to what habits they had to unlearn to keep building together, both artists get candid. “I had to learn to conceptualise a song instead of just freestyling without direction,” K.Keed admits. “Actually structuring the chorus, the verse, the phrasing, treating it like a process, not just a vibe.” Orish adds his own version of the same lesson: “For me it was learning to let go a bit. Trusting someone else to drive the song and not needing to control every moment of it.”
Umgaranto roughly translated from isiXhosa means “advertisements,” with the project being a clear love letter to shared nostalgia. It’s all ’90s SABC (think Gundi no Mazwi) and ghetto fabulous fashion, though the pair are careful not to romanticise the past for their own sake. “We’re not saying the ’90s were some glory days,” Orish clarifies. “It’s more about remembering where things came from and celebrating that, without taking anything away from what’s happening now.”
And the storytelling isn’t invented for effect, either. Asked directly whether one of the album’s key narrative tracks, “Abenam,” was based on something real, the pair don’t hesitate: “Yeah, that actually happened. We were together when it went down.” That grounding in lived experience is part of what makes the project feel less like performance and more like testimony.
Asked what they see as their contribution to South African culture, K.Keed turns reflective. “We represent the Gugulethu,” she says. “ [As] a female artist, a queer artist, we’re pushing those voices forward, making a sound and a way of storytelling that isn’t really out there yet. Making space for people like us in this industry.”
As for favorites off the album, K.Keed points to the opening run: “Those first two tracks pull you straight into the world we built, they’re a continuation of each other.” Orish agrees, singling out one of the more hopeful storytelling cuts as the most fun they had making anything on the record.
What’s next is already in motion. An experimental project called Jungle Gym is brewing, alongside Orish’s own album, with a tour and a headline show somewhere on the horizon. For now though, the city is still catching up to what they’ve just released, and by the sound of it — that’s exactly how they like it.
