Makhadzi

Born in 1996 as Ndivhudzannyi Ralivhona and brought up in the village of Ha-Mashamba, Makhadzi earned early recognition as the heir apparent to the late Brenda Fassie, the “Queen of African Pop.” She channels high-energy “Limpopo house,” a style rooted in the South African region where she first honed her craft performing at weddings. Her vocals are delivered in Tshivenda, a tongue largely unfamiliar outside the northern reaches of her home province, and she threads in synth-driven amapiano textures, most notably on the 2021 double-platinum single “Ghanama,” a partnership with Prince Benza.

Her parents separated during her childhood, so she and her sister were raised by their mother under modest circumstances. At thirteen she joined the Makirikiri Musical Group as a dancer, where she first uncovered her distinctive, rasping, soulful voice and committed herself to a solo path. Still attending school, she took to busking outside shops and on sidewalks while hawking her earliest self-made recordings. Those street performances quickly translated into steady bookings at weddings across Limpopo; in Sepedi-speaking areas, listeners struggled with her birth name and instead adopted the moniker Makhadzi, borrowed from a character on a local television soap.

Although she had been writing, recording, and independently issuing tracks since 2012, the 2017 release “Tshanda Vhuya” markedly elevated her regional profile. Impresario Rita Dee amplified that momentum by championing her follow-up singles, paving the way for the April 2018 arrival of her debut full-length album, Shumela Venda. In 2019 she appeared on Master KG’s “Tshikwama” from the Jerusalema project, and the two briefly became romantically linked. Later that year she issued Matorokisi, whose title track transformed her career trajectory, while the single “Mphemphe” reached the top of the South African charts. The 2020 album Kokovha, issued through Michael Alan Meyers’ Open Mic Productions, secured her place in the national mainstream by housing two additional number-one hits.

Early 2021 brought collaborations with Mlindo the Vocalist and Diamond Platinumz, followed in September by the gold-certified album African Queen, on which she crowned herself. 2022 saw high-profile features on singles by Lowsheen and Prince Benza, then the April release of Pain Ya Jealous, an album shaped in part by renewed work with her former partner Master KG. That July she launched her first tour outside South Africa, playing dates in Canada and the U.K. that concluded with a performance at Zimfest in St. Albans, just north of London.