Reactionary Reviews | Vuka Zulu | Umlilo
Vuka Zulu is the sound of an artist reaching maturity. This is a coded way to say that an artist has plateaued.
Vuka Zulu is many, many, many tracks that all sound eerily similar, an inoffensive Café del Mar-esque background track played in a South African-themed eatery in Copenhagen. Vuka Zulu is a relentless flow of sort-of amapiano, two-step, kwaito, soulful progressions that remind one of music but never quite get there. Each track is a very competent album-filler track. Only “Umvuko”, the opening track, has any trace of earlier Umlilo releases, and precious little trace at that.
What has always stood out in the music of Umlilo, from Shades Of Kwaai to Mpumi, was a chaotic mélange. Here there is just mélange: a stifling benignness wearing the sounds of freedom. There is not a single track that isn't some form of pleasant.
Lyrically, many tracks seem conceptually revolutionary enough, but just enough. You can quite imagine white people dancing to it, at a braai, in a gated complex, with the one black guy from marketing conceding that this is better than Prime Circle. It is the soundtrack to a Lay's commercial. The LLM set somewhere between Mango Groove and Simunye.
The whole of Vuka Zulu just sounds too easy. It does not live dangerously.