While many had hoped that the competition between award winning maskandi artists Khuzani “Idlamlenze” Mpungose and his nemesis Mthandeni “Igcokama Elisha” Manqele has died down, the stakes are now higher again after the Umjolo singer recently released a 21 song album titled “Inhlanhla Iza Nebhadi” his arch rival will be announcing that he is also releasing his own album later this month.
Earlier last month, the singer who won the “Ingoma Ehlukanisa Unyaka” competition on Ukhozi FM, announced to his fans that he will not be releasing an album this year paving a way for artists like Limit Nala, UMafikizolo, Mjolisi and Menzi for the crossover song on commercial radio stations.
Speaking to the KZN based Zulu newspaper, Mthandeni said:
“I don’t want to be seen as someone who is greedy for success. We have worked so hard to put the maskandi music in the map across the country and globally. We have to show other people from other provinces that there is many talents in this industry, only if we can open doors for others that is when our music is going to be respected globally,” he said
Mthandeni went as far as predicting that artists like Mjolisi, Limit, Smirnoff and Umafikizolo are going to take the maskandi music industry into greater heights this year as they will be competing for the song of the year respectivel..
“I believe that Umafikizolo, Limit, Smirnoff and Mjolisi are some of the artists that are going to take maskandi music to the top. We have many talented artists in maskandi industry and this time around we are very versatile and can be featured even by artists from amapiano and from house music in genres,” he said.
Mthandeni’s words emanates from the recently released maskandi songs by Umafikizolo’s Uyoncengwa Unyoko, Nkeshemba’s Ngixolele Mntanami to mention the few.
Mthandeni’s Gucci where he featured artist Mawhoo became the most viewed song on YouTube after Paris where he featured award winning Inkabi Records singer Lwah Ndlunkulu in 2023.
Attempts to get comment from Khuzani proved fruitless, text messages and WhatsApp messages were sent but they were ignored.