Mnyama

During the lockdown of 2020, Amanda Black used the downtime to confront internal and external issues she hadn’t been giving attention to as a busy artist. Mnyama, the South African soul/R&B artist’s third studio album, was conceived during that tumultuous period. “I felt vulnerable, I felt alone, so I just let myself be,” Amanda Black tells Apple Music. “It was a conscious decision to be like, ‘Listen dude, it's fine, it's okay, you're not the only person that's going through this, it's okay’. And that's how the songs manifested.” Lyrically, Mnyama is a stream of ruminations on heartbreak, self-doubt, confusion and optimism. “The album is a self reflection journey,” she explains. “It’s [a collection of] sincere conversations with myself [while] navigating through the dark time of being isolated in lockdown during a global pandemic, not being able to make a living, worried about how I was going to survive financially and emotionally—and also going through a break-up at the same time. I was ultimately finding myself and healing through these conversations.” Together with producers Christer Kobedi and Vaughan Fourie, Black has crafted an acoustic-leaning soundscape that allows her to share her raw feelings; she takes us through it all here, track by track. Ndandihleli “‘Ndandihleli’ translates to ‘I was sitting’. It came from a song we used to sing in choirs growing up. So, I took it, and then the lyrics that I wrote to it were about the breakup I was going through at the time; how I felt about us. I was reflecting on the relationship and what was making sense to me at that time. Obviously, I missed him, but I understood that it had to end… that ‘it's okay I get it, but I don't get it’.” Amagingxigingxi “I was jamming on the guitar and I was feeling so low that day, everything was weighing on me. My anxiety was at an all-time high. I just felt so insignificant. I wasn't strong enough to do anything about anything. ‘Amagingxigingxi’ is an honest conversation. Most o