THE REBELLION

“Gqom started as a sound for taxis, actually,” South African sonic pioneer DJ Lag tells Apple Music. “It was being played in taxis. And even now, if you go to taxi ranks, you’ll hear all the taxis are playing gqom sounds. In South Africa, the taxis have their own culture; they have big sound systems. [As a driver] if you have the big sound system, you’re going to get more customers. And that was another way we used to push our music.” Like the minibus taxi system that helped gqom artists get their sound out there, DJ Lag remains a driving force behind the growth of the scene, and with his 2024 album THE REBELLION, he presents the next chapter of the drum-heavy sound’s evolution. “I think if I stop [producing gqom], a lot of people will just stop,” Lag explains. “It’s my responsibility to keep pushing stuff. The style I’m trying now is gqom mixed with amapiano. And I just had to call it THE REBELLION. It’s slow like ’piano, but the beats—you can hear it’s gqom. I like experimenting a lot, and I think that’s how most of the producers are moving right now in Durban. It’s a mix of Afro-tech, but you can still hear the bass and the darkness of the song—so you can hear it’s two different sounds. On the album, we have three-step, we have proper gqom—like the old style—we have gqom with hip-hop, and we also have gqom mixed with amapiano.” Below, he talks through key tracks from the album. “Iza Ngamandla” (with Sykes & Vanco) “It’s a mixture of two genres. It’s three-step, but it changes and becomes darker in the middle, and then it goes back to Afro-tech-ish. And Sykes is really good with the vocals. I made it number one because it’s chilled, but it’s talking about how hot the album is. When they say ‘Iza Ngamandla’, they’re saying, ‘This album is coming with force.’” “Hade Boss” (feat. K.C Driller) (with Mr Nation Thingz) “I started producing that style around 2021, trying to link gqom with ’piano, but I don’t think I was really good at it. In 2023, that’s when I starte