Hey yo Sessioners! Another month, another spotlight and this month, the Si Session are twice as nice as we shine the lime light on an explosive house music duo. There aren’t many duos in the entertainment space so as the Si Sessions, we wanted to get perspective on how this "dynamic duo" (as they describe themselves) operates. So we had a chat with the gents, Lorenzo Booysen aka ‘Reezo Deep’ and Lathon Bongani Gxasheka aka ‘Da Luks' who together are known as Mafia Natives!.
Both members of Mafia Natives were born in Johannesburg and are currently residing in Turffontein, Johannesburg. Reezo Deep was born on the 22nd of Oct 95' making him a Libra and Da Luks was born on the 30th of Dec 94' making him a Capricorn. Both boys are freedom “babies” and they share a love for soul food.
So...what brought this duo together? They shared that Mafia Natives was formed way before the music. They have been family friends since they were toddlers around the early 2000’s. With a friendship that started that early and lasted this long they had to let us in on how they run their well-oiled machine both as business partners and friends, cause we all know what they say about business and friendships. The two felt like the best part about being a duo is that they’re like two hands, that the one will always wash the other so they’ve never felt alone and afraid to take on any challenges. For the worst part the two recognised that at the end of the day, they are individuals thus won’t always agree with each other and that can prove to be difficult at times.
Mafia Natives the MUSICIANS
Mafia Natives have been active in music for 8 years. They were established in 2015 but began their music journey as friends first, in 2013. So as usual we had to know, why the music industry. To answer the question, the duo explained that it was each of their individual traits that brought Mafia Natives together. Da Luks had always been the one who was drawn to music software while Reezo Deep was the out spoken people’s person, who was passionate about soccer. Later on, Reezo Deep had finally found his love for music as he was starting his journey learning how to DJ and produce and one day while walking at Southdale mall, he bumped into Da Luks and asked "Are You still doing music", thus bringing them together as musicians. How serendipitous!
So who are the duo’s musical inspirations? The duo mentioned House Victimz, Ed-Ward, Chronical Deep, Hyena and black Motion as their inspirations, but they told us their mutual respect for Da Capo really brings them closer. When Reezo Deep was learning more about music production he started understanding why Da Capo was such an amazing producer and someone they could draw inspiration from, and “We mean, why not???? We admired the way he could produce different styles of house music and also Remix international singles and make it sound original.”
The duo’s appreciation for beautiful art made them curious as to what type of sound they like to create, so we asked them to describe their music style and in their own words:
“We would describe our Music style as fresh, very unique, yet authentic to the culture. Experimental, up tempo and 1-of-1. We do not replicate sounds and do songs that sound similar, every time we release, our fan base can look forward to something new.”
That response made us eager to experience a Mafia Natives set, so we asked for a quick scope to what one can look forward to if they came to one of their performances. The duo said to come “open minded” and once you have that sorted, you are bound to have a blast as you watch the duo preform, become one with the music and express their love for music through an energetic set, while preferably Lifted #freetheweed.
To wrap up the duos experience as musicians, we asked them to share with us what their biggest highlight and lowlight has been as musicians. The duo shared their biggest lowlight was not dropping music and doing shows for one year straight! Which unfortunately is something all artist can relate to. Their biggest highlight on the other hand, was them being able to collaborate with one of their favourite artists ‘Ed-Ward’
Mafia Natives' 2 cents
Now that we know the men, it’s time to pick their brains a little! We asked the duo where they thought SA is sonically right now. The duo felt as if SA is currently the center of it all. That from amapiano, to deep house, to hip hop and its subgenres, South African’s are making better music than any other nation in the world considering where the industry was 10-15 years ago, when it felt like SA was filled with ‘wannabes’. The duo also continued to share how looking at the countries musical scope, everything feels like home no matter what genre and how they love that the world is looking at South Africa for musical preference instead of idolizing Americans like it’s always been. And you know, we stand by this statement and truly love that South Africa has found a way to own its identity and present it to the world.
We also asked the duo to comment on how they feel about the SA music industry and their response, we quote “All we need now is to grow the industry, pay everyone you work with. The more everyone eats, the more the industry will grow. There’s no industry that grows without growing financially.” Even we had nothing more to say to top that response, cue DJ airhorn on blast right now!
Mafia Natives signing out
As we reach the end of this great spotlight with the Mafia Natives, we couldn’t let them leave without a shameless plug! And here it is:
“Firstly we just wanna thank the honourable Miss Si Jones and the Si Sessions brand for giving us this opportunity, we really appreciate it and don't take this platform lightly, with that being said please do check out our latest project out Now, titled Press Play EP, which consists out of 7 tracks which one of them feature Ed-Ward.”
The honour and pleasure is definitely ours!
For the final words each member of the duo left with their favorite quote. Ladies and gentlemen, Mafia Natives the wise:
From Reezo Deep- “You live and you learn”
From Da Luks- ‘No cough, No Moff”
And we absolutely loved both of these quotes!
So what are Mafia Natives Future plans?
If you enjoyed getting to know Mafia Native and would love to continue to stay up to date with them, here are some artist spotlight exclusive future plans they let us in on.
“2023 is surely an exciting year for us, as we already have upcoming releases from last year's demo submissions and on top of that we are working on 3 projects for this year. A Deep ep, an Afro Ep and possibly an album. We will be pulling big names outta the Deep House rabbit hat this year, as we already secured a collaboration with Chronical Deep for the album project.”