PieceMaker’s latest production for The ESØTËRIC Ones is out today. THATHA KONKE, a five minute and thirty six second Amapiano single, brings together a four artist lineup drawn from across Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Zulu title translates roughly as “take everything,” and the song trades on that imperative across its full runtime.

The track sits firmly in the township driven end of Amapiano rather than the polished, vocal led style that has carried the genre into international playlists. Log drums sit deep, the mid range carries call and response phrasing, and the closing two minutes refuse to pull back. It is built for the kind of room where no one is watching from the side, where every body in attendance is part of the rhythm section.

That orientation is a deliberate position. The Amapiano global wave that began arriving on Western streaming platforms around 2020 was carried first by polished, song forward productions: tracks built to translate from a Soweto floor to a London festival to a Lagos club without losing structural identity. THATHA KONKE sits one step closer to the source. It is closer to the kind of record that gets cut for a township sound system before any of the international questions are asked.

That is not a small thing in 2025. Amapiano is now arguably the most globally distributed Black African genre on streaming, with Spotify reporting roughly 855 million genre streams in 2024 and Apple Music launching a dedicated category page later that year. Producers in Japan and the United Kingdom are now making the genre. That expansion has been good for the music. It has also produced a centre of gravity that increasingly favours the cleaned up, vocal led mode.

By holding the township orientation, THATHA KONKE argues that the floor still belongs at the centre of the conversation. The bass is more committed than tasteful. The mid range is busy. The track does not particularly care if it works on a phone speaker. It is mixed for a full system and trusts the listener to find one.

That is consistent with PieceMaker’s broader role on the label. He has been the producer most directly responsible for grounding the catalogue in Southern African Amapiano lineage, especially across 2024 and 2025. THATHA KONKE is the most uncompromising statement of that orientation to date.

Stream THATHA KONKE (catalog TEO030) now on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and all major platforms.