Johannesburg - As the world continues to mark Pride Month, internationally acclaimed artist Nakhane has been gushing over making it to a New York City billboard in celebration of this month.
In a post shared on Instagram, the We Dance Again hitmaker revealed that the feature was part of the YouTube Music Pride campaign and further shared the significance of Pride Month.
“My queer ass on a billboard in New York as part of the @youtubemusic Pride campaign,” said Nakhane – full name, Nakhane Mahlakahlaka, a South African singer, songwriter, actor, and novelist.
“On this here Pride Month, I only have this to share: Be more. Be Queerer. Be more demanding of your space on this f****** planet. Be difficult. Love life on your own terms. Be complicated. Be simpler. Be shameless. Be sluttier. But most of all, do your best to accept yourself as you are. This is as much for you as it is for me.
“Happy Pride, whatever that means to you. There is no coherence, anyway.”
The London-based music talent has recently shared thrilling details about the release of the album “Bastard Jargon”, which merges sexuality, politics, gender, and pop history.
Describing this album, Nakhane says it is an “existential sex album”.
“The eureka moment happened afterwards. I think I’d always known, but I didn’t have the language for it. I’ve never quite identified completely with manhood or womanhood. I think there’s nothing wrong with masculinity as it is; toxic masculinity’s something else, but I’ve always been interested in the spectrum.
“And not a lot of artists make a record as singular and addictive as ‘’Bastard Jargon’ in which sexuality, politics, gender, and pop history merge into something sublime.
“Micro, they’re intimate; they’re about day-to-day relations, one-on-one, and so in that world, even though that world is also influenced by the macro, your own decisions have a hand in how your life will be. I wanted to make a reflective pop album. In two songs, ‘Standing in Our Way’ and ‘The Conjecture’, I say, ‘The problem is me’. In music, not a lot of people say that,” said the artist.
Nakhane further explained the significance of queerness, music, and art.
“Even if you’re using formulas. Maybe with a pop song you go, ‘Oh, pop: verse, chorus, verse, chorus’ but how can you pervert this thing that’s so well known? That’s what I’m interested in: turning things a little bit upside down, making things a little bit wonky, just trying to turn the coin and look at it from a different angle,” said the music artist.
The Star