Venom And Shishiliza Open Up About Their Latest Album And Their Relationship. Shishiliza, whose real name is Sebastian Jameson, has managed artists like Nadia Nakai, Reason and Boity, while Pretoria-born Venom Nkosi has worked with artists such as Rouge, Chad Da Don, Focalistic and Omarion.
Venom and Shishiliza don’t plan on slowing down in the wake of the success of their smash hit Sondela. They just released their debut album Love is Pain featuring DBN Gogo, Blxckie, Jay Sax, Sizwe Alakine and Mr Selwyn.The songs on “Love is Pain” were born out of a three-day writing camp that Venom and Shishiliza hosted to bring together pre-eminent and emerging talents in April 2022.
“We got into the studio, and a lot of the songs we were making were love songs. Love has so many different sides to it, and just around what the year has been for us, it just made sense to call it ‘Love is Pain’…We just resonated a lot with “Love is Pain” from how we felt, from the signs God gave us,” Venom added.
“Love is Pain” is a blend of melodic smoothed out sounds, which Venom and Shishiliza have dubbed the sound “sondela”, a fusion of hip hop, amapiano, afro-pop and R&B. Shishiliza describes it as “easy music that can be listened to anywhere and something that almost any can relate to. The songs have messages aimed at anyone in any kind of “ship”, be it romantic or platonic or past experiences related to matters of love. At the writing camp, everyone was super focused on making the magic happen, with emotions running high during studio sessions, leaving everyone in awe.
It also topped the Recording Industry of South Africa’s (RISAs) official South African charts for both local and international and continues to consistently feature in the top 100 on Radio Monitor, which tracks the most played songs on local radio week in and week out. Prior to “Sondela”, Venom and Shishiliza had released their debut single, “Sho Boy”, featuring several artists like Focalistic, Beast RSA, Yanga Chief, Buzzi Lee and Junior Taurus. The video was released in April.
