Review
Genre and Mood
Nonku Phiri’s Things We Do on the Weekend is electronic R&B with hip-hop and kwaito in its blood, sultry and hypnotic rather than loud. Okayafrica called it “a sultry tale set to hazy beats and click percussion”; for Texx and the City it starts off unassuming and moody, and the moodiness stays to the end.
Song Summary
The song tells of a romance gone wrong: in Nonku’s own note, quoted by Okayafrica, “a narrative of a girl going through the motions of courtship”, meant to be “cheeky and very honest”. Texx and the City heard her croon in the R&B spirit of Rozonda Thomas around Crazy Sexy Cool, over a beat by Narch Beats of the Cape Town collective PHFat whose simplicity it found “effectually beautiful”.
Musical Breakdown
No review we found walks through the track part by part or gives times, so this breakdown keeps to what the reviews describe.
The Beat
The track is “underpinned by a deep bass-rooted, monotone beat”, in Texx and the City’s words: a low, steady foundation the song never leaves.
The Percussion
That beat is “peppered by a whizz here and a click there”. Okayafrica’s click percussion and Think In Electronic’s “fragmented beats” point the same way: small, broken-up sounds over the bass.
The Voice
Over it comes the croon, the “hypnotic vocals” Think In Electronic heard.
Concepts in Focus
kwaito is South African house slowed down, born in Soweto in the late 1980s and 1990s: deep basslines, drum machines, catchy loops and vocals that often talk rather than sing. Nonku told Okayafrica that she and Narch “had been listening to a whole bunch of reaaaaaaaallly old school kwaito tracks”, naming Mawillies, Spokes H and TKZee. Listen for what the finished song keeps, above all the weight of the low end.
The loop is where the song began. The two “started jamming on a couple of loops”, she said, and weeks or months later “the track organically grew into a sexy jam”. That origin is still audible in the monotone beat, a base that does not change.
Artistic Context
Nonku Phiri is a South African singer and songwriter, the daughter of the late guitarist and bandleader Ray Phiri. Before going solo she was a trusted collaborator of PHFat, the Cape Town electro-rap outfit, as her rap alter ego Jung Freud. Things We Do on the Weekend, premiered on 8 April 2015, was her first solo single, recorded at PHFat’s headquarters in Hout Bay “on a random Wednesday evening”. She calls herself “an extroverted introvert”: her two names let her tap into both sides.
Impact and Reception
Think In Electronic called her one to watch “not only in the local music scene but internationally as well”. Music In Africa’s profile later called the single “internationally acclaimed”; by 2018 Mail & Guardian counted Branko, heard in Branko, SKIP&DIE, Fellow – Made of Gold, among the artists her voice had featured with. It is here for its restraint: a fling gone wrong told over a bass, a few clicks and a voice. Play it late, when the weekend is almost over.
