Listening to certain musicians takes you down a familiar path with their vocals. I remember the first time I heard Lusanda Ngcobo’s soothing voice as I was staring at my screen, watching TikToks in a crowded café in Harare. Before me were deadlines, a warm cup of coffee, and the noise of a slow but busy Sunday in 2023. Then her cover of OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” appeared on my feed.  Angelic, commanding in its softness, the kind of voice that makes you freeze mid-scroll. That day, the democratic tastemakers of TikTok had already spoken: Lusanda was special. The viral engagement on her post was enough evidence. 

Two years later, I found myself speaking to her as she completes her degree in Theatre and Performance, with a focus on choreography, at the University of Cape Town. Dance has played a major role in shaping the person she is, but in this fresh chapter, she is more recognized for her music. Growing up, Lusanda always kept her creative juices flowing, balancing her time between ballet classes and choir practice. 

From a young age, Lusanda nurtured her talent with ambitions of becoming an entertainer. The same young woman who sang covers from her bedroom now has credits with Uncle Waffles, Manana, and Mörda. As I stare at my screen and chat with Lusanda via Zoom, I can hear the passion in her voice and the confidence of an artist who will continue to share her gift with the world. 

Lusanda was born in Durban, arguably one of the continent’s busiest ports and a landmark celebrated as a recognized talent factory in South Africa. Over the last two decades, Durban has produced household names such as Black Coffee, Zakes Bantwini, Shekhinah, and Nasty C, with Lusanda being the latest star to emerge from the coastal city. Although her story started in Durban, she moved to Johannesburg, the country’s economic hub, in search of better opportunities. 

It was in Johannesburg that she was exposed to the arts at a young age. As a child, Lusanda grew up with marimbas, choirs, and a deep discipline in ballet. “It’s always music,” she tells NATIVE Mag. “My family’s very music-oriented, so I was always in the arts. I did ballet, modern dance, and Jazz, but my focus was dance because it required so many hours of training.”

Already conscious of her talent, Lusanda’s ambition was to make it as an entertainer. This inspired her to enroll at the University of Cape Town to study theatre and performance. Balancing music and dance, her first big break came on TikTok in 2023. A spontaneous, half-bored cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” recorded in her living room went viral. “I think I was just me. I looked like everyone else at home, singing in their rooms for comfort or to soothe,” she says. “That’s what resonates with people the most on my TikTok and actually everywhere in my music.”

That authenticity has become her secret weapon. Even as she trains with the precision of a ballerina, Lusanda is intent on letting her two worlds–dance and music–mesh seamlessly. “Ballet has been a Eurocentric art form for many, many years,” she explains.  “So, seeing more Black ballerinas putting their African identities into it has been very interesting. Even just doing the technical moves of ballet as a Black woman is saying something.”

Her training as a ballerina equipped her with discipline and the pursuit of perfect craftsmanship. This is something she has carried on to her music. Her sound is dynamic with elements of Pop, Soul, Jazz, R&B, and even Amapiano being explored with a high level of rigor. In  2024, she found herself in the studio with Manana and Uncle Waffles working on “Echoes.” “That was one of my first official sessions,” she says, laughing. “I had nerves, but being in a space with Manana was very settling. Everything flowed, Uncle Waffles was present and putting in her inputs. I love that song because of how easy it was to make and how beautiful it actually is.”

Since then, Lusanda has been on a steady rise.  A debut solo single, “When You’re Around,” a Spotify Singles cover of “Mad World” for the EQUAL Africa program, and nods from artists she once covered have followed but it’s all underpinned by a desire to create. She describes her process as driven by melody-first. “The melodies flow usually after I hear a chord progression, and then in that melody you’ll hear a phrase, something on my mind, and I build from there,” she says. Her talent is drawing in listeners and gaining recognition, with her nod on Apple Music’s Africa Rising Class of 2025 proving she is one of the most exciting young voices at the moment. 

Still, Lusanda is thinking bigger than streaming numbers. She dreams of staging performances that combine choreography and live music. Imagine a Jo’burg ballet show where her voice glides over strings, while bodies in motion translate her lyrics into movement. “That’s the dream,” she says simply. I could hear her excitement as this would be a sentimental moment, capturing her life’s work in entertainment. 

Not slowing down on her momentum, she is in the studio writing, experimenting, and creating. Her new single, aptly titled “Progress,” captures her journey. Written over months of trial and error, the song starts with stumbling lyrics before blooming into a mantra: “Growing a garden starts with the seed.” 

When London-based, GRAMMY-nominated producer Sunny Kale sent her the beat over Instagram, Lusanda had no idea just how layered the instrumental’s history was. Alongside Kale’s production sat contributions from Charlotte Day Wilson, BadBadNotGood, and Biako, the two-time GRAMMY winner, whose fingerprints are on Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’  and Tyler, the Creator’s ‘Chromakopia.’ Remarkably, the seed of the song had been sitting on Biako’s hard drive for six years.

Upon receiving the beat, Lusanda was hooked. “I was listening to that song every day, at least twice a day,” she recalls, “But I couldn’t write on it just yet. I was really stuck. I just had too many ideas in my head and too many things going on.” It wasn’t until she forced herself to put pen to paper that something shifted. The act of confronting the block in writing cracked her wide open, and the music began to flow.

As our time together rounds up,  I realized our conversation always came back to Lusanda’s intention to leave a mark on people beyond her music. The way she could speak for minutes uninterrupted, sharing bits from her creative process and her ambitions for the future revealed her passion for music as a craft, but there is more beyond that. Lusanda also aims to inspire people to lead with authenticity. When I asked what message she’d send if the whole world were listening, Lusanda keeps it simple: “Just do you,” she says. “There’s something that attracts people to you, and it will happen naturally. Your people will find you, and you will find your people.” 

As it is, Lusanda has announced her arrival, and the world is paying attention but she’s only just getting started. 

Listen to “Progress” here.