Kay Faith established herself as the go-to producer for South Africa’s premier rappers, working on Kwesta’s “Day One” and YoungstaCPT’s “The Cape of Good Hope.” Her long-awaited debut album sees her embrace seemingly conflicting elements to create a finely tuned body of work. Seizing every opportunity to challenge conventions, from the stark black-and-white cover artwork designed by African Ginger to her mere existence as a white Afrikaans woman making some of the hardest-hitting hip-hop in the country, Antithesis is the sum of its varying parts. “This is the story of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ told by one of Cape Town’s best-kept secrets,” Kay Faith tells Apple Music. Here, Kay talks us through the 10 tracks, which showcase SA hip-hop, pop, drill, and her beloved childhood genre of kwaito in all their glory, aided by an array of carefully curated features. “Intro” “The musicality here is all very experimental. The first voice is a very well-known local artist named Nalu. And basically, what she’s saying is the definition of the word ‘antithesis.’ The other voice you hear is a local artist called Owethu. I purposefully didn’t want these two artists necessarily labeled as feature artists because the whole idea was that it’s very experimental. It doesn’t have to be so formal. It can be open-ended.” “Top Ten” [Kay Faith, Owethu, Kashcpt, Hanna & Holy Alpha] “The realm of the music industry is very much in Johannesburg. So, we [Capetonians] look up to the industry up there, and we dream of being on the charts and the Top 10 lists. And sometimes, it feels like it’s a little bit further away for us. But the song is pretty much saying, ‘Look at this lineup. This was homegrown in the Mother City. And it’s probably going to end up getting onto those lists.’ So, very much like a foreshadowing energy on this track.” “Slay Queen” [Kay Faith & Phreshclique] “Phreshclique is incredible. In terms of writing and performing, they are literally one of Cape Town's best-kept secrets. They do hip-hop and they do kwaito. So, I sent them this track, and they came back to me with this concept of ‘Slay Queen.’ When we wrote this, slay queens weren’t what we know and love today. It was a more positive thing. You’re a slay queen—you’re a businesswoman, you’re making things happen. Now, unfortunately, time has kind of taken this term and turned it into a more negative thing. But I feel like that is a term that we need to reclaim. This track also features a new queer female artist, Bandannie. This is an all-queer lineup with a song called ‘Slay Queen.’ What more do you want?” “Shark Week” [Kay Faith & Maglera Doe Boy] “I made this track at the end of a very chaotic week in my life. There were a lot of deadlines, a lot of pressure. And it was all for other artists that I was working with. So, I had this incredible pressure and stress on my shoulders. And at the end of the week, when everything was delivered, I realized, ‘Yoh, none of that was for my own career.’ I think I called this song ‘Shark Week’ because I had this little bit of anger inside me. And I felt like I was just swimming away from the shark that was trying to eat me.” “On Life” [Kay Faith, Faith K, Reason, Nyokks & Sipho the Gift] “Here we have Faith K in the studio with Kay Faith. I just thought it was too great to pass up the opportunity for us to do a song together. Reason’s verse is quite heavy; it’s quite personal. So, the song very much hit me like a more adult contemporary-styled hip-hop track, and I don’t have anything on that level on the album. Sipho the Gift’s addition to the track was perfect. He gave me a very well-rounded verse—very deep, very on-topic, masterful. The other feature is a bridge by Nyokks. I really like her energy. A lot of her bridge was freestyled, but I think it just added to the light of the song.” “Amamenemene” [Kay Faith, Bravo Le Roux & VenusRaps] “I was very fortunate to have met VenusRaps in Joburg; I think she’s super talented. Here we have the male-female dynamic, and we have the Xhosa-Zulu dynamic. We are all young musicians trying to make it in the music industry, but we’ve all met that person that sells you a dream and doesn’t follow up on it. Which, ironically, then ties into Bravo saying, ‘Andiwafun’amamenemene,’ which means ‘I don’t want people who lie around me.’” “PROUDLY CAPETONIAN” [E-JayCPT, YoungstaCPT & Kay Faith] “The pre-chorus that you hear on this track was recorded back in 2014, 2015-ish. They were going to be the vocals on the intro of E-JayCPT’s EP—where he goes, ‘Kaapstad in ne Kaslam.’ Now, [while this song] was being produced, E-Jay was in jail. And whenever YoungstaCPT and I had studio sessions, he gave me updates on how E-Jay was, and I think that’s what sparked the idea because I said to my manager, ‘Hey, is it OK for me to use that vocal in a track?’ This was the time where Pop Smoke had just become super hot and the whole drill movement was happening. But the irony of it is that a lot of my co-creators and I in Cape Town had been making UK-based hip-hop long before drill was popular. So, when I saw that this was popping off now, I was like, ‘I want to make a drill song, but I want E-Jay’s vocals on this drill song.’ Youngsta was the only other person I could put on this track.” “Township Deluxe” (feat. Blaklez, Maglera Doe Boy, Kid-X, KayGizm & AirDee) “I would consider this a new-age kwaito song. It’s also the song with the most features—it features OGs, it features youngbloods. It features four different languages, and it’s feel-good. It’s the first time we’re seeing Motswako and Skhanda together on the same track. And basically, all the artists, in their own capacity, have birthed a style of rap which wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for kwaito music. Blaklez is the founding father of the Spitori-type raps that you see in Pretoria. Kid-X is from the SKHANDAWORLD; Maglera Doe Boy and KayGizm are from the Motswako-Morafe era.” “Sugar Water” [Kay Faith, Uno July & DJ Ready D] “Uno was one of the first Capetonian artists that gave me a shot as an engineer and producer when I was still very young. Uno introduced me to Maglera [Doe Boy], and Maglera was like, ‘Just play me some of your beats,’ during a writing session. And one of the beats I played was this instrumental for ‘Sugar Water.’ And it was such a change of pace because we had been doing trap and drill the whole day. And then I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’m just going to throw this more old-school, boomed-up sound into it.’ And then, Uno stepped up and dropped such a crazy freestyle.” “Cinderella” [Kay Faith & Nathan Blurr] “This is my first public attempt at doing something that is a little bit more of a pop sound to it. I played Nathan Blurr the instrumental for ‘Cinderella,’ and while he was in the vocal booth, he just started humming along. And those two sounds, even though he wasn’t singing any words, the synergy between his voice and the instrumental was just amazing. And I was like, ‘OK, let’s wrap up this recording. I’m going to send you home with this instrumental of mine. Write a song for me for my project. You get something, I get something. It’s the birth of a good relationship.’ It was the first song completed for Antithesis. And this guy’s literally singing a song about how Cinderella broke his heart. If that’s not antithesis, then I don't know what it is.”