While eyebrow-raising on paper, the teaming of South African producers Kabza De Small and SLY with hip-hop and R&B star The Big Hash makes perfect sense just a few tracks into their Love Is a Star album. Kabza and his Piano Hub signee SLY build soulful, restrained production filled with warm basslines, airy pads and amapiano’s fragile snares, giving Hash space to lean into heartbreak and romantic vulnerability with full force. Similarly versatile guests like Lia Butler and Blxckie fit naturally into a genre-blurring approach, while Kelvin Momo’s reworking of The Big Hash’s 2019 trap single “Ringtone” bridges the MC’s past and present, transforming an early fan favourite into a hazy amapiano slow-burn. Closing track “when it comes to you” is a subtle drift from ’piano though, The Big Hash’s melodic raps gilding over distant saxophone lines by Jay Sax, both of which are cushioned by lively Rhodes keys and rich low-end. And yet even as the genre palette shifts, the mood stays warm, intimate and unhurried.