It has been less than a year since he released his previous album, When House was House. Many felt it was too soon for him to release another project.
But DJ and producer Mabi “Mobi Dixon” Ntuli is constantly working, ready to release anytime and he felt it was the right time to drop a new body of work.
On 30 September, Mobi released his 10-track Afro-Tech album titled Mobi Tek.
In the project, he features the likes of Digital Sangoma, KGZoo, JNRSA, Morena The Squire, Mafikizolo, and Lady Du to name a few.
Mobi describes this project as one with international appeal.
“I had a lot of critique for dropping this when my previous album was not even a year old,” he says.
“A lot of people were surprised because I normally take two to three years to drop an album but that song Abakithi was telling a story of what was happening in my life at the time.”
Making this project he had a specific agenda in mind.
“I am pitching the material to a global market and not only local. But with the crossover, I never want to lose the local market.”
Mobi says his music-making process is standard, it’s the beat followed by the vocals.
“Most of the time the beat comes first but on the odd occasion, it will be the vocal or something they have written. In most of my hits, it’s never the first beat, but I always change it three or four times.”
After many years in the game, he says he is still unsure about how to determine a hit because at times he has been proven wrong.
“There’s no way really of telling if a song will be a hit or not. But as a preprofessional you understand your goal and the ingredients you need to get to where you want to go,” he says.
“You need to understand the elements for a commercial record of for underground and you gain that through experience. One must always be open-minded as a musician and producer.”
He also can’t say which is his favourite but he has a song in the album that he holds dear to his heart.
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In the song Abakithi, Mobi features Amapiano’s leading lady Dudu “Lady Du” Ngwenya.
“I was going through something in my life when she and I recorded the song. We didn’t know why she automatically sang about my ancestors, acknowledging them and their divine intervention in my life and constantly protecting me,” he says.
“It was a song that carried me through a difficult time of two to three months and it gave me the confidence and motivation to do this album,” he adds.
“This is the song that pushed me to do this album.”
Mobi says music for him is not just about entertaining people and making them dance but a calling.
“Music is not just a career or a hobby but a calling. I believe the music I deliver lyrically and melodically. I don’t only do this alone, I have vocalists, producers, and engineers that I work with whose energies contribute to the work. I am just a vessel and it's all coming from a higher power, and I am here to deliver. My responsibilities are to fine-tune it, package it and present it to the people who need to hear it in the best possible way," he says.
“It goes really deep in spirituality and to be able to create opportunities for other people. I was blessed to have a computer at the age of 12 years old in 1995 and you can call me a cheese boy but it's blessings from my ancestors and God which brought me here today and opened doors for other children," he says.
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Some of the songs on the album were left out from his previous album and he reworked them to fit into his current project.
“Some of the songs needed more time and effort to get into it. Pillar To Post took me a year to work on featuring Babalwa M,” he says.
Mobi says he has been ahead of his time and that affected his growth in the music industry because people needed to catch up and they didn’t.
“That has been an issue since I started in the industry and dropped my debut album in 2008. I was always way ahead of myself with my sound and people were not ready,” he says.
“There were only a handful of producers. But nowadays when you make music no matter what genre you can put it out online, on your own without anyone’s approval. The Amapiano guys have shown us that it can be done, believing in your dopeness and not being skeptical, who knows you might just win.”
His very first ever international gig was in Kenya. He recently toured the African continent and followed by a trip to Korea and Australia and met some people whom he would like to collaborate with. He plans to take his music abroad.
“The Mobi Tek tour was about presenting this sound and also finding new sounds and creating new relationships. I made an effort to try and get into the studio in every country that I went to and most of the places I went to I’d find a studio somewhere and I did something or even in the hotel room,” he says.
“So I plan to do collaborations with Koreans, Australians, and whoever you know. That’s where we are heading.”
Mobi says he has grown as a producer and this brand is only getting bigger from here onwards.
“I have grown as a musician, and even as a DJ. Even technically with the production, it’s a different approach to music. Back then I used to use a lot of organic instruments and now I am using synthetic sounds, new software and I just hope people will enjoy and welcome the new sound.”
