Scorpion Kings and Tresor announce collab album ‘Rumble in the Jungle’

Scorpion Kings DJ Maphorisa and Kabza De Small have teamed up with pioneering Afro-pop singer, Tresor to announce the release of “Rumble in the Jungle”, a 14-track anthemic amapiano album.

With the uplifting, dance-rooted first single “Funu”, DJ Maphorisa and Kabza De Small cement their status as South Africa’s premiere DJs by fully integrating amapiano into the mainstream and by doing so, further spearheading the culture.

DJ Maphorisa has been the man behind South Africa’s favourite club bangers for just under a decade, with his main aim to change the game positively, producing hits like Uhuru’s “Y-Tjukutja” and Mafikizolo’s “Khona” both in 2013, and going on to release the lauded gqom anthems “Oncamnce” and “Midnight Starring”.

He also collaborated with American supergroup, Major Lazer, on the 2017 African anthem, Particular which topped the charts across 17 countries on the continent.

Tresore has comfortably cemented his position in the African Pop genre since the release of his award-winning breakout album, VII in 2015.

He has gone on to add to his string of accolades, including two SAMAs for Best Male Artist and Album of the Year for The Beautiful Madness (2017) and a Southern African Afrimma Award for Best Male Artist in 2018.

“I have been knowing Tresor for quite some time and we’ve been promising each other that we have to go to the studio but we never had time.

“We’d meet in Zambia at gigs, I’d play him some stuff and he would vibe and stuff but we never did anything.

“Since I heard him on another project with did for Covid, I told Kabza that ‘we need to work with this guy because I think he’s great and he brings a different kind of texture and is really authentic’.

“I felt like his sound can go with amapiano, it’s French, Lingala, Zulu and Swahili which for me to have all those languages in one project I knew the music would go in”, said Maphorisa.

“Initially Maphorisa and I were working on a brand campaign and he reached out to me on like ‘hey man let’s do an album’ and we’ve know each other for a long time but this will be the first time we actually work together on a full project.

“We started around June and of this 14 track album, 12 tracks were written in the first month – the entire project is less than 3 months old.

“It’s very beautiful magic, authentic and organic because the whole thing worked out beautifully. I am excited about it, the energy around it is just perfect”, added Tresor.