You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
My name is Tao Nguyen.
This episode contains explicit language.
Nakane is a singer and songwriter from Johannesburg, South Africa.
His first album, Brave Confusion,
won the South African Music Award for Best Alternative Album in 2014.
He starred in the award-winning film The Wound,
which was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
Nakane's second album, You Will Not Die,
was originally released in 2018 and then released in the US in 2019 as a deluxe version.
The deluxe version includes this song, New Brighton, featuring guest vocals from Anoni.
In this episode, as Nakane breaks down the song,
he talks about his complicated relationship with Christianity,
why the song wasn't on the original version of the album,
and what it was like to work with one of his musical heroes.
This is Nakane.
I actually wrote New Brighton on the 31st of December 2013.
It was New Year's Eve and my family had gone to my aunt's house and I decided to not celebrate New Year's Eve with them
because I wanted to write music.