Don’t let the stage name deceive you! When it comes to addictive rhythms and wildly imaginative melodies, Uncle Waffles has amapiano bagged and booming.
Sci-fi boffins made some pretty zany predictions about what the year 2000 would bring: flying cars, robot workers and even time travel. But while we might not be living in sky castles, the turn of the millennium did bring us Uncle Waffles.
Born Lungelihle Zwane, Waffles continues to make history by taking her kwaito vibes across international borders – whether she’s dancing with the greats of RnB and hip-hop or being name-dropped by her idols.
Worth the hype
The ‘Yahyuppiyah’ hitmaker recently performed at The Great Hall in Brooklyn, New York, for which she shared a rather provocative promo video that left fans picking up their jaws from the floor. Shorter than 60 seconds, the video features Waffles and a crew of women lathered in foam as they wash retro cars, alluding to countless American music videos.
Fans flooded the post with comments like: ‘Piano is going back into time now. Legends are about to eat from the samples licensing’ in support of her international endeavours. Just a few weeks before this, Waffles also shared a vibrant sneak peek of her performance and backstage shenanigans at the Afronation Piano People gig in Portugal, where she proved that she’s not only capable of hyping a crowd with her disc-scratching skills but also with her moves, burning up the stage beside SA dancer and choreographer Kananelo Precious Ngaleka.
All the right notes
That’s not all. This year, she’s also strutted the red carpet at the BET Awards in Los Angeles, where she was nominated in the Best International Act category alongside local favourites Burna Boy, K.O and Aura Starr. And she made history in April as the first amapiano artist to perform at the Coachella festival after several sold-out shows in the US. Given her success in the past two years, we’d say she’s hitting all the right notes!
But let’s rewind a little… It all started when she discovered a 15-year-old DJ deck while she was interning at Eswatini TV in 2020. Inspired by the colourful street culture and life of her home, and acts like Black Coffee, she practised DJing eight hours a day during the peak of the pandemic.
She soon received regular bookings through entertainment agency Kreative Kornerr, but the gig that changed her life was filling in for another DJ who had bailed on the prime 10.30pm slot at Zone 6, a popular venue in Soweto.
Already attracting a large crowd, the masses grew larger after a 30-second Instagram video of Waffles moving her hips to Young Stunna’s ‘Adiwele’ went viral. ‘The song says, “Coming at them with force”, which is what happened to my life after that!’ she later told Billboard magazine.
“I tend to use my dancing to translate the music, so you’re going to see what the song says even if you don’t understand it.”
In 2021, she released her debut EP ‘Red Dragon’, and the ears of millions were drawn to the six-minute hit ‘Tanzania (a song inspired by a visit to that country); by September 2022, it had gone quadruple platinum.
Dancing Dynamo
The video of Queen B Beyoncé dancing to ‘Tanzania’ during one of her shows on her Renaissance World Tour also went viral. It was retweeted by Uncle Waffles, who captioned it: ‘I’m crying, wow’, followed by teary-eyed emojis, expressing her joy at being recognised by one of her idols.
@zeebaybz Piano pianooooo #zeebaybz #renaissancetour2023 #beyonceunclewaffles #amapiano #beyonceamapiano ♬ original sound – Zeebaybz
‘Growing up, I was always very much a girl’s girl. I still am. So I was definitely a lover of Chomee, Lebo Mathosa… Those are the people that were accessible to me at the time. And then my girl B, my girl Beyoncé! If you didn’t know, that’s my girl because she knows me. Hey B!’ she gushed in an interview with amapiano music and culture magazine The Yanos.
‘Tanzania’ has also created a wave of viral dance videos by fans and garnered praise from big-name artists like Ciara, Kelly Rowland and Drake. Waffles doesn’t leave the dancing to fans and is not shy to let loose and flaunt her moves, killing the #Tambula dance challenge on TikTok with Riky Rick before his passing in February 2022.
‘I tend to use my dancing to translate the music, so you’re going to see what the song says even if you don’t understand it,’ the 23-year-old told Billboard. Her next EP, ‘Asylum’ (released in March this year), reached gold within a week and featured on global charts, as well as being mentioned in big-name publications like The New York Times.
She’s just dropped her third EP, ‘Solace’… Who knows where that will take her, but we do know for sure that this Year 2000 phenomenon is one nobody saw coming.
Fast facts
Full Name:
Lungelihle Zwane
Birthday:
30 March 2000
Birthplace:
Eswatini
– She started out as a model and appeared on the cover of Swazi Bride magazine in 2018.
– She was a presenter on Studio1, a Swazi music and entertainment TV show.
– Her high-school friends picked her stage name because it would be ‘unexpected’.
Words by: Saadiqah Schroeder
Photographs: Gallo/Getty Images, Supplied
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