In an interview with Arts&Culture, the duo’s manager, Khumo Monyena explained that ‘Exodus The Return’ is a kwaito album consisting of eight tracks, with beautiful songs such as Morena, Shayile, Holiday and Dihits. He stated that seven of the tracks were recorded at Kalakuta Records, while one, Dihits was recorded at Big Teeh Productions by Thapelo wa Mojuta. “This album is basically about us, we went back to old melodies and created that kind of kwaito that we grew up loving. It is a danceable album with mature lyrics. We have worked with different artists on this album such as Baptsa, Pongo Rista, Deben Natale and Khebos,” he said.
He further said that they have been amazed by the support from their fans saying it felt like they never left. Since coming back earlier this year, he said they have been doing their own shows. They have been to Kasane, Native Lounge, Love Groove in Malotwane, Tsabong, to name but a few and performed at some of the local bars. He added that the album is just a warm-up because they intend to dominate local music and go international. He said they would drop more music and videos before the end of this year. Exodus consists of two members, namely, Anthony Phatsima and Dawn Seisa who met around 1998 during their junior secondary school days.
According to Monyena, by then, they were dancers on V-Shows. He also said at the time, the crew had three members with the third member, Phenyo Tangisto Jankie, who later left in 2004 before they released their first album, Rockstar. He added that in 2001, they joined Black Money Makers as Vee Mampeezy’s dancers. They later started recording their debut album at Clockworks Studios titled, Rockstar, where they released songs such as Zero and Soka in 2004. He said the album was released in early 2005. He added that in late 2005, they released another album, which took Botswana by storm called Manyoloi, with hit tracks, Manyoloi and Masupatsela. He explained that those albums were recorded under the Black Money Makers with Vee Mampeezy being the co-producer. “After the production of Manyoloi and Masupatsela around 2008, Exodus went on a long break from producing new songs.
We only attended shows by bookings. We went back to the studio around 2010 where we released a single song, Holiday, which did really well. As for achievement, Masupatsela was nominated for Song of the Year at the BOMU awards; it became number one at Channel O Top Ten. We have performed at places like Malaysia,” he said. Moreover, he pointed out that the music industry on its own is very challenging, from studio contracts to events. He said there were a lot of crooks in the industry, which killed artists. His advice to aspiring musicians was that education is key; they must know their customer, impress them so that they can get bookings, work hard and lastly be patient and wise.
