Sun-El Musician enters new chapter with ‘Under the Sun’

A few days before the release of his new album, Sun-El Musician sounds like a man suspended between exhaustion and exhilaration. “Yeah, actually, it’s all of the above as a creative,” the artist whose real name is Sanele Sithole tells me when I ask if he’s feeling excited or nervous. “I think you get to a space where you’re just like over the whole thing.

It’s because it’s a lot of work. But there is some excitement just for people to hear the songs for the first time.” It’s an honest answer. After four years without a full-length project,Under the Sunarrives on Friday February 13 as both a return and a reset.

A 17-track Afro-house offering released through his own label, Under Da Sun, the album brings together a formidable constellation of collaborators; from Nasty C and Deborah Cox to Msaki, Youngr, Manana, Mnqobi Yazo and a new generation of emerging voices. But right now, in the quiet before release, he’s living with the strange emotional whiplash of finishing an album. “I’ve loved some of these songs and I hate some of them now,” he laughs.

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“And until I give it out to the people and then I fall in love back again. So it’s kind of a weird place to be in right now. So, yeah, I’m kind of all over the show, really.” “Plus I’m a perfectionist, so I keep tweaking until they’re out,” he says.

“As a matter of fact, even when they’re out, I’ll still be like, should have done this to that part. So it’s just like a never ending process of just trying to make it sound better, I guess.” There is relief, though, in surrender. “That love and hate until you give it to the people and then they go crazy.

Like, okay, I need to let go.” Although his debutAfrica to the World(2018) and its successorTo the World & Beyond(2020) were certified Platinum andAfrican Electronic Dance Musicfollowed in 2021, he could have released something much sooner. The songs were there. The demand was there.

But the feeling wasn’t. “I could have released an album a long time ago,” he says. “But I felt like I wasn’t feeling anything around all that time and I was going through this newness that I’m actually just like embarking on now.

“So at that time, I just felt like it was going to be just like an album made by a machine if that makes any sense where I could have just put a bunch of songs together and just got it out. I felt like I needed to go through a certain emotion or just a feeling like that’s where I’m at right now.” Under the Sunis, in that sense, an album born of timing. Some of the tracks are years old, others are recent.

“It’s always like that when you’re working on an album anyways,” he says. “There’s songs that won’t make the cut on this album. Maybe they could work in the next two years or next year or this year later.

It’s just always those. I guess it’s a timing thing.”

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