From: South Africa

DJ style: House

Best known for: Being Africa’s most famous DJ
 

In October last year, Black Coffee gave an interview to business podcast The Diary Of A CEO. Running at just over an hour and with nearly a quarter of a million views, it was one of his most revealing interviews to date. The DJ/producer, real name Nkosinathi Maphumulo, went deep on his backstory, his early years growing up in a township, exposure to gospel, fusion, jazz and classical music, and the accident that led to him losing the full use of his left hand. 

Coffee was a leading pioneer in the Afro house sound as it grew in the late ‘00s, releasing the now classic ‘Home Brewed’ LP and ‘Africa Rising’ DVD, which saw him performing with a 24-piece orchestra to an audience of 8,000. In 2022 he became the first African to win the Grammy award for Best Dance/Electronic Album, and he’s still making history, this time as the first South African to headline a show at Madison Square Gardens in New York, the biggest show of his career to date. “As long as I’m surrounded by music, that’s all I want to do,” he said in The Diary Of A CEO interview. “It brought me so much peace, happiness — this is why I share it. I share it because of what it does to me, it’s my way of healing people the way it’s healed me.”