#toya delazy

WATCH: South Africa’s Toya Delazy Performs An Acoustic Rendition of ‘Pump It On’

Toya Delazy sits atop South Africa’s electro-pop throne as the founder and reigning queen of J.E.H.P. (the term she coined for her fusion of jazz-electro-hop-pop). But back before she was the South African Music Award‘s newcomer of 2013 for her high energy solo debut, the KwaZulu-Natal-born music and streetwear icon was a young pianist/vocalist by the name of Latoya Buthelezi. Toya got her start in the music industry, she told us, playing acoustic music for the punks around Durban’s pub scene. And so when we caught a glimpse of this acoustic footage, we knew we’d have to get Toya behind a piano on her most recent trip to New York City. “Pump It On,” she explained, is the song that “liberated” her. It was her very first single and its video remains her most viewed clip to date. Where Toya is from, “music is not seen as a career,” she told us. That all changed with “Pump It On,” and OkayafricaTV was very fortunate to sit down with Toya as she performed her breakthrough song as a piano ballad for the latest installment of our Okay Acoustic series. Watch Toya Delazy’s live acoustic performance of “Pump It On” above.