Exclusive Interview: Mutsa talks everything about debut album Radio Mhere ahead of 13 October release

TAWANDA CHARI

Mutsa is set to release Radio Mhere, his debut album, on 13 October 2026. The project marks a new chapter for the Zimbabwean rapper and producer, who is giving the release a bigger commercial push than his previous projects while retaining the personal, historical and political themes that have shaped his music.

 

 

The project arrives with a more deliberate commercial push than his previous releases, reflecting a musician who has grown more confident in his abilities and more comfortable putting himself and his work out there. It also represents a meeting point between Mutsa’s ambitions as a writer and producer and the ideas that have shaped his music so far.

In an exclusive interview with ZimSphere, Mutsa explicated that the investment behind Radio Mhere (from the production and mixing to the mastering and visual identity) made it increasingly difficult to treat the music as something to simply release and leave for people to discover.

“You start to do these things where there’s just more and more investment that goes into the product, where it kind of feels cheap to call it a hobby and just release these things and be like, whoever finds it should find it,” Mutsa said.

“You really want to give it the post treatment that the investment you’ve made in terms of energy and just people’s talent and time deserves. You really want to see that investment be rewarded with as much listenership as possible.”

That desire for more ears is central to the album’s rollout. Mutsa says physical editions, including vinyl and CDs, are in the works, although the immediate priority is building excitement around the release and getting the music in front of as many listeners as possible.

Despite the increased commercial ambition, Mutsa is clear about where the music comes from.

“Despite the heavy Western influence in a lot of what I do, I make the argument that my music is just always going to be Zimbabwean. As a Zimbabwean, it’s always going to be a different listening experience to anyone else listening to the stuff that I make, which I’m happy with and quite proud of.”

Making dense music more accessible

Mutsa’s previous projects have demanded attentive listening. His writing draws on history, politics, personal experiences and questions about the human condition, often bringing several ideas together within a single song. Radio Mhere retains that density, but Mutsa says he has made a more conscious effort to balance his writing with melody and songwriting.

“This is probably the most palatable project that I think I could currently make,” he said, describing the album as his most commercial offering to date.

There are more hooks, more singing and greater variation in the production and vocal layering. These are not concessions that abandon his identity as a writer, but deliberate attempts to make the music more inviting without stripping away its substance.

“I’m primarily a writer, and I have these many things that I want to say and many things I want to learn about myself through the writing as well,” Mutsa explained.

“But trying to have more care for hooks and things that maybe don’t come as naturally to me but make a song more enjoyable — things like that.”

His intention is to make music that listeners can absorb, learn from and think about, while still enjoying the experience of listening to it.

“I think it does a pretty great job of bringing those two worlds together,” he said.

That balance is important because accessibility does not necessarily mean simplicity. Mutsa says conflict and contention run through the album, whether between themes, timelines, cultures or influences. The music may be more inviting in its construction, but there is still plenty to unpack.

What does ‘Radio Mhere’ represent?

The title suggests communication, broadcasting and being heard, and we had to ask Mutsa what ‘radio’ represents to him, and what he is broadcasting.

“Radio is kind of something that evolved as I was making the project. I always had this idea about making this kind of radio broadcast,” Mutsa intimated.

For Mutsa, radio carries several meanings. In hip-hop, it represents the commercial gateway: the space artists want to break into, even when underground culture sometimes treats it with suspicion.

“There’s almost a divide between fans of the underground and radio,” he said, pointing to the perception that radio is controlled by labels and fed to the masses rather than representing the true heart of hip-hop.

Yet radio airplay remains a familiar measure of an artist’s breakthrough. Rappers want to get on the radio because it can mean reaching people beyond their existing audience.

Mutsa wanted to explore that contradiction, particularly within Zimbabwean hip-hop, a scene whose artists are still developing their identities and confidence under difficult circumstances.

But the metaphor reaches beyond the music industry.

He also considers radio’s role in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, when broadcasting became a means of communicating revolutionary ideas and mobilising people against colonial rule. From that perspective, radio is not merely a commercial platform. It can also be a tool for solidarity, resistance and collective action.

“Suddenly, radio is not just this commercial weapon, but actually something for the people,” he said. “Not just music, not just jingles, not just something to turn on and go about your day, but actually this motivator, this thing to link people and bring them together.”

Radio also connects different periods of history. A listener turning on a radio in 2026 might hear music from 1985, creating a connection between people and experiences separated by decades.

For Mutsa, that idea of connection becomes personal. Although he is currently living in the United States, Zimbabwe remains home. Radio becomes a way of thinking through that distance and communicating the emotions that come with it.

As the album developed, the concept grew alongside the music, influencing the samples, sequencing and structure.

“Radio just became like a sort of crutch, but a beacon as well, in terms of fulfilling that metaphor,” he said.

It is an image that brings together the album’s commercial ambitions, its historical interests and its concern with the distance between people.

Personal grief, political anxiety and the fight against apathy

The emotional and political concerns that shaped Mutsa’s earlier work have not disappeared. If anything, Radio Mhere finds him considering those concerns from a different position.

His previous project, WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF SOIL TO BURY OUR DEAD, dealt heavily with the politics of its time. The new project, he explained, looks more closely at the times as they are shaped by politics.

“I’m not really good at getting over things, unfortunately,” he said. “I’m not really great at emotional processing, and unfortunately a lot of the grief and the human-condition stuff is very present.”

The album also reflects the difficulty of being far away from people he loves, alongside heartbreak, political frustration and the challenge of making sense of events unfolding in Zimbabwe, across Africa and elsewhere in the world.

Living in the United States has given him another vantage point from which to observe the pressures of contemporary life. He spoke about seeing the effects of what he described as “end-stage capitalism”, and the different ways people are coping with the difficulties it creates. Across these experiences, one concern has become particularly persistent: apathy.

Mutsa sees the album as part of an attempt to resist that feeling, to keep engaging with the world rather than surrendering to indifference. The radio concept, with its emphasis on communication and connection, feeds directly into that ambition.

The music remains personal, but its concerns are not confined to the self. Private grief exists alongside political anxiety, while memories and individual experiences are placed within larger historical and social contexts.

How does Radio Mhere builds on Mutsa’s previous work

There has been a clear progression from Mutsa’s earlier projects, and we were interested in knowing about what Mutsa learnt from the process of making those previous records and how that has influenced Radio Mhere.

“I grew in confidence a lot to be able to make music from previous projects,” Mutsa told us.

He sees the earlier releases as places where he experimented with ideas and approaches that have since found their way into the new album. The process of repeatedly making music has also helped him become more assured in his abilities as a musician and producer.

“There's a lot of really great stuff that happened on the previous projects, and I think that doing all of that has kind of helped me because I've brought so much of that into this project.”

He likened the progression to a character powering up in Dragon Ball, comparing Radio Mhere to “Super Saiyan 2” or “Super Saiyan Blue”.

The analogy captures his view of the album as an upgrade rather than a reinvention. The foundations remain, but the execution has developed.

Themes of timelines, remembrance and childhood continue to inform his writing, as does his interest in how people form identities amid globalisation and migration.

“There’s a lot of stuff I did in the early albums that’s really carried through to here,” he said. “And I’ve become more confident just by virtue of continuously doing these things and building these reps.”

That continuity is also why Mutsa hopes the new album will lead listeners back to his older catalogue. He says there are plans to breathe new life into the previous projects, which he still believes deserve a wider audience.

For listeners who have followed him from the beginning, Radio Mhere offers familiar concerns approached with greater confidence and a broader musical palette. For newcomers, it provides an entry point into an artist whose work does not fit neatly into one category.

Is this the right introduction to Mutsa?

Why should Radio Mhere be someone's introduction to Mutsa, and what should existing listeners expect to hear that they haven't heard before?

Well, Mutsa has an illuminative answer for that question: “I'm sure someone's going to listen to this and be like, ‘He's gone Hollywood.’”

The prospect of being accused of selling out does not seem to trouble him particularly. The commercial push is a change in how the music is being presented and distributed, not an attempt to abandon the ideas that have defined his work.

“If you listen to my older work, I think you're going to find a lot of stuff to enjoy, and I think it pairs nicely with the older work as well. I think it complements it.”

For new listeners, he believes the album offers something distinctive. Mutsa is conscious that his approach may not appeal to everyone, and he is comfortable with that possibility.

“I think if you listen to this project and you like it, you're going to love it. And there's going to be people who don't like it, and that's really okay.”

He expects the project to create new fans, while others may simply find that the music is not for them. The priority is to put the work out properly and allow people to decide for themselves.

Crucially, he does not see commercial ambition as a reason to dilute the personal nature of his writing.

The album continues to draw from his hopes, dreams, fears and traumas — the subjects he says he often finds easier to discuss in the recording booth than anywhere else.

“My personal mission statements and things — my hopes, my dreams, my fears, my traumas — the things that I am more comfortable talking about in the booth than anywhere else, really,” he said.

That might be the most useful way to understand Radio Mhere. Its wider reach is a new ambition, but the impulse behind the music remains familiar: to use writing and sound to work through personal experiences, examine the world around him and find connections between things that might otherwise appear separate.

Mutsa wants more people to hear the album because he believes in what he has made. But the commercial push is only one part of the story. Beneath it is an artist still working through the same questions, now with greater confidence, more deliberate songwriting and a clearer sense of how he wants the music to reach people.

Radio Mhere is an attempt to broadcast those ideas further without losing the things that made them worth expressing in the first place.