Nomenclature 

To name a thing is to offer it up for a specific kind of public dissection. There is a particular, heavy pressure that comes with christening a sound, because once a label is applied, the sound no longer belongs exclusively to the hands that sculpted it. It becomes public infrastructure, subject to the arguments of archives and the rigid categorizations of digital town squares. 

Thabang Mathebula, known to the world as Thakzin, understands this weight with a weary intimacy. He removed a single kick drum from a four-four house bar, and named the resulting form "3-Step". The space left behind became the most contested piece of real estate in African electronic music immediately the genre exploded. The debates began immediately – about who invented it, who perfected it, who it truly belongs to. Thakzin, meanwhile, mostly watches from a careful distance.

He is a product of Ivory Park, a township on the north-east edge of Gauteng, shaped by a household that treated music as a primary necessity, by sangoma rhythms absorbed as ambient noise before he understood their weight, and by a formative production constraint that taught him to think in whole stories rather than loops. All of that predates 3-Step. 

"I remember when people started catching onto 3-Step. I was stressed, for real." 

He recalls approaching his management during that time, not with the typical swagger of a pioneer, but with a deep-seated anxiety about the future of his craft. The worry was the one every high-level creative dreads: sounding monotonous. For an artist whose practice is fundamentally rooted in the act of exploration, becoming synonymous with a single, repeatable sound felt like a trap rather than a triumph. He has spent the years since then clarifying that his artistic identity predates this specific rhythm. He insists that his ability to survive in sonic spaces unrelated to 3-Step is the real story, suggesting that the genre itself is merely a chapter in a much larger, ongoing volume.

Imprinting 

The Thakzin origin story is sometimes reduced to the standard narrative of a young DJ discovering a DAW, but the roots are far more archival. He was born in Ivory Park, a township situated on the north-east edge of Gauteng, in a household where music was treated as a primary necessity for survival. His father was a musician and a dedicated collector of sound, a man who possessed a hoard of CDs and instruments and an inability to throw anything away. In this environment, the household ran on a steady diet of music ranging from Stevie Wonder to Fela Kuti. Thakzin describes this as a "bug" that caught him early in life. Even when he was focused on soccer, he suggests there was a persistent internal pull toward music that felt innate, a biological imperative that he recognized from a very young age.

However, the sonic imprinting went deeper than the records playing on the stereo. Growing up in proximity to sangoma rhythms, the drumming and trance traditions of Southern African spiritual healers, Thabang Mathebula absorbed these patterns as ambient noise long before he understood their cultural or technical weight. When he first began recording music at home, the percussive elements of the sangoma tradition often felt like a disruption or an intrusion into whatever he was attempting to build. It was only after he moved out of his childhood home that distance produced a necessary clarity. He suggests that he eventually began to consciously incorporate those rhythms into his drum patterns, viewing it as a vital connection to home and a spiritual exploration of the meaning behind those specific frequencies

This is where the Thakzin narrative departs from the purely technical. For him, spirituality is not an aesthetic choice; it is structural. When he discusses production, his language is consistently centered on the idea of channeling rather than constructing. He argues that modern software is effectively a vessel for ancient rhythmic energies and that these energies are intrinsically connected to the nuances of human behaviour. In this framework, the notion of imperfection is actually the highest form of perfection. He actively resists the "quantize" button, viewing it not just as a tool but as a philosophical position he finds increasingly sterile. He reasons that because human beings are inherently imperfect, the most effective way to connect with them is through music that retains those same human flaws. Music that is too tightly locked to a digital grid loses the connective tissue that makes it feel alive.
"My hurdle of not being able to save made me learn how to tell a story from start to finish – you need to take people on a journey. We need to start from somewhere and end up somewhere."
Thakzin’s technical proficiency was forged in a period of significant production limitations. During his early years, he worked with software that could not save his sessions, a handicap that would have deterred a less disciplined artist. This meant that every track he worked on had to be built in real time, from start to finish, requiring him to hold the entire song's architecture in his head simultaneously. What should have been a crippling hurdle became a masterclass in narrative structure. He suggests that this forced him to learn how to tell a complete story from start to finish without the safety net of revisiting a project. It instilled in him a sense of narrative urgency, ensuring his music always feels like a journey that begins in one specific emotional place and ends in another.

This version of Thakzin is far more interesting than the simplified 3-Step pioneer narrative. The spirituality he describes is deeply rooted in the sangoma tradition of South Africa, where the practitioner acts not as the generator of healing energy, but as a conduit for it. When he claims that the music speaks to him, dictating the direction of an arrangement or revealing its own emotional needs, he is operating from that same ancestral ontology. He is effectively bridging the gap between the ancient and the modern within DAW interfaces.

The Manifesto And The Ensuing Debate.‍

His debut album, God's Window Pt. 1, serves as the most complete expression of this philosophy. Developed over an intense three-year period, the 18-track project is an exhaustive mapping of his influences. It draws on ancestral drum patterns, the string traditions of the uhadi and the house style of collaborators like Sun-El Musician and regular suspect Morda. During its listening session at Johannesburg's Kwa Mai Mai, a space thick with inner-city heritage and traditional medicine, Thakzin knelt before a bowl of burning impepho (ancestral incense) before a single note was played. The spiritual facet of this project was neither subtle nor meant to be.
As the music traveled, it inevitably sparked a conversation regarding the origins of 3-Step that took on a life of its own. High-profile artists like Heavy K and Prince Kaybee have publicly debated the sound's invention, while scene veterans and fans have spent years picking sides and contesting the timeline. Thakzin, however, has maintained a studied, almost monastic indifference to the entire conflict. 
"The focus on origin can sometimes turn into a distraction…for me, it's more important to stay grounded in the feeling, the innovation, and the cultural exchange, rather than just the title. I want the music to lead."

This indifference is not a form of false modesty; it tracks with how he describes 3-Step as a "disposition" rather than a rigid genre. He views it as a space of fusion, a way to survive amid the noise while remaining true to one's own cultural identity. He argues that the sound didn't just appear out of nowhere, but was adapted from the genesis of other sounds, bringing different worlds together through a focus on rhythm. He admits that there is no single, fixed description of 3-Step because the sound is still evolving and practitioners are still defining it.

Lagos

Thakzin headlined the February 2025 Monochroma edition at Shiro. His set coincided with a heavy downpour. In a city where the weather often dictates the end of an outdoor party, the crowd’s refusal to leave was a significant moment of connection. They stayed in the rain, dancing to unreleased material, and Thabang Mathebula responded by playing for hours. 
“...at first, when the rain started falling at Shiro, I wasn't thrilled when the rain started, but once I took a step back, I realized rain is often seen as a blessing. If ever there was a sign of spiritual presence, that was it.”
Courtesy of Group Therapy, Thakzin returned in October of the same year to headline the Spotify Greasy Tunes opening night at Fired & Iced, where dining culture and electronic music attempted a merger and succeeded. By his second visit, the Lagos scene had already built an entire vocabulary around his sound — 3-Step remixes of Afropop tracks, DJs like Blak Dave, Proton, and Naija House Mafia who had studied and extended the form, and a crowd that knew the unreleased IDs from the February rain set. Thakzin shared the Greasy Tunes stage with Aniko, WeAreAllChemicals, FaeM, and RVTDJ, and he recalls that set being another eureka moment for him. 
“...being in Nigerian life brought out three things for me: colors, pace, and rhythm – it took me back to something real, something from my childhood with my father and Fela Kuti."
Thakzin speaks about the potential this reconnection holds, these elements waiting for the right moment to crystallise into music. He also views the Nigerian embrace of 3-Step not as a market to be exploited but as a conversation between two cultures reimagining the sound in real time. Ultimately, he looks forward to this evolution spreading to other regions, where each place honours the sound's roots while redefining the genre in ways that remain alive and ever-evolving.

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Initial Weight, Going Concern.

From an A&R and management perspective, Thakzin is a unique case study in how to scale a subgenre without diluting its spiritual core. Most pioneers of a sound spend their careers guarding the borders of that sound, ensuring that they remain the primary authority on its definition. Thakzin does the opposite – he opens space, just as he removes a kick drum and waits to see what grows in the silence. He blends a sangoma pattern with a log drum and listens to the dialogue between them, and will gladly slide in a cheeky interpolation if it feels right. 

The industry will likely continue to argue over who invented the "missing kick." They will debate the lockdown timeline and the influence of early house veterans on the 3-Step structure. But while those debates rage in the comment sections and trade magazines, Thakzin will probably be in his studio, perhaps working on a system that now allows him to save his work, but still operating with the same narrative discipline he learned when he had no other choice. He will be looking for the next rhythmic energy to channel, the next cultural state to express, and the next silence to fill.

He has successfully turned a technical subversion into a global movement, but his sights are set on the broader cosmos. He reminds us that he has the whole universe to explore, and 3-Step was just the beginning of the journey. In his world, the music must always lead, and the vessel must always remain open to whatever frequency comes next. The weight of being first is a burden he carries lightly, because he knows that being first is irrelevant if you aren't also moving forward.

Looking ahead, the evolution of 3-Step seems inevitable, especially as it continues to engage with high-energy scenes in Lagos and London. But for Thakzin, the technical evolution remains secondary to the emotional resonance. He is an artist who understands that genres are ephemeral, but the feeling that music provides is permanent. This is why he is comfortable leaving the 3-Step label behind if it ever starts to feel limiting. He is not interested in building a monument to a single sound; he is interested in the continuous act of creation.

Thakzin is now widely supported by the titans of the industry, with figures like Black Coffee, Louie Vega, Keinemusik, and Laurent Garnier all offering their co-signs. His inclusion in the Beatport Next Class of 2025 and his appearances at festivals such as Montreux and Ultra South Africa have put his music on stages across four continents. In addition, he is already set to have a wonderful 2026, as he’s billed to play at Tomorrowland and Burgess Park — both in July!

His story serves as a reminder that the best music often comes from a place of limitation and necessity. The "no-save" era taught him how to think in terms of entire compositions rather than just loops. The Ivory Park township taught him how to find beauty in the noise. And the sangoma tradition taught him that music is a form of healing that requires the artist to be a conduit for something larger than themselves.

"3-Step is just a chapter, not the whole story, and my journey is vast; it's like a whole universe. 3-Step is just one planet in that cosmos, and I'm here to keep exploring and innovating far beyond it."

He remains a figure who is fundamentally bigger than the sound he made. 3-Step gave him the platform, but his vision is what will sustain him. As he navigates the complexities of global fame and the pressures of being a genre pioneer, he stays grounded in the simple truth that music is about connection. It is about the space between the notes, the rhythm of the rain, and the ancient energies that still speak to us through modern software. He has started a journey with no clear endpoint, and for an artist who survives amid the noise, that is exactly how it should be.

By Temple Egemasi
Photos by Arthur Dlamini