Lordkez and Goldmax Bring R&B and Gqom Together for Gordon’s Mashup Masters Season 2 Episode 3

South Africa’s music scene often exists in distinct worlds: Johannesburg’s R&B and neo-soul circuit, Durban’s gqom and amapiano clubs, and Cape Town’s indie and jazz spaces. While artists regularly cross those boundaries through features and live performances, fully developed collaborations built around the meeting of two different musical identities are less common.

That is what makes Gordon’s Mashup Masters Season 2 Episode 3 particularly interesting.

The latest episode brings Lordkez and Goldmax together for an original collaboration that places Johannesburg R&B alongside Durban gqom. Rather than approaching the track as a conventional feature, Gordon’s Mashup Masters asks both artists to explore what happens when their creative processes, sounds and instincts occupy the same space.

Lordkez and Goldmax Bring Two South African Sounds Together

Lordkez, born in Kimberley and now based in Johannesburg, has established herself through a genre-fluid approach that moves between R&B, alternative music and soul. Her 2023 album Testament won the South African Music Award for Best R&B/Soul Album, while her recent inclusion in the COLORSxSTUDIOS and Levi’s EMERGENT programme further reflects her position within South Africa’s contemporary alternative music landscape.

Goldmax, born Zipho Mthembu in KwaMashu, Durban, is known as one half of Distruction Boyz, the influential gqom duo behind Gqom Is the Future. His solo project Play At Your Own Risk earned him Album of the Year and Male Artist of the Year at the 2025 South African Music Awards.

Putting the two artists together creates an unlikely but compelling musical conversation: Johannesburg R&B songwriting meeting Durban’s bass-heavy gqom production.

The appeal is not simply that the genres are different. It is that neither artist needs to abandon the characteristics that define their sound for the collaboration to work.

What Happens When R&B Meets Gqom?

The creative brief behind Mashup Masters is built around finding the space between two sounds without flattening either one.

For Lordkez and Goldmax, that meant figuring out how rhythm, bass, melody and vocals could coexist without one musical identity overwhelming the other.

“Working with Goldmax pushed me to approach the music differently. When you put two artists with their own ideas and ways of creating in the same room, you have to listen, adapt and be willing to try things you might not normally consider,” says Lordkez.

She describes the process as one of the most rewarding parts of the experience, particularly the opportunity to discover what could emerge when two established creative approaches were brought together.

Goldmax similarly describes the collaboration as an exercise in experimentation rather than simply applying his established gqom formula to an R&B record.

“Lordkez brought a completely different energy into the process, and that made the collaboration exciting from the beginning. We weren’t trying to make our sounds identical; we were figuring out how they could work together,” says Goldmax.

That distinction matters. The objective is not genre fusion for its own sake. It is the creative tension between two artists who arrive with different musical languages.

Gordon’s Mashup Masters Season 2 Goes Beyond the Track

The third episode also reflects the evolution of Gordon’s Mashup Masters as a visual series.

This season has expanded its production, giving audiences a closer look at the creative process behind each collaboration. Rather than presenting the finished song in isolation, the episode follows the journey from studio sessions to the final mashup.

For viewers, that adds another layer to the collaboration. The interesting part is not only hearing the finished track, but seeing how two artists negotiate their differences and arrive at a shared creative outcome.

Gordon’s has also created a bespoke cocktail inspired by the Lordkez and Goldmax mashup, extending the campaign’s central idea beyond music. The pairing of contrasting flavours mirrors the broader concept of bringing unexpected elements together to create something new.

Why the Lordkez and Goldmax Mashup Matters

There is a tendency to talk about South African music through genre labels and geographic associations. Johannesburg becomes synonymous with certain sounds, Durban with others, and Cape Town with another set of musical traditions.

But artists themselves are increasingly moving beyond those boundaries.

The Lordkez and Goldmax collaboration is interesting precisely because it does not require the audience to choose between R&B and gqom. It allows both identities to remain recognisable while exploring what happens when they are rearranged.

That makes Gordon’s Mashup Masters Season 2 Episode 3 more than another collaboration. It is an example of how South African artists can use experimentation to create connections between scenes that do not traditionally overlap.

With two more collaborations still to be released, the question now is whether the remaining episodes can maintain that same creative tension.

If the first three episodes are any indication, Gordon’s Mashup Masters Season 2 is less interested in simply putting unexpected artists together and more interested in finding out what those artists can teach each other.

Where to watch: Episodes of Gordon’s Mashup Masters Season 2 are being released progressively on YouTube, with the remaining collaborations to follow.