Jay Em Honour Gqeberha’s Taxi Culture on Deeply Personal New EP, iSOTTA

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By Viranova Music Desk03 Jul 2026Music

South African producer duo Jay Em have released iSOTTA, a seven-track EP that turns memory, movement and hometown sound into a love letter to Gqeberha.

Out via The Beat Club, the project is rooted in house music while drawing from the streets, sounds and cultural history of Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha. At its core, iSOTTA is about the way music travelled before algorithms: through communities, taxi routes, speakers, drivers and everyday listeners who helped records move from one part of the city to the next.

That idea gives the project its emotional charge.

Before discovery was personalised, it was public.

A song did not only travel because a platform recommended it. It travelled because someone played it loudly enough for a street to notice. It moved through taxis, through friends, through weekend routes, through neighbourhood memory and through people who turned local records into shared experience.

Leading the release is “Need To Know,” an emotive collaboration with Luke M and Botswana vocalist Kali Mija. Warm, soulful and nostalgic, the track carries a deeper dedication to Jay Em’s late friend and fellow producer Neelan Munnick, known as Four7, whose influence remains woven into the duo’s musical journey.

That dedication matters because iSOTTA is not only about city nostalgia.

It is about the people who shaped the sound before the world paid attention.

The EP title pays homage to iSOTTA, one of Gqeberha’s remembered Toyota Siyaya taxis. For Jay Em, that reference reaches beyond transport. It speaks to childhood, movement, community and a period when minibus taxis functioned like mobile radio stations, spreading local music long before streaming platforms and social media became the default discovery engines.

Across the project, Jay Em balance sentiment with groove-led production. “Borrels” and “Tick Tok” arrive with pre-release momentum from social platforms, while the wider record traces the duo’s relationship with home, memory and the sound-system culture that helped define their city.

That is the real story.

iSOTTA is not simply a project about going back.

It is about recognising that home has always had infrastructure.

The taxi was infrastructure.

The speaker was infrastructure.

The driver was infrastructure.

The friend who passed the song around was infrastructure.

The producer in the bedroom, the DJ in the community and the listener who knew every local anthem before radio touched it were all part of the same system.

Comprised of brothers Ruwayne and Waven Sebia, Jay Em have built a growing reputation as one of South Africa’s compelling house production duos. Their journey includes work with Mi Casa, YoungstaCPT and Ziyon, a role in Mi Casa’s We Made It, and the Mi Casa collaboration “Toca.”

That makes iSOTTA feel like a meaningful return to source.

The duo are not only releasing another house project. They are documenting a city’s musical memory: the producers who shaped the sound, the taxi drivers who became tastemakers, and the communities that turned local records into lasting anthems.

Jay Em are also set to perform on 10 July at YoungstaCPT’s WES-KAAP 10 Year Anniversary at Coco Johannesburg, placing the EP inside a wider moment of South African music memory and regional pride.

Tracklist Need To Know with Luke M and Kali Mija Chosen Synco Borrels Back Seat Tick Tok Front Seat

For fans of Kaytranada, Four7 and Mi Casa, iSOTTA offers something warm, local and deeply intentional.

It reminds us that before the algorithm, the city already knew how to move music.

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