Noluthando and Black Girls Deserve Good Love Too

When Noluthando Ngema won the Nando’s Emerging Artist of the Year award at the 2023 Basadi in Music Awards, she had no idea that just under a year later she’d be releasing a professionally produced music video of her debut song, Black Girls Deserve Good Love Too, sponsored by Nando’s and Puma.

The song is available on all major streaming platforms and you can follow Noluthando onInstagramandTikTokfor more updates.

Watch Noluthando’s video, directed by Kwanele Makhoba of Strange Creature.

Link to this headingMore about making the video

Making the music video was nerve racking – it was a bigger production than I had anticipated, she says.But it was a good experience and exposure and confirmation that my song means something and that the message that black girls deserve good love too is important and worth sharing.

She adds that the video helps to memorialize a time. It gives visual pictures of what the song actually means.

The storyline of the music video follows a young girl through to adulthood, showing how a strong relationship with her father translates into a healthy romantic relationship later on in her life. Noluthando explains that it’s important to have conversations about these topics, particularly in South Africa where there are high levels of absentee fathers and gender-based violence.

We need to see representations of what good love looks like, especially for black women, she says.This video shows the ideal – the type of love that is tender and true that I would like to see happen for us.

Link to this headingMentorship from Msaki

Noluthando’s journey has been supported by Msaki, South African music legend, as a personal and professional mentor.

These days, people aren’t shooting a lot of music videos, because it’s all reels, says Msaki.But when you invest in a video, you kind of anchor the song as a singer – you anchor it in public consciousness. You’re giving it a time and place; the visual to snapshot the moment. It archives in a different way. It’s also easy to pull up when people are doing retrospectives. And it’s also the way to say, if you’ve got a body of work, ‘This is the song that I want you guys to really pay attention to.’ It’s also about telling the story.

She says her journey of mentoring Noluthando is based on things she’s learned in her own career as an independent musician, and through establishingALTBLKcontinua, which she describes as a home for unique African independent artists.

I love Black Girls Deserve Good Love Too as a song, she says.It’s so soothing sonically and I think the message is really stunning.

Beyond that, she says it sparks important conversations in the South African context around how black women have been treated and gender-based violence.It’s a love song that becomes a protest song and I’ve always believed that those two things are interchangeable, she adds.

We’d love to hear what you think of the song and the video! Share with us on Instagram and Tiktok, support Noluthando’s journey and join the conversation.