At the top of 2021, just a couple of months after becoming a breakout Amapiano artist, thanks to the South African hit song “Superstar,” Lady Du lost everything. “I lost my apartment and even lost the love of my life, who was the father of my child,” she candidly tells BET.com. “It was just a lot for me at that moment trying to pull myself out of it … And out of being a coward, this spirit of darkness came and was like, ‘I think you should take your life.’ And I attempted it. I got to the hospital, and I survived it.” Three years later, the now-established singer, rapper, and DJ is still surviving.

In late January, just a few days before our phone call, Lady Du took to Instagram to reflect on her suicide attempt, telling followers in a since-deleted post she was “given a second chance” to follow her dreams. “I thank God every single day for saving my life,” she added. “I wouldn’t be here doing such great things. I’m living my purpose, and that’s the biggest gift.”

Lady Du’s purpose began with her musical epiphany at nine years old. “My music journey started there,” she says, recalling how her DJ title was passed down from her lineage. Born Dudu Ngwenya into a family of revered deejays and producers, music runs deep in Lady Du’s DNA. As the granddaughter of Alias (the first Black man to own a nightclub in her homeland), daughter of DJ Choc, and niece of YFM’s DJ Zan-D, the blueprint was set for her to follow in their legendary footsteps, although, as a kid, she took a slightly different route. 

“I was completely a different DJ from them because they were doing house music, and I was doing hip-hop,” Lady Du explains. “So it's more of a generational legacy in our family from my grandfather to my father to my uncle. Even my youngest brother, who is Reign Racks, and my other brother does Amapiano as well. So it literally runs in the bloodline.”

Amapiano, the South African dance genre becoming a worldwide phenomenon, is where Lady Du found much of her recent success after first dabbling in hip-hop, most notably after teaming up with Amapiano pioneer and producer Mr JazziQ for “Superstar.” “That's how I've maneuvered my career [thus far],” she notes of pursuing such defining collaborations. “If you look at my catalog, I've worked with every single person that's in Amapiano. I've worked with Yemi Alade, I've worked with Reekado Banks, I've worked with Davido, I've worked with Niniola. That out of an independent artist is something that is truly amazing, so that is what I focus on. Being a feature [on] other people's platforms has become an advertising tool for my music career.”

Networking in the industry has become one of Lady Du’s most powerful lanes for elevation. It’s how, as a teen, she worked with some of the biggest names in Amapiano, like MFR Souls, Kabza De Small, and DJ Maphorisa, before the genre even took off. “All the guys started using me for their songs because I came in with a different flavor,” she remarks. Other Amapiano collabs she’s done, like “Umsebenzi Wethu” with Busta 929 and Mpura and “Catalia” with Junior De Rocka, have turned Lady Du into one of the hottest voices in the genre she holds near and dear. “[Amapiano] has changed so many things in South Africa,” she adds. “The youth of South Africa used to go through a lot. They didn't have a passion for things; they didn't understand really where they were going. But Amapiano has opened a platform for the country and so many doors. It's bringing more attention to South Africa, and that's amazing for [us] as a whole.”

Lady Du gives the genre much credit for completely changing her life, though it took time for her to find a successful break in it. Before she became an artist to watch, the breakout star busied herself with studies abroad after earning a ​​scholarship to study somatology (a branch of anthropology) in London. “I wanted to learn more about different countries and get to experience them because I'm more of a person that's an empath,” she explains. “I like feeling some type of energy towards people and people bringing the same energy towards me. So, doing somatology taught me so much about the characters of people, which I think is why every time I drop songs, they become international more than they are just local songs. If you look at my catalog, all the songs I'm featured on are international because I've traveled so much.”

Lady Du’s travels became part of a grander vision for her career. Learning about other genres and styles from the 108 countries she visited on a nine-month voyage inspired her to “use some of the elements from those experiences and bring it to Amapiano,” which eventually helped her craft her sound. “Most of the songs that I drop are actually blueprints of my life,” she notes of her particular style. “Most of the time, people think we [Amapiano artists] are doing songs just because, but we are actually putting out music to be able to change the movement.”

Around 2021, when the pandemic was still at its peak, Lady Du noticed a shift happening for Amapiano. With much of the world at a standstill, more eyes noticed what was seeping from South Africa’s underground roots. “Even though I've been doing this for so many years, nobody noticed my music until they had to be in houses with their families,” says Lady Du. “With COVID, obviously, because we were all restricted, we were not allowed to be out of the house, so I put out my music because it was for the kids and adults who do challenges on TikTok. And that's when I got my big break.”

Like many rising artists discovered during lockdown, Lady Du’s career was greatly blessed by social media. Not only did it help spread her music around the world, but it also gave her the ambition to maneuver through her country’s male-dominated industry. “If you look at the charts or you look at the top 10, to even get an opportunity to speak to you, in our country, it's a very hard thing,” she explains. “It becomes very difficult because the industry on its own pushes males more than it does females. So it's ten times harder for females to dominate in the industry unless somebody, maybe in America, mentions them, and they start blowing up. This is why if you look at our artists, they blow up quicker when the international reach is there, so social media is the best platform for us to be able to sell ourselves because even radio stations pick who they want, and it's manipulated at times. TikTok, Facebook, by giving us platforms like that, it pushes up the sales in South Africa because they start noticing you as a brand more than you are just an artist.”

Other platforms beyond social media have been just as helpful for Lady Du, like Spotify’s interactive African Heat campaign. Launched in 2021 to celebrate powerful voices across the continent, Lady Du was featured on curated playlists and billboards alongside leading artists like Olamide, Focalistic, Niniola, and others. “It was a very scary moment for me because that was my first ever international anything [beyond songs],” she says of the recognition. “To be on a Times Square billboard, and it was just after the Grammys, I was like, what is going on? That was one of the things that changed the way that I felt about myself and the industry as a whole. That is what changed my being because I then knew that as a person and as an individual, you are able to achieve more when you look and manifest what you want to do. It gave me more power to be able to keep moving and pushing.”

Lady Du released numerous singles and a handful of projects over the years before finally releasing her first-ever album, “Song Is Queen,” in 2023. The album reflected her years-long artistic journey and experience in the industry while also spotlighting dozens of her talented collaborators, including T-Man SA, DJ Riley, Sizwe Alakine, and the late Killer Kau. But this is only the beginning for her. Now, she’s motivated to make the most of her new lease on life by continuing her purpose: creating music that unites and heals the world.

“When you understand who you are and what your purpose is as a person, it is easy for you to maneuver in an industry that is full of darkness and people not understanding who people are, and people being fake around you and not wanting to actually understand your actual character,” she says. “What I've learned is to take my actual emotions and put them in a song, but in a vibey way, because people go through so much on a daily and it is us [artists] who are supposed to send a message of hope … I want every single person in the world to relate to me, rich or not rich, but to be able to see me and say she was a vessel of music. Nothing less, nothing more, not my body or my looks, nothing more than music.”