'Dark room truth' in song

Nakhane Touré is aware of the hypocritical society in which he lives - Shakira and Rihanna are criticised for "promoting lesbianism" in a music video, while T-Pain gets away with his Up Down music video of excess and scantily clad women twerking on stripper poles.

In releasing his new music video for In The Dark Room, from his critically acclaimed debut Brave Confusion (which earned him four nominations at next month's South African Music Awards, including best newcomer), the alternative singer is doing what he wants.

The single-camera black-and-white music video, shot in a prison cell at Constitution Hill, is a moody and tentative homoerotic work of art that begs watching again and again, but one which may also have some viewers squirming.

"The first edits of the video were more violent and we scaled it back because we didn't want it to be an 'Ooh ooh, we are trying to shock' thing," he said yesterday.

It is a visual imagining of the track in which he sings: "We go in packs of twos and threes, we're the diseased owls, dallying in the dark room / Hope you know I'll hate myself in the morning for this."

Touré suggested yesterday that the song, written three years ago, is one of his proudest achievements.

"At the time I wasn't even completely comfortable with my sexuality," he said.

"I had written it for myself. It was written after two separate incidents; my first time in a gay club, and again when my friend and I had been to a club that had such a room, and me being inquisitive, I had to go in and see.

"There was a lot of self-hate after that that I could only exorcise through writing about."

In the video, he jostles in the prison cell with a man dressed only in black trunks, and they switch from almost violent in parts to intimate in others.

Could this make some viewers uncomfortable?

"Almost every second video I see has booty hoes shaking their butts at my face and nobody seems to squirm, but I do. People are allowed to be themselves. If I want a guy in my video to portray my truth, then I should also be allowed to do that. That's equality."