A man walks into an empty boardroom at the start of the workday in an oversized blazer, shirt, tie and chinos with long fabulous dreadlocks hanging incongruously down his back and a tote bag with his laptop slung over one shoulder. He's exasperated.
"I'm gonna ditch that nine to five," he declares, while the words flash on the screen in bold, bright red letters.
That's the opening scene of the music video for S'bo Gyre's new single, I Quit (9.2.5), a Zulu electronic pop-rap track about walking out of corporate life for good. The single lands today, 18 September; the video follows on 1 October, arriving at the start of Pride Month.
"That wasn't my initial intention," he says, "but I was like, hey, that works. So let's rock."
Gyre, born S'bonakaliso Nene, has just resigned from his job as public relations lead at Writersbloc, where he spearheaded campaigns including SuperSport's Rugby World Cup coverage.
I ask what finally pushed him, at 31, to take the leap out of salaried employment stability and into making music full-time.
"It was a desire to fulfil what I started," he says. "My career in PR and comms only began because of my music. Because I started doing my music, people saw my skills and thought: 'You could translate these into this.' And by chance, everything just started falling into place."
That's the part easy to miss: Gyre didn't wander into music as a side hustle from PR. It ran the other way. Music came first and the professional life grew out of it. But the desire to return to it full-time sharpened with time.
"The more I listened to the song that I did, I was like: 'I think it's time. I don't want to be a version of who I could have been when I'm older, because you're going to resent that person.'"
A conversation with a friend and former colleague, about pride, tipped the decision over the edge. "He was like: 'If you're going to take the step, you can't let pride be the reason why you don't win in life,'" Gyre says.
"That question of accountability — Are you truly content with the fact that no matter what the result of this is, it's a result of your choices? — allowed me to take a deep breath and send an email to my boss."
What makes the release genuinely funny is how deliberately Gyre has built the roll-out as a resignation, complete with press material written like exit paperwork and a music video in which he's suited up in an office, gradually losing it, before finally storming out. It's a direct extension of the skills he's spent years sharpening for other people's brands.
"I think I finally know how to do it for myself," he says. "The old version of me would have just done a normal press release. But because I've been immersed in a space where I've really had to flex my creativity, I've constantly been playing with those kinds of tensions."
A friend told him after he performed in the opera Nkoli: Fierce & Fabulous that he wasn't just an artist, he was a performance artist. It reframed everything.
"My performance artistry is the sweet point where my PR capabilities and my sonic capabilities meet," he says. "Is this showing storytelling? Is this showing art?"
The track predates the resignation by years. Gyre wrote it in 2022, frustrated in a job at the time, not long after Beyoncé released Break My Soul.
"That lyric, 'I just quit my job', triggered something in me. I stood and looked into the distance and watched an airplane fly over and I was like: 'I need to get on that plane. I need to ditch that nine to five.'"
The hook arrived almost instantly, electronic and unlike anything he'd made before. "I'm like: 'Girl, what are you doing making electro?' But I was so sure that's what this song had to sound like."
He's previewed the song at Basha Uhuru, Trace Sessions and Back to the City over the years. The response taught him something the studio couldn't. "I've had people come up to me and say: 'Hey, you're that nine-to-five guy, I actually quit because of you.' I didn't realise its true power beyond it being catchy, until I did it for people and they were like: 'I feel you.'"
Now, having resigned, he's living inside his own lyrics. "I always used to joke to my friends that the day I released this song, I'd actually quit. Then I did. I was like: 'Oh my God, you listen to me too much.'"
Freed from splitting himself between boardrooms and studios, Gyre says the biggest shift is consistency.
"I can continually do things but I couldn't continuously do it. Now I have no choice but to live out my conviction because it all rests on this."
He's candid that the road there is unsteady. "This morning alone, I had five rejections and five affirming things."
But he frames the whole pivot as playing a longer game, one that eventually points toward public service.
"I have ministerial ambitions," he says, half-joking, mostly not. "I believe in my ability to be in that space one day. This is just how I do it."
For now, though, the goal is smaller and more immediate: "It's time to serve self, in the most unselfless way, if that makes sense."
Consider it noted and accepted, effective immediately.