The Huck List: 2025

A quarter of the way into a new century, it’s easy to feel like the world, and the forces that prop it up, are on increasingly brittle ground. The climate crisis is intensifying, with natural disasters of record-breaking severity hitting across the world. Shortening attention spans and generative AI are taking us further from reality, while the far right continues to make tracks across nations.

But it’s why we need remarkable people, doing remarkable things, more than ever. Musicians rewriting genres, artists evoking new possibilities, sporting figures breaking through adversity, photographers capturing details that the naked eyes miss. Since Huck was founded in 2006, as a counterpoint to the commercial and mainstream, we’ve focused on those who inspire, create, and do things in their own way against the odds.

With the tides getting stronger, it’s never been more important to paddle against the flow. Introducing The 2025 Huck List: a rolling collection of our favourite changemakers and creative pioneers who define our year.

Since striking out on her own as a teenager and immersing herself in Durban’s underground music scene, Moonchild Sanelly has exploded to become a truly global pop star.

Her music, usually sung in both English and Xhosa, is unapologetically sex positive and liberation-focused, drawing upon anything from R&B, trap, hip-hop, kwaito, gqom and amapiano in a distinctive cocktail she calls “future ghetto funk”. But she also cares about the world around her, only hiring women and LGBTQ+ folk to assemble a team that she calls “The Avengers”.

Ahead of her new album Full Moon, we caught up with her in our monthly newsletter interview series. Read it here.