Versatile: Blxckie, whose rowdy rap hit Big Time Sh’lappa thrust him into the spotlight, says singing is ‘basically another outlet, because you can’t always be rapping’. (James Puttick)
“Damn it man, I’m sorry your girl wants me badly, ’cause I got the formula,” raps Blxckie, who is shirtless and animated as he performs for the camera. Next to him is his partner in crime, Lucasraps, who is also shirtless and wearing a balaclava over his head as he wildly throws his arms back and forth in the air, his exuberance on par with Blxckie’s. It’s a scene reminiscent of a young Lil Wayne and his Cash Money crew back in the early aughts. You just knew they were about to blow.
But the setting here is a sprawling Midrand mansion, with expensive cars and palm trees in the mix, and the scene is the video for Blxckie’s Big Time Sh’lappa, the rowdy, swashbuckling hit that thrust the Durban-born-and-raised rapper into the spotlight in late 2020. Believe it or not, that same Blxckie — wild, carefree, raw and rough around the edges — is the same Blxckie that’s just dropped a smooth, considered and beautifully fluid RnB (yes, RnB!) EP that’s well and truly solidified him as a multi-hyphenate superstar. It seems he really does have “the formula”.
As a caveat, it’s worth noting that Blxckie doesn’t exactly have the purest singing voice. His enunciation is sketchy at times, and his melodies aren’t the sweetest. And yet on Umoya, the brilliant kwaito-influenced standout on his EP 4LUV, none of that matters. There’s a smoothness about this record that makes it almost compulsory to repeat. And it’s not just me — at the time of writing, Umoya is the number one song in South Africa on iTunes across all genres. The EP’s success is vindication for Blxckie who took a risk by shifting from the head-banging trap sound that introduced him to us and showing us a different side of him.
It may require a few listens, but Blxckie’s sound here will stick. The writing is simple yet potent, as he paints an absorbing picture of love and heartbreak. The production on 4LUV, which is helmed by London Rhodes, Zoocci Coke Dope and Yolophonix, is uniformly excellent. Gorgeous keys and spaced-out drums that don’t knock too hard are the order of the day here. There’s only one feature, too, clearing the path for the young wordsmith to showcase an uninterrupted view of his world and the intricacies of its romantic experiences.
His unorthodox delivery is enchanting and has the benefit of making him stand out from the crowd. He’s somehow turned what would be a weakness to most into his strongest quality. And for the most part, Blxckie’s career has thus far been characterised by him turning nothing into something. For most people, the mere thought of the first 21-day lockdown period in 2020 and the weeks that followed bring back bad memories. For Blxckie it marked a turning point and, in his own words, the most important part of his musical journey.
It was during that period that the Durbanite found himself stuck in Johannesburg for weeks on end. Instead of sitting around and wallowing in the dread of the moment, Blxckie and his friends, among them Lucasraps, recorded and released music on SoundCloud on a daily basis, rapidly drawing buzz online from an audience that was eager for some entertainment. The buzz culminated in the release of Big Time Sh’lappa later that year.
In the year and a half since, Blxckie has comfortably solidified himself as an A-list rapper, releasing quality, hard-hitting music at a frightening pace. Since Big Time Shlappa landed, the 22-year-old rapper has collaborated with Nasty C on the anthemic Ye x4, released a solid debut album titled B4Now and lended his unmistakable voice on more features than I can count. Despite his early success, there’s an overwhelming sense that his moment still has yet to arrive. There’s more in his locker.
I got a chance to catch up with Blxckie while he was recently in Cape Town for a music video for a feature he did with a Nigerian artist. Blxckie was forthcoming, attentive, thoughtful and upbeat. He laughed wholeheartedly, and his manner was in keeping with the easy and flowing warmth of his music.
Congrats on the new EP. You’ve been putting out music more rapidly than anyone in the game for over a year now. How intentional was it to be as active as you are with your features and what inspired that choice of direction?
When I was coming up, I learned a lot of things from being in a group. I’m part of a group called Clout Internet Boyz. One of the major things I learned is that collaboration is the only way to skip a few steps because you’re not basically just using your own energy any more, you’re feeding off other people’s energy and you’re all moving together. So collaboration has never been a hard thing for me, and it’s never been a thing I had to think about, it just sort of happens. It’s second nature to me. We’re moving and we have to move together — there’s no other way to get to where I wanna be.
This song that you’re shooting for in Cape Town right now isn’t the first time you’ve teamed up with a Nigerian artist. You also had Joy with Oxlade on B4Now Deluxe. Has that been a deliberate ploy to extend your reach further north, and can we expect to see you also delve into afrobeats?
I have no limitations genre wise, I just wanna make good music. I feel like on the path to being legendary, you can’t really put yourself in a box, you have to let the people get what they want and at the highest quality. And just having a broader audience is also dope.
Blxckie’s previous project, B4Now, hinted at his range
It’s not common for a new rap artist to go and drop a full on RnB project. I think you first teased this side of you on Hold and Sika, which were two of the fan favourites on B4Now. Have you always had that singing ability in your locker?
It’s been developing over time. I started off as a rapper, but the first time I heard music it was Black Coffee and a lot of deep house songs that had vocalists. Those are the types of songs I listened to when I was younger. And then just creating you start realising that it gets a little repetitive, so I thought, let me just start singing for a bit. And I’ve been working on it, I’ve been working on my sound in terms of singing because I don’t think I’m a good singer naturally but I’ve been using Fruity Loops for a long time so I’ve learned to bend and alter my voice, or just sing it in a way that’s going to come out properly when people hear it. I think Hold was just a culmination of all those years of practice and stuff, and after Hold I was, like, okay cool I’ve got it down to a science and I can carry on doing it.
Was the response to Hold what encouraged you to do a whole RnB project?
For sure, but mostly it was Kwenzekile that solidified that. Hold was a great first step, but Kwenzekile was the one that touched more people. I don’t know if it shows like that statistically, but when I perform it or when people talk to me they speak of Kwenzekile highly. So I was, like, alright, cool, if that’s what people want to hear let me just try to give them more of that in a little compact EP.
You blended elements of house, kwaito and RnB into Umoya. Do you see yourself shifting more and more away from hip hop and going more in a singing direction?
I feel like singing is super important. I feel like people just feel it more or you can tell more stories and get more emotion through singing. I don’t think it’s where I want to go fully, I just go with what I feel like. Even after I dropped the EP I recorded a bunch of rap songs and other features. I don’t think it’s a home to me, but I’ll definitely visit a few times.
Blxckie says the singing displayed throughout his current EP, 4LUV, allowed him to “tell more stories”
Kanye and Drake. These are two of the biggest artists of the past 15 years. They both came out as rappers but they’ve both sang quite a bit throughout their careers. Do you see a parallel between their careers, particularly Drake’s, and yours and is this a blueprint you’d like to follow?
There are a lot of similarities. But I don’t think it’s specifically just Drake. A lot of rappers have big singing songs. Kendrick has his own. J Cole, when he did 4 Your Eyez Only, there was a lot of singing happening on that project that just hit a lot deeper. I just feel like singing is basically another outlet, because you can’t always be rapping. Some emotions can’t be portrayed through punchlines and stuff like that. It’s better if you just tone it down a bit, take out a few drums and just make sure that people are hearing your soul in the songs.
Looking back, the start of the first lockdown in 2020 seems to be a pivotal part of your journey and when things seemed to really pick up for you. Can you talk me through that period: what happened and how important was that period in your musical journey?
That’s really the most important part of this whole musical journey of mine because for the longest time I was just trying to figure out how I’m going to make it work because I was busy with academics — I was busy with my degree. I was busy juggling the two things and I wasn’t really getting satisfied by either of them because I wasn’t giving anything my full energy. So when I was locked down with the guys, the plan was for us to make music together, but not for that long. Because the lockdown hit and I was, like, shit, now what, because I can’t go back home and I don’t have money to be staying at different places so I stayed with the guys. It was meant to just be 21 days but it got extended. Lucas came after it got extended and everyday we started banging out hits and putting them out on SoundCloud.
In that whole period I was also selling songs. So basically I’d have a song which was basically a hook with space for a verse and then the hook again. So I used to sell that and make money off that, but I wasn’t spending that money. So when I finally got back to Durban I had a lot of cash, the most I’d ever had at the time, so I was like, “Ma, I’ve been making music this whole time and this is how lucrative it is and I’m trying to go back and make more and I think I’m just gonna take a pause on school”. She understood, I think the money helped that decision. So that whole lockdown experience was a definite turning point for me in focusing and making sure that I’m concentrating on making music and taking it further.
A lot of people discovered you during that lockdown period when you and the guys were putting out music daily. But then I think the first real mainstream moment for you came when Big Time Shlappa was released. Then a short while later, you had Ye x4 with Nasty C and you were the rapper on everyone’s lips. How did the Nasty C feature come about?
After Big Time Shlappa I was running with Lucasraps a lot and doing every show that he did. He was big off What It Is at the time, so people were just watching him to see what’s going on. Dr Peppa was also on his side. He’s a big DJ, so anywhere that he had to DJ he’d take me and Lucas. We were all just working together in one house because we stayed in the same house. I actually met Nasty C while we were doing a gig in Springs I think and Big Time Shlappa was big at the time. I met him there and we spoke, but he didn’t really know me like that. Then he put me and Lucas on the Zulu Man With Some Power tour and that’s when I realised that we could be onto something … One time I was in the studio with Geek Fam, I was, like, “We need to make an anthem”. At the time I wasn’t even thinking of an album, I just wanted a single that was gonna go crazy in terms of repetitiveness. It was super intentional to have Ye sound like that.
So we recorded it and I was, like, this is exactly what I wanted, but I don’t know if it’s going to go as far as I want it to go. It was around 3am, I took a VN of the song and I DM’d it to Nasty. He replied same time and asked me to send it right away. I sent it to him and two days later I had the full song. I kept it for the longest time trying to figure, now what, because with everything that I’ve learned I thought to myself that there’s no ways I’m just dropping this on SoundCloud and doing a video like Big Time Shlappa. People already saw that and I needed to do something very different. And the only thing I could do is do an album. I have to attach this song to an album and make sure it goes crazy. So we did the single and announced the album and everything from there has just been crazy.
In April, you’ll be embarking on a European tour as a special guest for Dreamville duo Earthgang’s Biodeghettable World Tour. How did that come about?
So those guys came to Jozi recently, just before the new variant came around. I think they were here doing a media run for their album and we were supposed to link … then when the variant hit they had to go back before restrictions were out on flying back out to America. By the time they got back one of them DM’d me then I passed the number to Nandi (his manager), because with music it’s cool to do it person-to-person but if you take it a little further you can get the promo that you need to get it to where it needs to go. So that whole conversation with Nandi escalated to them speaking about me needing to come to America and we need to do more than just music. Then it escalated further and further until they were like alright cool let’s put him on the tour.
What’s your biggest goal for the year?
Moses Mabhida. We have to do Moses Mabhida this year. I’m putting it out there so that it happens and I put pressure on myself and pressure on my team. I have to do Moses Mabhida this year, that’s the main goal for 2022.