The Sunday News
Peter Matika, Senior Life Reporter
THE mark of a good rapper is their ability to string words together into captivating rhymes . . . but the mark of a great one is the ability to weave those rhymes into stunning narratives that grip and maintain the listener’s attention right through to the end of the song.
As hip-hop continuously matures as an art form, rappers have come along to taking the craft to new heights with their storytelling talents. What started out as light-headed toasting over party music, eventually evolved into something closer in spirit with its gifted grouts centred on releasing people from mental slavery.
With time being our most valuable currency, in an era defined by immediacy, we are used to instant accessibility in our communications, transactions, and entertainment.
It makes sense, then, that the rate at which relatively unknown artistes skyrocket to success has seemed to accelerate in recent years, take local rap king Cal_Vin, who has grown from being just a wanna-be rapper but a household name.
It’s easy to forget that Cal_Vin’s speedy come-up is far from traditional, even by today’s standards.
Today’s rappers, through the advent of social media, are able to turn themselves into an overnight sensation, they even rap about it too, take it from Twista.
For most superstar rappers, the come-up involved clichéd appearances, awkward name changes, forged and lost alliances, and above all, years and years of hustle.
However, for one local rapper Bret Ngwenya affectionately known as Rammz, the come-up was phenomenal, as mentioned by the likes of South African rapper KO who owns CashTime Life.
His efforts to climb the hip-hop ladder locally and internationally have gone unnoticed as Rammz, recently collaborated with an American rapper Rahc Wilson to release a track titled Get The Cheese.
He announced the development on social media. His rap ally Rahc is the youngest brother out of three boys, born and raised in Detroit from a loving family that wanted nothing from him but to see him succeed in life.
“My mother was a school teacher and my father was an electrician. My parents divorced when I was six years old, which caused me to rebel, although my father stayed in my life. My father used to read me his poems, which inspired me to write. I wrote my first poem when I was six and my first rap song when I was 11. My mother remarried when I was 14 to the angriest man I ever met. I was 16 when my mother passed away from breast cancer. It took a whole year for reality to hit me that my mother was gone from this world and I will never see her in the physical form again. Because of my father’s struggle with alcohol abuse my cousin adopted me,” he wrote in his profile.
@peterkmatika
