The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Correspondent
THIS past week, rapper Cal_vin revealed to the world that he was eagerly awaiting the birth of his second child, a girl to add to the boy that he was blessed with earlier this year.
The announcement, made on WhatsApp, was muted, in sharp contrast to the pomp that greeted the arrival of his first born son earlier this year.
While the arrival of his son was greeted by a first time father’s triumphant excitement, the birth of his daughter, like the announcement will probably followed by a cautious approach by a man who has never been shy to share his life with a fan base fascinated by all things Cal_vin since the rapper rose to stardom is 2015.
Cal_vin has been stung a little too frequently over the last few months to be as carefree as he once was. First, there was controversy around how he had two children with two different mothers within the space of a year. Then rumours on social media alleged that he had assaulted his mother after a drunken binge.
All this has made the rapper apprehensive about sharing his life with a public that seems increasingly interested in who he is outside the recording booth. Slowly, he is now coming to terms with the prize that one pays for fame.
“Personal life is personal life and I would like to keep it that way,” the rapper told Sunday Life in an interview.
“Even though there’s so much interest in Cal_vin, the people that I’m involved with are not about that life. It’s been really damaging for me. I have a personal life. I would like to keep it at that,” he said.
According to Cal_vin some of the rumours are being circulated by enemies that are hoping for his downfall.
“I realised something. The only reason why people rush to media with these stories is because they know that that’s the only way that they can get me. Even it’s not true, because I believe some of the things said about me are borderline criminal, the media does not care. They just write.
“Some of these things can’t be verified but they still make it to the paper. That’s why I believe that my personal life is being affected by who I am and I don’t like things to be that bad. That’s why I don’t talk about it anymore. I would rather people just write rumours about me,” Cal_vin said.
Despite his life being portrayed as being somewhat in turmoil, the rapper has been careful not to feed the rumour mill. In fact, he has given in to the pressure and decided to lead a more private life.
“Even my close family doesn’t like any of that. Now if one of them achieves something I can’t even post about it because you’ll start to follow them again. You’ll start asking who’s this and what do they do. That’s why I no longer post about my son. I’d rather people run with rumours instead of me feeding them information,” he said.
According to the rapper, some rumours just start out of thin air, as despite his best attempts to play by the rules he finds himself filling up newspaper pages.
“Sometimes you will be thinking that you’re on your best behaviour. You stay at home, you even drink at home but you find rumours written about you. That actually is something that makes me survive because even the people around me who stories are written about now see that some of these things are not true because they’ll be with me,” Cal_vin said.
The city’s hip-hop scene has been buzzing with rumours of a feud between Cal_vin and another fiery Bulawayo wordsmith, ASAPH. When ASAPH won the best hip-hop gong at this year’s Bulawayo Arts Awards, some felt that the crown had been symbolically passed on to him. Before that however, the rappers seemed to be in a cold war which heated up earlier in the year after ASAPH released a diss track directed at his perceived adversary.
“There was no beef to me. He was urged on by people who had intentions of dissing me. It wasn’t his true intention to diss me I believe. He put out a song in which he was dissing me so I went to their studio and asked about it but they said there was no diss towards me.
“Then I heard the song and I was being dissed because I could tell it was directed at me from some of the lyrics. I asked him about it and he said it was because of something that I had tweeted back in December,” he said.
With his position as the city’s king of rhyme at stake, Cal_vin feels like he was backed into a corner.
“He put out a statement on another blog and said that he’s the only king and I’m threatened by his presence. I was like how can I be threatened by your presence? All this time I thought we were cool. So I was like let me leave this alone. Then the song came and then there was hype around it and I had no choice but to reply then,” he said.
