Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
WHEN one speaks of rappers, the first image that may come into mind is that of a young man in baggy clothes, weighed down by heavy chains as he spits out words at machine gun speed over a microphone.
Others might think of raunchy videos they have seen over the years, with scantily clad young women twisting and gyrating as they leave little to the imagination.
Some minds might turn to flashy champagne lifestyles portrayed in those videos, capturing cinematic moments in the lives of these young men and women who seem to live on the fast lane.
Behind that flashy veil, however, these rappers are often just young people trying to figure out life and all its inner workings in the real world.
Professional disappointments, heartbreaks and financial struggles are all part of life and rappers are not exempt from these struggles.
After all, not all hip-hop music is about trinkets and the finer things. Some wordsmiths confront the daily realities of life in their songs, crafting verses that magnify the hopes and aspirations of their people.
One of those rappers is Bulawayo’s Tafadzwa “Asaph” Tarukwana, who over the last year has transformed from just another young man trying to find his way in life to a figure from who much is expected.
Last year, as the Mambo hitmaker walked out from one maternity ward in the city with a bouncing baby girl in his hands, he knew his life had changed.
While he is renowned for his sharp tongue while on the microphone, he also knew that from that moment onwards he would now have to tame it for his own daughter’s sake.
“I now know that I have to carry myself in a certain way that is exemplary,” he told Sunday Life in an interview.
“I have to model myself into the type of man that my daughter can look up to and be proud of. As far as the music, I have always felt that I am purposeful in terms of the songs that I make but now I feel the need to be that much more intentional with the messages that I’m putting out. She’s going to grow up and listen to my music. If I am to pass away, she would hear my voice in my music so I have to make sure that what I am putting out there is adding to the world and not bringing destruction.
“I want to add positive things, good things and ideas that will enable her to build a good worldview.”
While fatherhood has over the past year opened his eyes, Asaph said it had also shown him just how much more he still needed to learn in life.
“I am grown but still there’s a lot of growing that I have to do. Fatherhood is showing me that there’s still a lot that I have to learn. I don’t know everything. There’s a bit that I know but I don’t know everything so I am still trying to learn more,” he said.
As he takes his first steps in what he hopes will be a long fatherhood journey, Asaph the rapper and Asaph the father are slowly becoming one. This is not reflected in just his interactions with his own family but with the outside world as well.
Asaph
“It’s helped me to become more responsible, even with other artists. I am always thinking about how I can be a better leader, and how I can be a better ‘father’ in my space. When I see young artists I think how I can be a type of father figure to them and show them how not to make the same mistakes that I made and how to benefit from the successes that I got,” he said.
One of the ways that the rapper showed the increasing level of responsibility on his shoulders was through the Kwela Initiative workshops, a five-day platform geared at guiding artists through their young careers.
After a visit to the United States in 2024, Asaph said he returned with a wealth of knowledge that he felt he needed to share with his peers.
“The initiative came about when we went for Next Level Global in the United States. The lessons we learned there, as well as the lessons we learned during our Zimbabwe residency in Harare, informed the basis of the initiative. We felt the need for an artist development platform focused on hip-hop because there hadn’t been one before. We came across this concept called Conflict Transformation and we had seen that back home, there always seemed to be conflict between the community and artists. So we felt that we should host an indaba on conflict resolution that would later lead into some workshops,” he said.
Asaph said that he had noticed that there was constant conflict between hip-hop artists and the communities that they came from and he felt that this was a rift that he was eager to heal.
“We had members of the community, from media, bloggers, fans and even city fathers. They were all there to meet with artists and have that dialogue. We went through topics such as studio etiquette, corporate engagement, business engagement and global and regional expansion. So, the goal was to try and transform the situation in Bulawayo. We know that we won’t resolve it immediately with one workshop but we can transform it by talking about the issues that artists face. That’s why we just didn’t bring people from music but instead, we brought together people from all walks of life. We brought Exclusive Events, people from Munch & Sip and people who host business seminars because we want to equip artists and make them more socially responsible so they take their craft to the next level,” he said.
The rapper said that he wished that growing up, he had similar platforms to rely on, as they would have helped improve his decision-making in the infancy of his career.
“It would have influenced a lot of the decisions that I made. You get the benefit of listening to people who are not only within the hip-hop community but from business as well. Hearing from city fathers and getting a handle on their thinking and what their expectations are would have influenced how I handled my career,” he said.
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