DramaBoi back to makeishane
Thalefang Charles | Friday October 17, 2014 13:38
DramaBoi, also known as Thuto Ramphaleng, 21, is one of the YAMA’s nominees in the Hip Hop Motswako Artist of the Year category. He has for the first time spoken out about his soured relationship with Mafia Soul Clothing Company.
“I’m doing my own s#*t now,” he stated.
Arts & Culture met him at the Square Mart Filling Station in Gaborone CBD for an interview. He came wearing a red Dikkies hat, white muscle top, oversized camouflage pants and white sneakers. He was also carrying what appeared to be a Louis Vuitton backpack. That is the new DramaBoi look.
There is no more Mafia Soul inspired Brooklyn look. No more oversized Mafia Soul T-shirts. No more REP-GABZ nor MADE-IN-BOTS clothes because he said, “I’m no longer their [Mafia Soul] ambassador”.
He is on his own now. He walked across the road from Phase II where he said he ‘was chilling with my boys’ while waiting for our arrival.
We decided to conduct the interview in the car while driving around town or makeishane as he said. We took a turn into Phase II where he used to live courtesy of Mafia Soul.
“I decided not to renew the contract with those guys because there were some issues I was not happy with. The way they were running things was not the way I wanted to run things. And that was the conflict,” he said.
As we slowly cruised through the midday summer heat along the short streets of Phase II, he got comfortable and spoke out without any restraint.
“They were controlling everything. They owned my art. I was just their money spinner,” he said.
DramaBoi explained that music business is a dirty game. In the few years that he has been in the industry he has learnt that there are ‘vultures and suited thieves’.
Dramaboi, instead of running to the media decided to put his feelings in a song, and released his latest single titled Bob Marley.
He named it Bob Marley because according to him the late Jamaican reggae legend represents a true embodiment of peace and protest for everyone’s rights.
He said the song was meant to address the ‘nonsense’ that was being said about him with regards to his contract with Mafia Soul. He raps in the song, “Ka tsena mo game, ka bona manong, ka bona, dinoga, ka bona, magodu, ba apere di suit le mokha”.
He is quick to point out that South Africa’s Motswako rapper Mo Molemi’s Manong song inspired the line.
He said the song describes how he fell into a trap set up by ‘vultures’.
Explaining the breakup with Mafia Soul, he got emotional and said: “And the worse thing is, they always had the nerve to tell me that they could fire me. I mean I am self-made. I rose from the gutter through my own art and I didn’t work hard for that long to just be told off by some n****rs just because they are rich and they think they could own me.”
He said he made a conscious and brave decision knowing all the risks involved in choosing not to renew the Mafia Soul contract. His breakup with the clothing label caused a stir on social media last week, with some people saying, “…he won’t survive without Mafia Soul”.
“What did they do for me? They have done nothing for me that I could not have done by myself. Well, I might have taken more time to get there but that was all my vision. What do I have from them? It’s only T-shirts. Man, I SOLD their T-shirts. They know they need me,” DramaBoi said.
He went on describing that he has been wearing Mafia Soul T-shirts since his first Godzilla music video when he was not yet signed to them. All his music videos with thousands of view counts have Mafia Soul label in them.
“And now they went childish, going around posting stuff about our contractual relationship on social media. I ain’t signing s#*t. I’m signing teddies,” he defiantly stated.
He explained that after all these years they were selfishly selling their own label refusing to have at least one T-shirt label for him. DramaBoi understands that this could not be good for his own brand saying, ‘Mafia Soul ate out of DramaBoi’s brand’.
“They even exclusively sold my album (his second album called Wa Makeishane) at their clothing shops. My real fans could not even access it,” he said.
DramaBoi said he knows the demographics of his fans.
“My fans are from the Kasi. They don’t buy at Mafia Soul. So these guys sold my music to their customers, not my fans that made DramaBoi. This can’t be good for my brand,” he explained.
Why he released free tracks for downloads and how it benefits him? He shed light on the dynamics of the music business. He said because of the small population, piracy and high costs of production, it is only viable to release many free good tracks to the people.
He explained that when many people are jamming your music the benefits come rolling. He said Mafia Soul never bought this idea and they wanted to sell everything. He said the music business is different from the T-shirt business citing Cassper Nyovest and HHP who are still releasing free tracks on the Internet.
He said that the reason why his hit track Candy did not make it to Channel O is because Mafia Soul wanted money.
“These guys were kidnapping my music,” he said.
DramaBoi said he has learnt that in Botswana you cannot survive on album sales alone, explaining that one needs to be booked for shows and needs lucrative endorsements to breakeven.
He further explained that first people need to play one’s music and if more people are playing the music more bookings will come as a result. This according to DramaBoi is an innovative way of surviving the music industry and he knows all about survival because he grew up in the gutter.
From Phase II we drove east to Maruapula location where DramaBoi grew up. He remembered 10 years ago when he lived in abject poverty with his grandmother.
“We were poor, we had no television and it was a hard life. The music started when I was only 12-years-old at primary school and I was greatly inspired by Eminem,” he said.
So at that tender age DramaBoi was listening to PG Explicit lyrics of US rapper Eminem. He said he ended up writing Eminem lyrics and singing along. That nurtured his rap skills and when he got to secondary school he knew he was destined to be a rapper and as he put it ‘Not just a rapper but a great rap artist’.
With such nonconformist ambition DramaBoi felt school was actually delaying him to be what he wanted to be.
“Our school syllabus is not designed for people like us. Although I learnt a lot from school, I felt if at all we were allowed to choose and study only those subjects that augmented our ambition at a tender age it would really help us,” he said.
At school he said he concentrated on the Art subject because he believed it was key in his already chosen path of being an artist.
“My uncles used to lecture me about how there are no employment opportunities and that I should study hard so that at least I could get an allowance. But I told them I don’t want to get a job. I wanna create jobs. I didn’t want a normal life,” he said.
But the family did not let DramaBoi have it easy. He said they wanted him to achieve good grades at school get a job and be like normal children.
His father tried to discourage him from pursuing music, threatening that since he was divorcing his mother, life will be even worse if he did not study to get a job.
“But I was stubborn with this dream,” he said. He did not let his parents’ fears derail him from what he felt was his destiny. His parents’ disapproval heightened his focus on pursuing a musical career.
He worked hard at it.
He said he participated in open mic sessions, poetry shows and rap battles to build his brand. But despite his hard work, he encountered a few challenges, including being turned down by producers probably because they doubted his talent.
He said he did not give up on his dream, but rather pushed on until the hard work paid off at the age of 17, when he eventually released his first single Godzilla under Dee Zone HsP record label.
“Godzilla opened a lot of doors, and brought a lot of change,” DramaBoi said.
He later released his first album titled Township Music. He said even though the album was never distributed, it managed to establish him as a rap artist. It was when he left the producers of Township Music that he signed with Mafia Soul.
DramaBoi became the brand ambassador for their clothing labels. He appeared everywhere wearing the their merchandise. His music videos were all branded Mafia Soul. He adopted the Brooklyn look. He was in a sense no more a truly township or wa makeishane rapper who identified much better with street boys.
But he is back to the township now. He feels free and hungrier to take over. He has one booking agent. He said he wants to work with ATI and he is positive about the future.
We asked him what he did with all the Mafia Soul T-shirts and he responded: “I gave them all away.”
The Managing Director of Mafia Soul Molefi Nkwete, admitted that they had fundamental differences with DramaBoi but wished things could not have ended.
“He [DramaBoi] didn’t see my vision,” Nkwete said.
He agreed that the young rapper is a powerful brand and they lost an opportunity.
He disclosed that DramaBoi notified him about his decision not to renew with a text message while he [Nkwete] was overseas. Nkwete also admitted that they indeed controlled everything. They even refused him to venture into new sounds as he wished.
“It’s business, we were building his brand. We knew his audience and what they wanted. We can prove it that we developed his brand and this was working well for him. We gave him a chance to renegotiate but he chose not to negotiate,” Nkwete said.