Rapper waiting for his dreams to take flight
NOT so long ago, a young, lanky rapper called Solo ( pictured) walked into our offices. Although he had just released his solo album, Dreams.A.Plenty, which was critically acclaimed, he was still unsure of himself. He walked into our offices again the other day, more confident this time, to talk about his second album, Dreams.B.Plenty.
“The idea has always been a trilogy concept. I had the idea originally in 2008. The first one was Dreams.A.Plenty, we now have Dreams.B.Plenty and the last one will be C.Plenty.Dreams. I am glad to see it through. The one huge challenge with sequels is that as a concept it can get tiring. You can get over it after planting the seed when people still want more,” he said.
Looking back to when he released his first album, Solo spoke about what he wanted to convey when he first came out and how it ties in with what he has in mind with the second album.
“Dreams.A.Plenty was about telling the story of this vulnerable kid who can rap, but he just comes in and doesn’t know anything about the music. I paint a picture of his honesty and nervousness. Dreams.B.Plenty is the middle ground and about growth. So I am not as naive because I know more about the business. There are a couple of wins and also some loses. There are awards and the praise is now coming in, but there are some doors which are still closed. I think the average person who is on a path with a purpose lives on this ground the longest. You are no longer starting out, but you are not yet at the final destination and that is where I am. C.Plenty.Dreams will always speak to success and not necessarily that I will make the project when I have blown up. It will be about my interpretation of success when I start recording,” he explained.
Dreams.B.Plenty has a number of tracks that have nuances of someone taking a flight. The artwork also adds to this idea as there is a lot of aviation paraphernalia.
“I had a year-and-a-half of a headache to decide what the best analogy was to put my ideas together. You run the risk of flopping if you don’t do it right. The whole idea was to take a person who was going to the airport to catch a flight, but the flight is delayed so he has to sit and wait. Whether you like it or not, when you sit in that space, that forces you to have introspection,” he said.
They do not make albums like this anymore and if Solo did not describe this album the way he did, you could have missed it. This is not one of those projects you can play on shuffle because you would miss the point. The songs are arranged in chronological order.
“The music starts off all bravado because I’m different from the Solo of Dreams.A.Plenty who did not know if he was allowed to say certain things or not. So the early songs like Benchwarmers with Kabomo show me getting to the airport and I have so much bravado. I am saying I am at the place that says eventually I’m out of here, but then the flight is delayed, but what you hear as the album goes on is that cockiness diminishing. I sit there and start having some introspection and then eventually I get out of that place, only when the time is right. So in actual sense, as a musician, I’ll fly out of this stage I am in at some point,” he said.
Several skits are on the album to help tell the story and Solo gave that a lot of attention.
“I tried to have my team act out, but then I realised I was going to mess it up. So we approached several actors including Tumisho Masha and Richard Lunkunku. They did a good job and I learnt that you need to respect what people do,” he said.
Dreams.B.Plenty is on iTunes and in stores.