Devotion to mom pays off for The Big Hash
IN 2017, while he was writing his Grade 11 mid-year exams, The Big Hash decided to purposefully flunk his papers. He wanted to make it abundantly clear he wanted out.
His mother, a divorcee raising two young kids, was heartbroken.
She rebuked him, but the young man was unmoved: he wanted to focus entirely on music.
Two years on, the Big Hash, 18, is one of the country’s most prominent music forces.
“For some reason, music really stood out for me,” he says. “I knew that maybe I could make my mom’s life better just by pursuing this.”
On March 29, The Big Hash released his latest mix-tape, Young.
“Hearing news of Xxxtentacion and Mac Miller passing on, young rappers like that losing their lives, it shook me, and it made me feel like I could be next. So I had to drop a body of work that sounded like it could be my last.
“It made me feel like every song I record should sound like my last.”
On the day the mix-tape dropped, he recalls waking up and finding it charting at 15th on itunes. A while later, he got a text from A-reece saying he’d climbed to number two.
“Seeing that was so surreal for me, only to find out an hour later, I was number one through a Whatsapp screen-shot. I couldn’t stop screaming.”
Much of this success has been built around his impressive social media presence.
“I had to be different and bring in a different sound that was organic, and at the same time, sound like something you won’t find in this country.”
That approach has worked wonders.
The Big Hash will be performing at the Reece Effect concert in
Pretoria today.