Rap’s golden boy to help those trapped in tradition

THIS year, iFani ( pictured) was in pursuit of happiness. He was already a well-known Xhosa rapper with a popular debut album, I Believes In Me (1st Quadrant), under his belt. But his home had been broken into and all of the music he had been working on for his next offering had been stolen in the process. So he had some tough decisions to make.

“I was looking for happiness,” he tells me, “because I had just blown up and felt like I had everything that I wanted. I didn’t know what was going to be next. To be honest, I felt like blowing up with my music would be everything I ever wanted. But happiness is not a destination, you know?

“And after they broke into my place and stole my music, I had absolutely nothing. And in that space, I thought, ‘I need to find something. I can either go back to the drawing board and try to get paid, or go back to computer engineering’ – even though I knew I would never be happy like that.”

So in January, he decided he wanted his next album, titled I Believes In Me (2nd Quadrant), to be certified gold on the first day of its release. He would start a full-on campaign where he took meetings with big brands, canvassed on social media and literally knocked on people’s doors to ask them to preorder his album at Musica in order to go gold on that first day.

“I took the idea to Sony and Paul (Thackeray) was like: ‘If this is what you want, go ahead’. (The label head) had seen me when I started out, when I was broke, when I left and made it back from the ashes.”

He continues: “I had nothing so I had to start looking for a studio to record and, luckily, George Avakian’s was available. It was hard because I had to campaign to go gold and make new music at the same time.”

So on April 29, iFani’s second album was released and he went gold on that day as the trending topic, #1stDayGold, attested. You’d be forgiven for expecting the music industry to rally behind him with this milestone.

“Mine was the first big dream in hip hop this year. To dare to go out there,” he pauses, “but everyone was very negative. People were like: ‘It’s not going to happen.’”

And, of course, rapper, AKA, took to Twitter to allege that cider company, Redd’s had bought thousands of copies of iFani’s album, thus enabling him to go gold without many actual members of the public buying the album. In the same way that – as many people have raised – Samsung bought a million digital copies of Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail album to give to customers. This prompted the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) to change how albums are awarded gold and platinum status.

But back to iFani. So because of AKA’s Twitter allegations, this achievement was surrounded by negativity.

“I definitely got companies and brands involved,” iFani says coolly, “but that (Redd’s allegation) took everything in the opposite direction of what we were working on. We had all these campaigns ready to go with these companies, but they collapsed because SAB had to do damage control.”

Having still achieved his dream regardless, iFani says he hopes it inspires ordinary South Africans to achieve their own. Especially in a socio-political context. He wants to use the next phase of his career to be a voice for others: “With initiation in the Eastern Cape, young men are dying. And people are encouraging people to go to hospitals instead. Slowly, that will kill tradition because people will start seeing hospitals as a cooler option. My thing is: find a way to address the problem – maybe by getting certification for practitioners – instead of killing the tradition. Let’s find ways of making tradition current.” iFani’s album,

is in music stores.