To gospel tunes
from a couple of songs perhaps like Ncam
there was nothing that was particularly X-rated. It was all good music that I’m proud to have made,” he said.
But just what prompted the musician to make such a dramatic U-turn?
“My urban music era was offering me too much candy. It was like eating popcorn. You go through four or five buckets of the stuff and yet you still don’t feel full. You still feel unfulfilled. That’s exactly what I was going through. When you’re doing urban music you’re always under pressure to do certain things that make you look cool.
“You always have to girl that pretty girl in town that everyone wants, you have to get that new production or this and that. You’re always in search of that new thing. You’ve You ve got to go to the club and nd do these things and in the end I felt that the e urban scene was pushing me towards things gs that I felt were unnecessary,” he said.
Despite having ving left the dog eat dog of urban music, Gudu u points out that even gospel music has its own unique pressures.
“What I have ave noticed is that when I was doing circular ar music, there was a lot of pressure to market myself. In circular music, you’re always under pressure to make yourself look cool. This is because if you’re not hip, people will not ot buy your music. You’re under pressure to market yourself in a certain why and I’ve noticed ced that it’s the same thing with gospel music but in the opposite direction.
“In gospel music, you’ve got to market yourself as the he good guy. You’ve got to be the guy who goes s to church, the guy who has one woman at a time, the guy who listens and is well behaved. As I’ve made my transition into gospel music I’ve discovered that I’m more at home with h that kind of pressure than the kind that was brought on by circular music,” he said. d.
Since he unleashed leashedAbove Above All, an album released under er his Praise Worth record stable, Gudu has been on a journey to rebrand himself. self. It is a journey that has not been easy y thus far, as to many he is still the same man that made Ncam Ncam.
“When you were doing circular music for so long, people brand you. You’re known as that guy who did Ncam Ncam or Tombofara. So since my last album it was all been about showing people that this is a different Calvin.
“The more things we do in the gospel genre, the more people come around to this idea of the new me. So over the last couple of years I’ve been mingling with people on the gospel scene as opposed to the urban scene which is what I had been doing previously in my career,” he said.
As he works on more new music, Gudu is confident that he is making the necessary headway.
“Changing from gospel to circular music is not easy. I feel like weve we’ve spent the last few years preparing me for now. We’ve fully embraced the direction that we’re heading in and can finally come to the full realisation of our ambitions,” he said.