- written by Ntando Bam

LUUKHANYO and the Hii-Rollers, captured by James Cameron Heron

LUUKHANYO first came to my attention while scrolling through Instagram, when a post from his popped up on my timeline showcasing a SoundCloud billboard of his music up in London. Not a couple of days later Jeriah asked me if I wanted to do an interview with him -it goes without saying that I said yes. These are the types of conversations I look forward to, especially when you can tell the person has high heights awaiting them. It’s the perfect opportunity to try and find out what it is that makes them.

I want to start off with the reason why we’re here. Why do you think it’s time for an album?

“I love albums. I think the art of making an album has been lost to time. Right now, we focus on releasing hit singles and putting them together in an EP. An album is something that lends itself more to the art side than to the entertainment side, because I’m inviting you into my world. I respect entertainers, but I’ve always felt like that wasn’t what I was meant to do.”

“The process itself is very grueling - I got to a place where I was on the verge of quitting music. It felt like making popular music was gonna be the be-all and end-all of it. I was going to achieve some fame and make some money, but I’d only be enriching myself.”

“I’m from Gugulethu, and when I go home, I kinda see everyone still struggling and trapped in a certain mentality that is stopping us from breaking out of the cycle. I personally understand that there is more to life than your immediate surroundings, whereas my niggas can’t even come to Obs without feeling like aliens. With that, it kinda made me scared that maybe I’m not really achieving what I was meant to if I keep doing music.”

“I was kinda contractually obligated to complete the album though, which was a blessing in disguise.”

Listening to your music, your sound has a ‘mainstream’ feel - is that intentional? Or is that just the end product?

“Not necessarily. I think when I started out, it was, because obviously - it's more about the concept of success. If I’m not doing this thing on a level where people can appreciate it en masse and appeal to a lot of people, then I’m not doing it right.”

“At first, I was very obsessed with the idea of achieving success and pleasing people on a larger scale, but over time, I guess maybe that was me learning a more efficient way to share the message, which is more important.”

“Now I’m falling back into a place where I’m trying to tap into myself and what I like. So if it sounds kinda commercial, I guess that’s what I like. It just happens. And I think the album gives context to that.”

“Right now though people only have a small sample to understand what it is that I do. When you’re rolling out, you release the easier to digest work first, but as you dive more into the album, people will have a broader perspective. There’s a song where I don’t even sing, I just rap throughout. It’s different sides of the same coin.”

You’re signed to a London-based label - how did that come about?

“They reached out, bro. There's this one TikTok video that didn’t go viral, but it started making waves. A lot of labels reached out, most of them international actually. Some of them with money, like they put real money on the table. Money I could change my family’s life with right now. But the clauses in the contract were telling. That’s how they trap you.”

“So yeah, we had a few meetings with all the labels that reached out, and my label seemed to be the ones that were buying into the vision. With the creative control and the splits of who actually owns the music, all of those things were pretty favourable to me.”

“So I was like, Ahyt bet, you guys dig with me enough to give this thing a try, and also I’m not really sacrificing my integrity or anything I hold dear to me through my artistry, so I went for it. I feel very fortunate in a lot of ways.”

You don't strike me as someone that is focused on the numbers side of things, but labels are. How much influence does that have on your process?

“None whatsoever.”

“I don’t think I wanted to be signed initially, but they came through when everything was so in alignment that I would have been a fool not to take it. I don't create for them per se - they care about the numbers for sure, but I’d rather build something that’s more important and luckily for me, they were on board with it.”

You’ve spoken in interviews about being an army kid, that must play a massive influence in what you do. Your parents being in the army and you wanting to create - how did that go down?

“Not very well, that’s for sure. In the context of my family I was a relatively bright kid when I was younger, so everybody felt free to throw their expectations on me. When you’re a kid, you kinda just feel like ‘Yo I’m being appreciated for something’ and you hold on to it.”

“I remember as a kid starting to fall in love with music and rapping in particular, and one day I told a family member I wanted to be a rapper - I looked around the room and you should have seen the disappointment on everyone’s faces.”

“It was a tough battle to climb for sure. I did try for a bit, I studied accounting at Stellenbosch for two years, but I was depressed the whole time. The only time I felt alive was when I interacted with anything artistic. The more I kept doing it, the more it felt rewarding, even in small glimpses.”

“Eventually, I realised I could either live my life for others and be depressed my whole life, or I could sacrifice the conditional love I was feeling and pursue what actually gave me love inside, so that I wouldn’t have to sacrifice for that external validation. They fought me for some time, and they still kinda do, but every time something happens that they can quantify as success, they’re kinda happy.”

Do you think people’s perception of you has changed the more levels you’ve gone up, or do you find yourself being more guarded with others?

“I wouldn't say guarded, but I’m a lot more aware. I do try to keep my ego at a distance though.”

“Being an artist, it can be so easy to let everything go to your head. Everyone has a version of themselves that’s a loser, and a version of themselves that’s a winner. But you are all these things. If you continue to mold yourself around the version of yourself that’s a winner, you will stay fighting the version of yourself that’s a ‘loser’ - the version that’s there to help you acknowledge the things that you need to learn about yourself.”

“And I understand where that comes from - all of this feels too good sometimes. Have you ever had someone come up to you and rap your whole song to you, word for word? That will do something to you, have you feeling yourself on some ‘yea I’m chosen!’. But you are not the source, you’re just the messenger.”

“Most of us have a blurred idea of what success is. And we’ll do stuff to kind of affirm the winner in us, but we end up obsessing over those things. And I’m learning that in my own path.”

“I’mma do this little album because I feel like this is something I need to let out. I'm sent here to do this thing. Outside of that though, I’m just living my life bro. I’m playing pool with my friends, I’m chilling. And I think that’s part of the work you need to do for yourself.”

So how then do you nurture your creativity, in the sense of creative burnout?

“I saw this reel - think of yourself like a bathtub. When you do something that exerts energy or releases anything, you’re opening the plug and allowing the water to flow out. When you rest, you’re only closing the plug, so the amount of water that was in it remains. But you have to allow yourself time to refill the bath. And for me, that’s simple shit. I enjoy going on bike rides, I enjoy going on picnics, things like that. I grew up kind of in the club lifestyle, but later on I realised that I’m a very wholesome nigga dawg. I enjoy cute shit.”

On the chat of health, how active are you outside of your creativity? Do you do running or stuff like that?

“I try everyday bro. A homie asked me something that really changed my perspective: If I could give you R10 million today, but the catch is that you only live for today, would you take it? For me it was a no-brainer - I choose to live another day. That gave me perspective, that I value my health over money.”

“At the height of my run with the Hii Rollers, when I was performing and rolling out music, I ended up in hospital from overworking. I was getting migraines so intense that if I blinked it felt like someone was punching me in my face. I was in the hospital for like 3 weeks.”

“I speak about it on Open Casket, I say ‘forced to face an unfortunate fate when angels told me to mind my patience’. I could either try to pursue all of life’s capacity in one day, or I could pace myself and understand that I’m already alive.”

“I’m already here, and all the things that I yearn for, I already have. Let me nurture the little bit that I have so that when I do get more, I know how to handle that. If I don’t know how to handle what I have, I risk losing it all as well as anything that I want in the process.”

So then through everything that you’ve learnt as a musician, what have you learnt about yourself?

“I know myself to be very determined and strong willed, and I know that there is a sense of purpose within me. There’s something that I’m here to do, and my job is to try and unravel the things that stand in the way of that, or cloud my vision - even if that’s myself”

What is your opinion of the Cape Town landscape right now, and where do you see it going from here?

“Cape Town has always been divided in my opinion, and the division is only getting stronger. A lot of people are coming into Cape Town to express their voices, and that’s a good thing no doubt, but it kinda leaves very little room for the voices of Cape Town to be around. I think that’s something that’s very important because Cape Town has a very rich, diverse history to begin with, and I feel a sense of responsibility to make room for those voices to exist.”

“Maybe a part of the reason I feel alienated in Cape Town is because I’m the first to have the courage to go about saying ‘I’mma be this, unapologetically’. I grew up around gangstas, that’s not me. But those are stories, those are real people who live life with real voices to be heard. I know niggas in the hood who can rap circles around anyone who raps and I know cats who can play soccer better than anybody on the TV. But they don’t find any paths to make that happen for themselves. That’s part of the responsibility I feel.”

During my research I learnt about a person that was humble, just trying to give his all in his craft for us to enjoy. Being able to sit down and chat to him, he didn’t disappoint. You can tell that his focus on his goal is what drives him to create. An artist’s first album is an introduction (at least that’s what it’s supposed to be) to their full form at that moment in time. After having a conversation with LUUKHANYO, I anticipate being able to bear witness to his upcoming introduction.

Be sure to keep an eye out for his next single and music video dropping early August, and for his debut album releasing shortly thereafter

- written by Ntando Bam

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