Interview

Mar. 07, 2019 03:40AM EST

Photo courtesy of Boity

In Conversation: Boity Wants to Create Bad-Ass Anthems for Black Girls

Make space for the up-and-coming rapper. She's here to stay, and on her own terms.

Boitumelo 'Boity' Thulo is a South African TV personality, actress, entrepreneur and model for the Sissy Boy brand. Her journey to stardom began when she landed a gig as a co-presenter on the educational show The Media Career Guide on SABC 1 alongside Stevie French. She has since graced South African television screens for years, acting on the local drama series Rockville and hosting the popular music show Club 808. Last year, Boity surprised many when she released her first trap-inspired single, "Wuz Dat" featuring the lyrical maverick, Nasty C. She recently released her second single entitled "Bakae", where she spits a few verses in English but mostly pays homage to her native Sotho language.

In the beginning South Africans were not convinced, however, that Boity's transition into music would be all that successful or that it should even happen at all. Quite a number of them felt that she should rather "stick to what she knows" and leave music to "those who know how". However, with "Wuz Dat" having received close to a million YouTube views and "Bakae" steadily growing in numbers, they may just have to eat their words.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You've released two singles, "Wuz Dat" and "Bakae". How does it feel to be able to personally add "rapper" to your resume?

It feels incredible. And now that I'm in this space, I realize only now how much I've wanted it and how at home I feel in this space. It's been such a massive chunk of me that's been waiting to be explored. It feels good.

For the longest time we've known Boity as a TV personality, a model for Sissy Boy and an actress. Is that space completely different to the music space?

Yeah, definitely. I think to a certain extent all of them require their own kind of characters I guess. I think in the other realm it's the politically correct and respectful voice that everyone knows and is used to. Not that she's not real but that she's just a part of me. I don't feel like that space would have ever given me a chance to showcase the rest of Boity the way in which rap has allowed me to.

Were you making moves to venture into the music space or did you finally get that opportunity and just said, "yes I'm going for it"?

I think it was more of an opportunity-based thing. The Boity brand is growing so organically without me having to try and push it to. But I think when the rapping opportunity came about it was just a matter of timing as well, where I felt like, "I think I'm ready to push myself a little further without the fear of the risks of doing it," you know? It was me being comfortable and secure enough in myself knowing that I'm gonna try it whether it fails or not.

In your first single, "Wuz Dat", you collaborate with Nasty C, one of our top notch and quality hip-hop artists. How was that experience?

It was fantastic. The whole experience has been brand new to me. I started questioning myself and thinking, "Is this was you thought it was gonna be?" And if so, "Do you really wanna do this?" So I went through all of that. Nasty C is a musical genius. He's so brilliant, and he's also so chilled, you know? I think it made a huge difference, having someone who is as talented, someone who is as well informed and someone who's so willing to work with me as he is. He allowed me to be scared, uncomfortable and free all at the same time.

Was there ever a moment where you asked yourself whether you should be rapping at all?

That was my first day in the studio and it was time for me to open my mouth and say something, you know? At the very beginning, I had to be comfortable with what my voice sounds like. Even now, I'm still very self-conscious about what I hear.

Do you like the way your voice sounds?

No. I'm still getting used to it and I'm still wrapping my head around it. I'm still getting comfortable in this space. And, also, just learning how my voice should sound, because I'm assuming that it's still gonna mature the more sessions I do. I'm gonna get used to what Boity sounds like. For now, obviously, we're seeing where it goes and we're testing the waters in terms of what sounds and feels comfortable, but I don't think I've discovered my voice as yet. But it takes more than two records to figure that out.

Nasty C has been welcoming to you. Do you feel like the rest of the music space, especially the more veteran female rappers such as Rouge, Gigi Lamayne and Nadia Nakai, have been as welcoming?

The reception was amazing. People were truly cheering me on. Gigi, Nadia, Rouge, all of them. They all tweeted and they were congratulating me, But, without a doubt, I think the reception I received was incredible. I wasn't expecting it. And, I wouldn't have held anyone against it if they hadn't congratulated me. It's okay. No one has to.

Read: Why Nasty C is The Greatest South African Rapper of This Generation

What would you say makes you a little nervous or anxious in this new space?

And, the only thing that makes me nervous, I guess, is before I get on stage. It's never the same because it's a different crowd all the time. It's a different space and a different time. Different energy as well.

How do you handle those nerves? What are some of the processes you go through?

Obviously, mentally, I'm preparing for this five days before the show. But, if I know that I'm about to get on stage, in like 10 or 20 minutes, I don't want anyone to talk to me. I'm getting lost in my thoughts—just self-preparation and calling on my ancestors. I just want to make sure that I give people my best at any given moment, whether it's 17 people or 17 000 people. It must be the same energy because they all just bought tickets.

Boity performs at the South African Hip Hop Awards in 2018. Photo by Sabelo Mkhabela.

Do you channel anyone or are you just trying to focus on Boity and developing your own identity as a musician?

I wouldn't say I've stopped listening to female rappers altogether, but I've tried to lessen that so that I don't get subconsciously influenced. The last thing you want now is to hear, "Oh, but you sound like this person." I try to not think of anything or anyone. It's just me.

You're an actress, a model and now, you're becoming a rapper. What do you have to say about the "open up the industry" conversation?

Well, for me, personally, it's such a tricky conversation because I know that essentially it does lead to people thinking that opportunities are being given to the same people all the time. But people don't understand that it took ten years to get to the point where it seems like, now I'm getting everything. You had to build. Actually, trust, is more more than anything, that's the main one. Trust with producers, people who can trust you with coming, showing up on time. And they don't know how long it took for me to get a certain gig. What if I'd been working on it for three years? People don't see those things.

And so, their assumption is purely based off of the end product and also, it's a massive chunk of this conversation about "opening up the industry" should be with gatekeepers and those are the people that call us.

Perhaps there is the misconception that because of all the glamour in your line of work, you don't have to work as hard?

You don't even know how much pay and how much we work; the hours we have to put in to get to that point. It's like, again, it's you look at the end product. And, it's almost like people wanna show up to a good life. A lot of the people who want the industry to be open based on this thing that they see; this glamorous side, it almost feels like they're not willing to put in the work. They just wanna rock up and be in the dress and be on the red carpet and also be presenting.

Boity - Bakae (Audio)www.youtube.com

What kind of music do you want to make? What music would make you happy?

Well, I definitely wanna make music for, like you say, black girl magic. That would be dope. Whether it's about us getting our own money or you know, making it sound as bad bitch as possible. Just a female anthem. But, if I can create anything that resonates with a young female and it makes them feel like, "Hey man. This created some form of a shift in my mind to either do better or to step forward for myself and to put my foot down and say, I deserve more."

Are you going to keep dropping singles, getting into the feel of it? Are we expecting an album soon?

No pressure. We'll see how it goes. We're gonna go with the flow. I don't wanna make any promises to myself or to people. I think people should just know that whenever I come out with something...there it is.

Follow Boity on Twitter (@Boity) and stream her first two singles below.

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Music

Photo courtesy Black Major.

Bongeziwe Mabandla on his Latest Album, 'amaXesha,' and Returning to Love.

The South African singer-songwriter revisits timeless themes on an album dedicated to giving love a second chance.

When we last left Bongeziwe Mabandla, he was shutting the door on a relationship. Very literally, since his previous album, iimini, ended with the sound of a door slamming closed. But then the pandemic happened and, like so many of us, the singer found himself wondering about – perhaps, maybe – trying to open it back up again. You know, just in case this was how life was going to be forever.

“I was in that space of understanding that a lot of us revisit old relationships, old loves, trying to make something that didn't work, work,” he tells OkayAfrica. It was in this way that amaXesha, Mabandla’s latest album, began taking shape. The singer sees it as a continuation of iimini, his third album, which was released just as the lockdown in South Africa began. Rather than halt his songwriting, Mabandla, with a word of encouragement from his manager, kept on with the business of mining his thoughts and feelings about the things that were coming up for him during this time of enforced solitude.

AmaXesha means ‘the times,’ in his vernac of Xhosa, and the album roots itself in the idea of returning to a relationship over a span of time – reinvesting in it, fighting for it, giving it a second chance, even if there is no guarantee it will all work out again. “I just thought about the complexities of that; of going against everything that you said and trying to make a very turbulent relationship work again, and what it actually means,” says Mabandla. “What does it mean, relearning somebody, learning to forgive, finding love where there's a lot of pain?”

Let there be nothing that will again separate us

It’s how songs like “noba bangathini” came about. “That song means, no matter what anybody says, I think we are destined to be together,” says Mabandla. Or, as he sings, "makungabikho nto eyophinde isahlule (let there be nothing that will again separate us)." Like with iimini, he writes about his own experiences and there is much introspection as we hear Mabandla’s inner dialogue, the reckoning he goes through, and the desires he wrestles with, over folk-based and pop-tinged songs.

While the album may have been created during the insulated time of lockdown, it has an expansiveness to it. For Mabandla, who lives in Johannesburg but spent most of the early pandemic in Mozambique where he recorded with Correia-Paulo, writing lyrics that are able to extend far beyond his own experience is a skill he honed while studying acting at AFDA. His ability to reach into his own inner depth opens the door for others to do the same; to ask, where do I really belong?

Bongeziwe Mabandla - noba bangathini (official visualizer)www.youtube.com

AmaXesha captures that yearning for true connection, a yearning the pandemic only made more acute. As Mabandla’s fourth album, it’s connected to his previous work through little sonic trademarks, snippets of conversations – oftentimes between him and his producer Tiago Correia-Paulo – that are left in for us to hear. On 2017’s Mangaliso, the album that earned him the first of two SAMAs, you can hear Correia-Paulo at the beginning of “Ndibuyile” say, ‘Want to get closer to the mic?’ and then later on, his encouragement, ‘That’s it, little bit better.’

Now, as if responding years later – a progression of their working partnership – we hear Mabandla’s words to Correia-Paulo: ‘Should I try one last one? I’ve got one last one in me.’ He’s referring to a take, and keeping this in the recording lets us in on trust that exists between them. As much as this is Mabandla’s work, it’s also a feat of Correia-Paulo’s dexterity. He draws out elements from the singer: a sped-up vocal here, a drawn-out note there. They’ve worked together on the last three of Mabandla’s albums, shaping what some call the “Afro indie” sound of his songs – a mix of folk, soul, R&B, rock, and electronic that’s earned the singer a well-respected place in a country where amapiano and house rule the day.

“He’s definitely one of my closest friends,” says Mabandla of Correia-Paulo. “I feel like he has that sensibility of what an artist needs and what an artist doesn’t need. His way of working is not so much the technical, but it goes to understanding an artist’s sensitivity and emotive quality.” The trust between artist and producer creates the kind of atmosphere that allows Mabandla to relax and show us what he’s feeling, even when it’s a difficult song to share.

From "Zange" to "Thula"

There’s usually always one song on his albums that causes him a little bit of apprehension to share. With iimini it was “zange,” on amaXesha, it’s “thula,” a song that features Mabandla’s mother singing a lullaby, which was taken from a Whatsapp voice note she sent to him. The song is about his mother, “and some of the deep differences we have,” he says. One doesn’t have to know the details of their relationship, or what they don’t see eye-to-eye on to understand the conflicting emotions that can come with a mother-child relationship.

Mabandla, who was born in the Eastern Cape town of Tsolo, was raised without his father. “It's hard because I've always been very close with my mother,” he says. “So to have so many problems and issues between us, and to even put that into the music, it feels like a betrayal.” During a recording of “thula,” he changed one of the lyrics so that it “landed a little bit softer.” But it wasn’t really true to how he was feeling. He came back into the studio and found the original lyric had been placed back in the song by his producer. The old take “just worked better.”

An image of the singer looking at the camera as a sheet of purple blows across him. Bongeziwe Mabandla studied acting but has made his name in music for over the course of a decade and four albums.Photo courtesy Black Major.

To be sure, Mabandla has learned that diminishing the intensity of feelings doesn’t help. “With ‘khangele’ on my previous album, it was like, I have this song that I want to write and it’s about this feeling of loneliness that I sometimes get, which is super intense, but I'm not sure if I want to tell people that I'm actually a very lonely person,” he says. He wrote one verse, but felt it seemed a bit too needy, a bit too exposing. On the day he went to record the song, the loneliness made itself all too known.

“I was in the studio and I had that conversation with myself: ‘Dude, if you're not gonna go there, it’s never gonna land. If you’re not willing to risk it, it’s just gonna be, like, melodies and sound.’ And I took the risk, and had to write the second verse in the studio, and I decided like, I'm just gonna describe it – the chaos, the confusion, the mess. The loneliness.”

And it paid off. “Because people saw themselves in that song so much,” he says. They still see themselves in his music. Mabandla’s fans span the world, his tour dates cover from London to Mexico City, and he recently taped the single “sisahleleleni(i)” for the esteemed Colors show. As a nod to his roots, he also recently recorded covers of Brenda Fassie’s “Too Late for Mama” and Shwi No Mtekhala’s “Ngafa,” – the former being one of his favorite songs of all time.

Bongeziwe Mabandla - sisahleleleni (i) | A COLORS SHOWwww.youtube.com

“It’s one of those songs you listen to and never really digest the lyrics,” he says. Turns out, the maskandi classic has “the most heartbreaking lyrics that you can ever imagine.” Mabandla relates to their simplicity; of a man who believes he is dying for nothing, wondering out loud what has become of his relationship. South African artists, from Shwi to Simphiwe Dana and Thandiswa, are the base of Mabandla’s inspiration, with the likes of Frank Ocean, Solange and Bon Iver providing additional layers, too.

“I really have to give gratitude to the young me,” says Mabandla. “When I started out, I wasn’t sure about anything. It’s amazing how I've been able to build a career from knowing so little about music.” He chuckles when he thinks back to the days he’d walk around Melville in Joburg, guitar on his back, just trying to make a name for himself. The plan was to be an actor, and although he still takes on roles (he has a part in Baloji’s Omen, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival), music is the door he chose to walk through over a decade ago. It’s one his fans are ever grateful he decided to keep open.

News Brief

ISAAC KASAMANI/AFP via Getty Images

Uganda's President Will "Go To War" Over New Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill

President Museveni is defending the world's harshest anti-human rights bill, threatening death for being gay.

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has declared that he will go to war to protect the country's anti-LGBTQ+ bill passed this week. "The NRM (National Resistance Movement) has never had two languages," he said in a statement released by his office on Wednesday, "What we tell you in the day is what we shall say to you at night. The signing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is finished; nobody will move us, and we should be ready for a war. Remember, war is not for the soft." Museveni made an onslaught of chaotic comments when he met with lawmakers from his ruling party this week, as he continues to defend signing one of the world's harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bills to date.

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Style

Photo courtesy Rukky Ladoja.

Rukky Ladoja on Building a Socially Responsible Nigerian Fashion Brand

The Nigerian designer behind Dye Lab has established a popular design brand based on the principle of little to no waste.

Rukky Ladoja is having what she describes as a typical Monday. She’s been called into her workshop for an emergency because her suppliers brought in the wrong materials. Rather than panic and wonder what to do, she immediately starts figuring out how to use the materials she’s been given in new pieces. ‘‘One thing I am big on is no waste,’ she tells OkayAfrica, when she shares the kind of day-to-day issues that come up for her as the designer behind Dye Lab. Ladoja founded the design brand during the COVID-19 pandemic and, guided by a zero-waste policy, it’s now become one of the most popular fashion brands in Nigeria today.

While Dye Lab has been branded a sustainable brand by many, Ladoja notes she is more comfortable calling herself “socially responsible,” as she didn’t set out to create a sustainable brand; she wanted to create a practical one. A brand that, instead of sourcing materials from international markets or using practices foreign to her environment, adapts local resources, styles, and skills across the entire design process. The result is practical kimono pieces that require little to no adjustment per customer, created in a way that ensures every part of the design process takes advantage of the resources — human and physical — around her with very little to no waste allowed.

The response to this? Phenomenal. Today, Dye Lab is fast turning into a household name in Lagos where it has inspired several copycats as the brand has turned into one of the best sellers of Industrie Africa — an e-commerce website with a focus on African designers. Days before Ladoja and I talk, Dye Lab had just finished a six-week pop-up store at the Anya Hindmarch store in the United Kingdom, and their year is just getting started.

$An image of the designer sitting on a chair that\u2019s placed on a checkered floor and there\u2019s a vibrant art piece behind her.$ Designer Rukky Ladoja is all about running a socially responsible fashion brand.Photo courtesy Stephen Tayo.

‘‘The response has been great,” says Ladoja. “It's been an onslaught of demand, from clients, from friends, from international orders.” The brand recently started stocking on Industrie Africa, and Ladoja was told to expect 10 to 12 orders a month — that's kind of what their highest sellers get. “They just sent us a report that we had gotten over 60 orders in a month,” she says. “It's always like a surprise, every time we get those numbers.” It’s the same feeling she gets when a brand like Anya Hindmarch approaches the label. “Before they approached us, we had been talking about what kind of brands we wanted to emulate globally and they were put at the top of that list. And so to get a call saying, ‘Hey, I would love to collaborate,’ it was sort of surreal to us.’’

From a young age, Ladoja has always been interested in fashion, design, and the process of design in particular. ‘‘I was more interested in putting things together, not necessarily the style element of it, but the construction, the process of it.’’ Her favorite designers — the likes of Miuccia Prada, Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, and Alexander McQueen — are all designers who focus on intelligent fashion, and the purpose behind every design choice they make. These influences are what interested Ladoja in fashion when she was in university.

She started a brand in the late 2000s, observing how many of her peers shopped, noting that at the time, online shopping wasn’t as readily available as it is today and that many Nigerians didn’t trust the few online stores that did exist mostly. For many, shopping meant sellers had to come into their places of work or buyers had to rush to stores after work. ‘‘I recognised how people were shopping,’’ Ladoja says. ‘‘And it was always someone bringing a suitcase into the office and everyone going through it, or running down to the market to see what they could buy.” It made Ladoja think: people should be able to shop in nicer environments than this. That was the start of Grey Projects, a high-end retail brand in the vein of Zara that stocked ready-to-wear fashion pieces created with Africans in mind.

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But in 2019, a decade after launching the brand, Ladoja had to shut down Grey Projects. Sourcing supplies in Nigeria was difficult and even when she would get the supplies, finished products would often sit in warehouses, going to waste. She learned that working with local tailors to recreate her designs, which were often foreign to them, was a Herculean task that only led to more surplus items. Closing the business left her not wanting to be involved in fashion ever again. ‘‘I just felt like I had just been scarred too much,” she says, “and there was too much trauma there.’’

Instead, Ladoja turned her focus to consulting, working behind the scenes for brands like Lagos Fashion Week. Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened and the world stopped for a second; as did Ladoja’s consulting work. She needed to find another source of income. ‘‘The resources I had were my tailors, access to fabric, fabric markets, and suppliers,’ she says.’

Yet Ladoja was resistant to the idea of launching a brand. Instead, she searched for a retailer to house and sell what she had created, agbada kaftans that took inspiration from traditional Yoruba styles and dyeing processes. ‘‘Unfortunately, at that point, none of the retailers wanted to buy it, which was a shame,’ she says. Ladoja then took to teasing the product herself, wearing it on Zoom meetings and around friends, who started saying, ‘Oh, I want to buy it.’

The interest grew organically, so much so that Dye Lab soon had a strong enough customer base and a distinct enough style for Ladoja to launch the brand. Armed with the lessons from Grey Projects, she took the leap. This time around, Ladoja sought to do everything differently. She rearranged the structure of her brand, and focused on making sure everything in the production process was accessible and easy. ‘‘I broke down everything that I didn't like about Grey [Projects], and used that to create Dye Lab,” she says. “The garments we made with Grey were my designs, but they were very complicated for my tailors. So I decided 'm not going to do that. I'm going to create styles and use styles that are familiar to my tailors. That way everybody can feel comfortable.’’

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Taking the lessons learnt from Grey Projects to Dye Lab seeped into every part of Ladoja’s new brand, right down to the approach to fashion week. For the 2022 Lagos Fashion Week, where other brands were showcasing their designs on the runway, Dye Lab chose to invite select guests and press for a special exhibition where they got to see the garment-making process of the brand, educating them on the history of the fabric, techniques and the people behind it all. ‘‘With Grey Projects, I was importing Westernized ideas of fashion into a space that just did not connect with,’’ Ladoja says. ‘‘With Dye Lab, I said, let me go back; let me work with what is here; let me respond to what the people around me want, what works.’’

Now, Ladoja is focusing on expanding the world of Dye Lab. She reminds me that Dye Lab is first a ‘design brand’ and not just a fashion brand, which means there are limitless options when it comes to expanding. “I'm quite impatient to innovate and do more, or bring out all the ideas in my head,” says Ladoja. “However, just the garment production has taken such a toll, especially as we are trying to keep up with the demand.” Ladoja’s vision is to take the ideology and the conceptualization process from fashion to lifestyle products, furniture, stationery and everyday objects.

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