Exclusive: K.O speaks about Teargas, Cashtime Life, Cassper Nyovest, AKA, Vanessa Mdee, Nahreel and Diamond (Video)

South African rapper, Ntokozo Mdluli, popularly known by his stage name, K.O is in Dar es Salaam as part of his East African media tour. He will stay for two days before heading to Nairobi, Kenya this Wednesday. He also sat with Bongo5’s Head of Content, Fredrick ‘Skywalker’ Bundala to talk about several subjects. Watch the interview below.

On whether Cashtime Life will sign artist outside South Africa

Vanessa Mdee somehow is indirectly a Cashtime Life representer, shout out to Vanessa. We will actually like to do some stuff with some of the guys from the continent, we always looking out for new and exciting talents it doesn’t necessarily have to be hip hop.

We just picked up a kid in South Africa, he is an R&B artists, I can’t wait for the world to hear him. We are actually looking for anything that’s jumping, something that we know can help expand our reach as far as the company is doing. So we might pick up someone hear in Tanzania, you never know!

On how he reacted when Cassper Nyovest called him out after he was crowned MTV’s SA Hottest MC last year (I done made a mil trying to f*ck Minnie… I’m cool with number 2 coz I’m richer than number one)

He didn’t call me out on anything because if he had called me out maybe I would have felt the need to react and do something about it. He just said something which could have made him feel like he was above everyone else.

But a couple of days later he apologised on Twitter so I respect him for that. And we just continuing building, we don’t necessarily promote any of all that crazy stuff because for us our main calling is music and just doing all these great things and building. But beef and tension is part of the culture, hip hop is ego and all kind of things. And I am not going to lie to you that me and some of these guys are buddies, it’s a real situation but it’s not on like F you, F that type of type of situation but you keep your distance but as long as you are not messing with my bread and I am not messing with your situation, we can just continue hustling and and doing what we do, so I know my lane, they know their lane.

But we always encourage the spirit of unity and just building. Unfortunately in South Africa hip hop like only started taking international stage last year and for us to be so divided amongst ourselves where we are actually just a fraction of the market is counterproductive. I am just arguing or the brothers even beyond South Africa let’s just stay together and continue to make this money and taking the culture to the next level.

On whether he is going to record a collaborative album with AKA

I can’t actually say much about that right now, people have been calling for it and I think if it does happen it will be a game changing. We have been talking about different things we want to do together and people just need to watch the space and you will never know, we might just messing around and drop a movie…

On working with Vanessa Mdee

I met her actually when we were doing the whole Teargas thing . I think we were in Nigeria a couple years ago, 2010 or whatever. Just her energy, her presence just her charisma it just says a lot just where she comes from and I didn’t actually know if she was an artist back then because she was still working for MTV.

Fast forward a couple of years later I see her video on TV and I am like ‘okay cool so this is what cracking out there.’ And she reached out to me last year saying ‘yoo we wanna to something and eventually this year it happened.

We were in the studio with Nahreel, shout out to Nahreel the producer. We bumped to couple of beats and that’s one record that I felt like me and her could connect properly from an artistic perspective and I’m just happy it came out the way it did. We actually shot the video like two days later.

Interesting thing in the studio the intro that I do on the record in Swahili they had to ghost write the whole situation for me, some Quentin Miller and for the first time someone wrote something for me which is beautiful. I mean I couldn’t pull that off so they actually helped me with the pronunciation to get the diction right. I saw the response on social media, people were like ‘your Swahili is so good’ I am like we do this right here, I am an African at the end of the day, I just wanna learn more and more about the beautiful continent that we are living in and I am hoping that I could learn even more Swahili and get to do more stuff with some of the guys out here and continue representing.

On working with Nahreel on his upcoming projects

He [Nahreel] sent me some fire beats, I actually played them for AKA. We are planning to jump on one of the beats that he sent through.

Hopefully on my next album I can have one of two records by the homie and while I am out here probably I am gonna reach out to him and see if he can get more stuff because I just like the fact that his beats are different from what I usually jump on. They don’t sound like American beats, they don’t sound like South African beats, they just sound like something really crazy, like special from different part of the world.

On whether he will record songs with other Tanzanian artists

Yes, we always trying to create new relations and expanding our reach. When I am out hear just depending on how thing play out. I actually have a meet and greet later tonight with some other artists which is beautiful and we will see what emanates from there. But I have had conversation with the likes of Joh Makini hopefully we can do something. Diamond is always in South Africa. Last time I spoke to him was at the MAMAs a couple of months ago in Durban, so let’s see how that relationship works out but I would love to do some stuff with him as well.