Sometime in 2023, a veteran colleague popped up at the studio where <a href="https://absafricatv.com/us-to-drop-south-africa-rwanda-from-duty/" title="US to drop <a href="https://absafricatv.com/us-to-suspend-south-africa-and-rwanda-from-duty/" title="US to suspend South Africa and Rwanda from duty”>South Africa, Rwanda from duty”>South African rapper Tyson Sybateli was putting finishing touches to his mixtape, Present. As is customary, Sybateli played the older artist some songs off the project, but the feedback he got was confounding. “It’s not that he said the songs were bad, he was just saying stuff like, ‘You have to be adaptable,’ because I was doing a lot of rapping on the tape,” Sybateli tells OkayAfrica.
At that time, Sybateli had just gotten signed to Sound African Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment Africa, and Present was his first release on that deal. For an artist who had been grinding independently for years prior, working within a major label system exposed him to how much commercial expectations dictated creativity. Sybateli’s colleague, signed to the same label and with several big hit songs to his name, believed he was giving the best advice in a terrain where rap artists often need to lean into amapiano or whatever’s popping for crossover appeal. Perhaps the message would’ve been better suited for another artist.
