We had the pleasure of attending Cassper Nyovest’s #FillUpTheDome press conference this morning and Nyovest, who has been relatively passive with the media for some time, was an open book. Seriously, at one time after being asked (by one of our spicy but trusted reporters) to address the AKA beef he literally said: “I’m surprised you guys aren’t really going in on me with these questions.” From the details of the album to the big day 31 October, here are the 10 most important things we learned from the press conference.
1. #FillUpTheDome is about Cassper Nyovest, Family Tree and no-one else. After being asked more about the line-up on the day of the concert, Cassper had this to say: “I didn’t wanna add a bunch of people to the line-up because I didn’t want to take away from what this is about.” Riky elaborated: “It’s about time that we as artists take back the power and start throwing our own gigs. I haven’t learned a single thing from performing at these concerts where there are 30 people on the line-up. All we do is perform and leave.”
2. Cassper’s team advised him against releasing #Dust2Dust but he felt he had to do it to stand up for himself. Nyovest explained that he and his entourage are peaceful people and his closest friend Carpore (featured on Slyza Totsi) even tried to discourage him from doing it the day before releasing his diss track. But after being slapped, threatened with gun violence and causing him to lose relationships with peers, he felt it was time to respond. 
3. Cassper is not making a dime of money from #FillUpTheDome. According to Nyovest, the price of pulling off his production is a whopping R4.8 million and even if he fills the venue to capacity, he will be making a loss. He also added that the reason he is still going through with it is because it’s more about “changing the way people do things and giving South African music the platform it deserves.”
4. Cassper is not a fan of AKA’s song ‘SimDope.’ While explaining that AKA was a worthy competitor in the rivalry, Nyovest suggested in passing that SimDope was an average effort compared to the songs AKA has been producing in order to stay afloat in the storm that is the two rappers’ on-going tussle.
5. Cassper is not scared of AKA, or anyone else for that matter. After Cassper released #Dust2Dust attacking AKA’s character, it was rumoured that beefed up his security in fear of being murked by any of the Supermega’s affiliates. Nyovest says this is not true.
6. #FillUpTheDome is 4000 tickets away from being a sold out show. Seeing as the average capacity of the venue is 20k give-or-take, it is a pretty impressive feat that 16k tickets have already been sold.
7. The beef is making Cassper Nyovest and AKA extremely rich. When asked if there was any part of him that was profiting from the beef, Cassper directly responded: “It’s making me A LOT of money.” He also added that he would’ve preferred not have been in this position but since he is, he might as well make it work in his favour.
8. There is a high probability that his album tracklist will be revealed this week.
9. Cassper thinks AKA is an amazing artist who has helped to push him to be the best he can be
10. #FillUpTheDome is sponsored by AG Mobile and BP.
Check out the photos below.
