A chain is an ambivalent symbol. Its connotation is solely dependent on how the person who owns it chooses to use it. It can represent linkage and reinforcement; the intention to build and strengthen, as it did in many Communist images in history. Or, as in the case of slavery, it can represent confinement, shackling and restriction of freedom. One could say that this is the state of limbo in which this industry finds itself today while trying to forge an identity. As the local hip hop community, in our journey of discovery, we (the audience/consumers) will always have the power to determine what we use our metaphorical chains for.
iFani is a man who has had to resist the entanglement of these chains from day one. For starters, as a hip hop artist, you don’t just put on massive Steve Urkel frames and
sport a loud bowtie and a cane, get in front of a camera, entertain thousands of people, make a fortune doing it and not expect to attract a swarm of disgruntled comments from ‘real hip hoppers’. No way. At least he warned us. His rap moniker (iFani: a Xhosa term meaning ‘not the same’ and also a phonetic pun because it is pronounced ‘I-funny’, referring to his jovial persona) is about as literal a description of himself as anyone could give you, and a prophetic omen of the main themes that have come to define the rapper’s counter-flow relationship with the music and the industry. Where does one even begin? This guy is weird,man. Refreshingly weird. Not ‘comes-off-as-anice-guy but-ends-up-on-an-episode-of-Carte Blanche-for-hoarding-human-body-parts-inhis-fridge’ weird. First of all, he is early for our appointment, which everyone knows is a violation of the first chamber of the unwritten rules of rappers charter. It’s just after 11am and iFani is wolfing down a Steers burger as we make our way to the location in the Vaal, south of Johannesburg. He explains that he hadn’t gotten a chance to eat because he woke up extremely early to shoot an episode of Takalani Sesame (yes, the educational kiddies show with all the weird puppets).
I chuckle because I think it’s a joke but my laughs are not reciprocated and instead returned with a deafening silence which speaks louder than any explanation could have and makes me realise that he is being very serious. Those are the kinds of situations one finds oneself in when one is presumptuous about what is acceptable for rappers and what isn’t and then you encounter a guy who doesn’t give a f*ck about precedence. “You know, Mizi is the reason there’s an iFani today. It’s crazy ‘cause when he called me to tell me I was picked for the HYPE Sessions CD, I was working in the south; and I’m on my first HYPE cover now and we’re on our way to the south so this is crazy right here.” The Mizi he is referring to is of course the former editor of HYPE who iFani credits for being one of his first believers. He is basking in nostalgia as we enter the highway and he wins his battle against a mouthful of beef and starch to belch out the rest of the anecdote. “My friend had submitted my song to Mizi but it was not being used. And then The Naked DJ chose it out of a pool of songs and Mizi asked him ‘why are you choosing this song when it’s been here for so long and every other DJ has rejected it?’ He (Naked DJ) was like, ‘Yo’ this is gonna be the next big thing, trust me.’ So then Mizi called me up and told me. And when C-live heard it, he played it on his show. So he was pretty much the first DJ to play my song on the radio. And the rest, as they say, is history.” Only that it’s not just ‘history’. Unless every time someone says ‘the rest is history’ it means that between the situation they just explained and their current situation, they were paralysed in hospital for a month, got their car stolen, got kidnapped by thugs, lost a record deal with Sony Music, and were embezzled out of R200,000 of their hard-earned money by their publisher. Then yes, it’s just ‘history’.
At what point did you realise that this was all possible?
I think with everything that happened in the past four years, most people would’ve given up somewhere along the way. I knew there was no other option after my accident. I was in hospital for three weeks and you’ve got a lot of time to think when you’re in bed and you can’t walk. You have nothing else to do but think. I thought it all through there and knew exactly what I was going to do. I didn’t know how, but I knew what it is I wanted to do and that was to make music. I never once doubted it after that.
What happened exactly?
I had a car accident on my way to Durban back in 2010. The car flipped and landed way off the road. I was in hospital for about a month. Nurses had to change me, feed me and bath me. It was crazy. My spinal cord was fractured,
probably still is. So yeah. I’m glad I can walk, let alone jump on stag.
That’s pretty hectic. This was before or after?
the hi-jacking? Before. That happened about a year or so after. When the car accident happened I hadn’t recorded anything. I wasn’t too serious about the music, it was just joints I was making for the boys, you know? The hi-jacking was crazy because it happened during a time when I was just starting to gain momentum and my song was playing on the radio and everything.
There were a lot of different reports on that incident. What exactly went down?
I was watching Live on SABC 1 and Pro was launching his album Continua. I’d always been a fan of his and was thinking that there’s no way I was missing it. So I switched the TV off, got in the car and left for Sedibeng in Soweto where the launch was happening and parked the car. I needed to pee but the toilets were so far. There was a tree right next to where I parked so I went to it and that was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. That’s when three guys pulled up with guns in my face and they took me with the car. (He pauses.) MY GOLF 6 GTI!
I remember that car. You gave me a ride once from Teargas’ event in December of 2011.
Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, they had three guns to my face. I knew I was gonna die that
day, as far as I was concerned. We drove for a while and then we stopped in the fields somewhere. They took me out the car, head covered in a bag so I couldn’t see anything and during that walk I made peace with the fact that they were going to kill me. And through what seemed like the longest moment of my life (but
was really a short walk), all I could think about was my ‘Chocolate & Vanilla’ video which I’d shot on the same day as the ‘Ewe’ video a year before. I mean I went to the trouble of shooting it. It’s done and it’s on my computer. If I could only just tell someone so that they could drop it after my funeral or something. That was my biggest frustration and all I was thinking about in that moment.
Damn. So you escaped or…?
They left me tied up so I had no idea that they had left. Only when I started hearing the sound of traffic from a distance, I started to think that it must be morning. I thought to myself, I will move and at least if they shoot someone will find my body ‘cause they’ll hear the sound of the gun. Finally I got the thing off my eyes and realised there was no one around. I never
recovered the car. The next morning I got up and thought “sh*t, life is way too short.” I shot the video for ‘See Live’ that same day. Of the most obvious different things about the Eastern Cape rapper is his look. And I waste no time in finding out how it originated. His quirky look makes him an easy target for his detractors. With words like ‘gimmick’ and ‘clown’ used to describe him, the accusation of being a one hit wonder crossed everyone’s mind at first. Mainly because when an artist enters the scene with a song that is so massive that it precedes the artist himself, the artist spends the next few moves chasing the popularity of the first single and very seldom manages to get there again. But the steady incline of iFani’s music and exponential credibility as an artist has already proved that his costumes are the only thing funny about him.
In fact, iFani is an actual scientist by profession. Not an experimental scientist like Einstein or anything (although the hairstyle suggests otherwise) but he did spend a couple of years in university obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree and the subsequent years after that in a lab holding down a nine-to-five. And he insists that his time in class back then forms the foundation for what he does in the booth today.
I think it’s fair to say that because of your flamboyant get-up, it’s sometimes hard for people to view you as a ‘real’ MC because it’s so different to what people expect from rappers.
People underestimate my rhymes ‘cause of my look. I go deep. I go really deep. It doesn’t help that I rhyme in Xhosa and it can be a little difficult to keep up with what I’m saying. I always felt like I wanted the music to be a mirror reflection of me. I’m educated. I can’t and won’t run away from that. I graduated. It’s who I am. So when I craft my rhymes, I want people to not just enjoy the music but also recognise that there’s a level of intellect that has been applied to these lyrics. There was a thought process involved. I can’t be like ‘Pop champagne! Pop champagne!’ There’s no thought process involved in that.
You have to tell us about your sense of style. Settle it once and for all.
It’s a crazy story. At the time I was doing mixtapes. I had just shot my own video for
‘Ewe’ and sent it to Channel O and Live on SABC 1. They rejected it. Everywhere I
went everyone said no to it. And I was like “F*ck! There is no way I’m letting this go. I have to get the video out for this song. This is the song that is
gonna blow up, why won’t they see this?” Then I saw Maraza’s video for ‘One Foot in the
Game’ on Channel O and thought maybe they just wanted a different type
of video. So I it up Maraza and he told me Chris Green
What was the nature of the deal you signed with them?
It was a licensing and management deal. My biggest problem at the time was like: “listen guys, I’m bringing the music already done. ‘Shake’ had just kicked Mafikizolo’s ‘Khona’ off the number one spot on the charts. I don’t have any gigs coming in. I’ve been with you for months and the only gig you got me was in January and all I got was R1,500.” I was a man in debt. I had minus R60,000, I had nothing, so I needed to get work and these guys weren’t making it happen. I was impatient. Eventually they said “f*ck you, iFani. We can’t deal with people like you” and I was cool with that.
And at what point did Dreamteam Talent come by?
Coincidentally almost immediately after that deal went down the drain, Refiloe (Ramagase – also manager of Khuli Chana, Ms Cosmo, Kabelo Mabalane and more) hit me up on some “who’s managing you?” I was like, damn if he only knew the drama I’d just been through. So we spoke and he said “sort your ish out with Sony. In the meantime, I’ll give you these five gigs.” He was the first to give me gigs. I mean REAL gigs that didn’t pay in peanuts and I wasn’t even signed to him at the time. I was like, wow. I went and did those gigs and after I came back, he told me that as soon as Sony released me on paper, I could come to Dreamteam. Two months later, Sony gave me those papers and I was out of there. It was bananas after that. Strawberries. Peaches and pears.
With a career that looks like a colourful bowl of the juiciest fruit of his labour, this is a man reaping what he’s sowing, one hit at a time.