He was discovered while hustling as a busker on the streets. After a video of him singing went viral, he was headhunted by DJ Maphorisa.
Within no time, they were working on an album in 2021. Unfortunately, the album wasn’t released.
Philadlozi Mfekayi tells Drum that he’s had issues on the business side of music.
He has, however, released an EP called ‘Ekhaya koMama’ which earned him a South African Music Awards nomination in the Best Afro Pop Album category this year.
Speaking about the project, he says each song tells a chapter of his story and his experiences.
With Badimo, in which he featured DJ Maphorisa and Boohle, he talks to how things are not going well and are in need of ancestral intervention while Ekhaya ko Mama touches on what's happening, ancestrally at home.
In the rest of the EP, the Afropop singer brings in the beauty of love and working hard.
“Everyone is working hard but sometimes it gets hard to a point where you feel like giving up, but you also need to give yourself that little motivation,” he says.
Read More | Philadlozi Mfekayi – from busking in the streets to working on a new album
“You fail today, you wake up tomorrow, and you try again until you get it right. I was not about to give up at all. And I had always believed it was going to happen. You know, it might not be now, but in the near future, it's going to happen.”
The pair is still working on the album in the background.
In the meantime, he still busks in the streets to fulfill himself.
“It will always be a part of me, even when I'm a Grammy winning artist. I also go back to small places where there are people who know who I really am and just connect with them with my music. Street busking will always be a part of me. I don't think I'll ever leave it because that's where I see people getting life from what I say, what I sing gives me life.”
Now that he is a signed songwriter and singer, he doesn’t do it for the money but to give back to the people who live on the streets as he was once one of them.
“When I go to the street, I give back half of what I make, I give it back to the people that are on the street especially in Randburg. There are blind people there next to where I play so when, when I'm done, whatever I made, I give them half of what I made.”
Being a simplistic homebody, he adds that he doesn’t need a lot of money to survive, and his music sales are enough to keep him afloat.
Read More | How singing gave Khokho Madlala a voice, long before she could speak
With his recent single titled Impilo, the 24-year-old musician says he dissected societal issues.
“It’s just inspired by things that happen in the society. Most women right now don't date you because they love you. They date you because of what you can provide for them. So most relationships are about women right now and what they want and what they desire.
“If you can't buy them an expensive iPhone. If you can't buy them a weave, if you can't take them to expensive dates, if you can’t fund a girl's getaway trips, she doesn't want you. They don't care how much you make, can you afford to fund that lifestyle,” he adds.
Acknowledging that women do like nice things; he also says that the essence of love in this generation has changed.
When he writes his songs, he draws inspiration from the experiences of those around him more than he does from his own.
“I don't write songs. I don't know how to write a song. I've never written a song in my life. All the songs that I have done, it's songs that come to me randomly. It's either I'm in the car driving somewhere, or I'm just sitting, and then I just doze off, and then it comes, you know. Or maybe I'm listening to a song and then it's going to just inspire me to think about something else that is most likely to be similar to what I was listening to that time.”
