Maphorisa Reminisces About The Time Radio Didn’t Want To Play His Track With Wizkid. Themba Sonnyboy Sekowe, popularly known by his stage name DJ Maphorisa, is a South African record producer, DJ and vocalist. Today, he has worked with African giants and international stars including Drake, Wizkid, Burna Boy and more.
Maphorisa took to social media to reminisce about the time radio didn’t want to play his track ‘Soweto baby’ featuring Wizkid. The star mentioned how confused he was however, he did not give up. Maphorisa said he now doesn’t really care if radio plays his tracks or not, because he’s a top charting artist with four of his tracks on top 20 chart. See post:
Maphorisa has been in the music industry for quite a while now, today he has become a pioneer of SA’s biggest genre, amapiano. Speaking on what motivated him to invest in piano, th star said: “With my gigs, I wanted to understand people’s reactions to this new sound because amapiano was underground. What really sparked my interest in the genre was that, at the time, I was looking to get into something that originated in South Africa. Amapiano is part of kwaito and dance music. When I started working with Afrobeats, which hails from Western Africa, I felt that we didn’t have a sound that strongly represented South Africa. When I started paying close attention to amapiano, I knew that this was a sound that would take South Africa to the world. There’s a lot that you can do with amapiano — you can make it soulful, funky, dusty and hard or jazz it up.”
Phori said he has a way of making songs blow and reach a wider audience, “How it usually happens is that we’ll either do an ordinary or exclusive mix, then publish it. People start paying attention to it — some music bloggers will distribute it on their blogs, websites and YouTube channels. That’s generally how our songs start growing. This usually helps us measure a track’s potential because, the truth of the matter is that, we have a lot of songs but not all of them are going to be massive hits. There’s a trend to this thing! Most songs that made it big were because someone posted a video of, either, myself or Kabza DJing or dancing to it. Social media dance challenges also help songs blow up. Lastly, a big shout out to TikTok for always putting us on,” he explained.
