Watch! Mellow & Sleazy Break Down How Their 2021 Smash Hit “Bopha” Came About. Not only are Mellow (Phemelo Sefanyetse) and Sleazy (Olebogeng Kwanaite) a duo, but they are also friends whose friendship grew when they discovered they both had a passion for music. They have not looked back since they made it big with the single that launched their career, Bopha.
Mellow and Sleazy broke down how their 2021 hit single ‘Bopha’ came about and the process. “We use Fruity Loops to produce our songs because of its accessibility and because it is easy to collaborate with it. I would start the beat, then Felo adds some stuff, then Phori finishes it; and in the end, it’s dope,” Mellow said.
Speaking on how Young Stunna added his verse, the duo said Young Stunna found the beat complete and he only took two minutes to add his verse and make it a complete song. In the clip, the duo breaks down how their smash 2021 hit “Bopha” came out. The song, which employs their signature hybrid style, has proven to be a success as it has achieved platinum selling status.
Another track of theirs, the Ch’cco-assisted viral hit “Nkao Tempela” has amassed millions of streams. However, when the song dropped in November 2021, social media was split between loving it, and confusion — mainly because of its unorthodox approach and style. Many defenders of the song attributed the hate to people not understanding Sepitori (Pretorian lingo) and Pitori culture and sound. During that time, Mellow & Sleazy even tweeted, “Nkao Tempela is basically a bacardi track with a hip hop broer trapping on it.” The “ko morago / ko morago / ko morago / hayi ko morago” lyric in the song’s intro references yet another old school Pretorian track, DJ Strongbow’s “Ko Morago.”
“Rekere, nkwari, you can choose what you call it,” Sleazy revealed in a video for Boiler Room and Ballantine’s True Music Deconstructedseries, after Robot Boii tells them that they almost have their own [sub]genre of ‘piano. “I don’t know how this sound was created, but it’s a sound from Pretoria. It’s that particular sound. If you come from Pretoria, you know that sound. You hear it and then you lose your morals, you just go crazy.”
