Watch! Vigro Deep Reveals He Used To Sell Weed In High School. Born in Atteridgeville, Pretoria, Kamogelo Phetla actually started music with the goal of being a rapper. In 2018, while watching his dad, a founder of the Godfathers of Deep House collective, compose music on Fruity Loops, he decided to give it a try with the genre making waves in his school: amapiano. Four years later, the apprentice has become a pillar in his country and has earned the respect of global electronic music superstars such as Skrillex or DJ Snake.
After Vigro Deep dropped his debut project Baby Boy, the success of the project meant that he was gigging more and going to school less as he could not manage to do both simultaneously someone had to go and that was school. He spoke on his experience in high school and selling weed. “I think I was 17 when I was selling weed in high school, and I would make like R1000 per week. But I feel bad for selling weed at school though,” he shared.
His sound is not the mellow and loungy amapiano you will play to relax on a Sunday; based on ultra-dark chords, tense and nervous melodies, shocking breaks and powerful sub-bass, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear it in a Berlin underground club or at the Dour alternative music festival. His latest album, Far Away From Home (2021), released following the “Baby Boy” project series, aptly named, leading him to a European tour through Amsterdam, London and all the cities known for appreciating dance music. Fresh from a gig organized by the Amapiano France collective, we had a chat with the South African wonder-kid.
Speaking on his musical upringing, Vigro shared his background growing up and jumping into amapiano. “Actually I never thought of being the person that I am now with amapiano. At that time I was more into hip hop, I was even rapping. What influenced me to this amapiano genre was that at school the sound was banging. They were making a lot of mixtapes back then, one hour projects. You would hear tracks by mixtapes and not by singles, I even discovered Kabza De Small from mixtapes. One day I was at school and they sent me a folder of 17 songs of amapiano, and it took me one day to switch to the genre. Also, regarding gigs, with hip-hop you have to push it, but with amapiano it was going so easy I decided to DJ. In December 2018 I switched to amapiano and I had my first gig the same month. Moved up, pushed and yeah!”
