Kwesta Opens Up About His Collaboration With Kabza De Small. Senzo Brikka Vilakazi known professionally as Kwesta, is a South African rapper and songwriter. Born in Katlehong, Gauteng, a township also known as “K1”. In 2003, at the age of 15, he and his friends formed a rap group Ghetto Fellaz which then changed to The Juvenylz, same year.
Kwesta says he’s taking it back to basics. This body of work is personal for both of them, he says. This new album got him out of a dark zone and got him closer to the positive space. The time and the environment created in the studio made him focus on the bigger picture.“I was in a place of joy and wasn’t pulled back by all those things because I had this release. Even before we started working on this album, I have a studio set up in the house, I record and write, with a lot of those stressful moments captured in my home studio. I didn’t want to put that out to the public yet because I intentionally wanted to get myself into a good spirit and this album was a perfect vice for that,” he said.
The Hip Hop star said the album is a collaborative effort between him and Kabza. He says their whole idea was to give back to Kwaito and experiment with the sound. They didn’t want to do something obvious where he raps in an Amapiano beat, or Kabza makes a hip-hop beat. “We wanted to find our happy place in music and when we spoke, we realised that we both have a love for Kwaito, the township.”
They wanted to make music that reflects where they grew up and they are two guys who love kwaito and music. “This is a very intentional and personal project because you won’t find just one song of kwaito but the whole album is a kwaito album.”
Kwesta says before making music with Kabza, they’d only met once and the conversation they had was that one day they will work together in the studio and do magic together. They’ve now formed a strong brotherhood. They first got to know each other outside of music and found out that they have a lot of things in common.“The reason why we ended up heading to the studio was when we realised how well we get along. We found out that we are almost the same person, we share the same values, background, and beliefs, and then the studio part was very easy and organic because we clicked without the music,” he says.
