"I gained respect without demanding it"

A young and talented hip hop artist, N-1, also known as Cape2Cairo, is a singer who believes that he “resides in his rhymes,” which only means that life is meaningless without music.

He resides in Manavhela Village in the Kutama area, but he also previously lived in Thohoyandou J Block, Secunda in Mpumalanga and Mossel Bay in the Western Cape. His birth names are Humbulani Cecil Murulane, and he has so far experimented widely with music at the age of 30.

“Music started in the womb for me – I was born holding a mic,” he said metaphorically. “I listened to grandma sing church hymns all day, every day. Dad played jazz most of the time. Mom was a gospel fanatic and she could sing very well. My brother and I would put it all together. Whether it was blues, soul, or hip hop – we sang it all while growing up! Thus doing chores became music.”

At some stage he was introduced to underground hip hop, and he maintains that hip hop interested him very much. “I had many fellows with whom I mingled – KRS1, Pharaoh Monch, Black Starr, and Hymphatic Thabz showed me it could be done in SA as well,” he said. “I met up with Proverb a while later in my career, and there I realised I was not destined to be another stereotypical rapper. In the music industry, I gained respect without demanding it.”

Everywhere he went, he carried the Tshivenda culture in his walk, talk, dress code and humble attitude. “So I guess it started at birth – this love for music,” he said.

So far, N-1 has released a mix-tape, Class, a number of singles and has also featured in numerous projects by other artists in South Africa and abroad.

“I had a crew called Mic Lords,” he said. “Most of my music touches on current affairs, educating the youth and directly talking to leaders about world issues and politics,” he said.

He had worked with Tamara Love in Miami, USA, and many local artists in order to enrich his music. He aspires to turn his music talent into a major business enterprise. He is available on Facebook.

Entertainment - Date: 23 October 2017

Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

Email: [email protected]