Tuesday Music Feature – Qba Nkosi

April 16^th 2014, Wednesday morning. The weather is inviting with its chill, semi-grey mood and birds chirping. I’m in Newtown at Sofiatown patiently waiting for Qba as I prepare myself for our interview. So to illustrate the scene I thought, what better way to do it but by spontaneously whipping out my laptop and start typing; the joys of being a reporter huh?

While contemplating my order, within minutes of my arrival, she (Qba) arrives, in a pair of white and black, stripped leggings, navy blue boots, a black turban and a large beige jacket. She had on really cool rings and a natural coloured nail polish. We greet one another with warm hugs, and attempt finding a balmy venue for our interview. We leave Sofiatown and finally find a place near Bassline.

We engaged in quite a profound conversation about our lives, careers and ‘deep’ experiences that played a part as an intro to our extended dialogue. And this is what went down…

Angela Nimah: Tell us about Qba - Who is she?

Qba: I think I’m many things. I’m different women at different times. I was born in a small town in Mpumalanga, Bethal, and I grew up as a single child, raised by a single mother. My siblings were way older than me; my sister and brother were already in college when I grew up with my mom and grand-mom.

My mother was a really strong character then, she was headmaster of a school and she was strict; she was iron lady, she was a single woman, you know. She was in a town she moved to later in life so she had to prove herself because she was in this leadership position in school and in church and everything so uhm I grew up with that; in that mode that I cannot disappoint my mother; whatever I do the community is just ready to jump and say she failed, she can’t do it, who does she think she is?

So I’ve always been that kind of child; I was always a performer, I was an academic at school, I performed, I did sports, I was in the netball team, you know, public speaking I was always performing and all of this was motivated by the fact that I didn’t want to disappoint my mom because I was scared of her. I know I loved my mom, I respected her but I know I was scared of my mom. Even in the community they were scared of her, in the schools, boys, teachers, all of them were like, yoh! She was iron lady at that time.

So I have that background whereby I always had to excel. I did a lot of stuff in my teenage years. And then eventually I was in a hip hop space in Jo’burg, because I moved to Jo’burg after matric; I was coming to WITS and that’s when I discovered the whole hip hop community. I’ve always been interested in music when I was home in a small town where there wasn’t the culture or anything; it was the stuff that was on radio. I’d rap, write people’s raps and that’s what I used to do… yeah! I told you I have a tendency to kind of ramble LOL

What I’m trynna describe is that I’m different people at different times. When I’m home, for me it’s a matter of that’s my mother’s place, I am her child there, I’m a different person, I’m a mother also; I’ve got two kids now and I’m also a crazy hip hop head, crazy fashion person, I’m a model, I run events as well, so like I have to take up different characters for all the things that I do. With the events for instance I’m in a corporate environment, where we do business seminars, I’m also very much in love with the arts, I’m in the arts, I’m active in the arts and within that space I’m an artist as well.

Angela Nimah: When did your career in music start?

Qba: My career started in 2007, because before that I had been participating within the hip hop space in open mic sessions, I was in cyphers with a few khats, we were rough, raggedy-wild shxt, you know? It was dope, it was when I was really discovering hip hop and the different aspects of it and it was unapologetic hip hop!

I wouldn’t say that we actually had a music career in mind; we were just doing what we loved; we loved performing, we loved writing, it was competitive, it was all about cyphers. We had the doppest lyrics, the doppest scripts, we were like playing with words, coming up with punch lines, and it was just about all of that. We didn’t know that that we wanted to make money from music or that there was actually gonna be money in music. Because I was in varsity and I was also struggling with that and as soon as I stepped into Jo’burg I realised that I didn't know shxt about who I was. I was this naïve little girl who came from a very protective environment, sheltered from the actual realities of the world. Because as much as I come from the ghetto, a township, it was nothing like what I saw here; the levelsof poverty, the classes that are actually out there in the world.

Angela Nimah: How has the shift affected your life musically and personally?

Qba: Nowadays I’m very shy to call myself a revolutionary but it made me radical. I became very radical to levels of bitterness. I felt betrayed; I felt like I had been lied to about who I was and what my standpoint is in the world as a young girl, as a black girl, as a youth in South Africa, this was in the early 2000s and I felt like everything was a lie and that this idea of the rainbow nation, that we have hope and all of that and that we are going to come out of this victorious, it felt like it was really all a lie.

Angela Nimah: Do you still feel that way?

Qba: To a certain extent ,yes but I have hope, I do have hope now, I really have changed my perspective in terms of who’s responsible for your life, and I now believe that you are responsible for your life, you really are responsible for your own life. It’s not your parents, it’s not the government, it’s not your friends, it’s not your education that’s gonna save you. You are going to save yourself, it’s about a mind shift and a decision that you need to make with yourself and say that this is what I wanna do and this is what I’m going to do and to really action in all the things you wish to do for yourself.

Because I mean we have so many things that we want to do and beautiful, beautiful dreams, I mean like, you know… a lot of people, in fact I think everybody has some kind of talent, some kind of gift that they can use but it’s all in the action, and that is not a simple thing. Often people say: “you say you wanna do it, just do it” - but you have to action in what you think. Teach yourself how to take action because it doesn’t just happen. 

I’ve found that I’ve wasted a lot of my time dreaming as well, because it’s good to dream but you need to initiate and stop depending on anybody! It starts with you.

Angela Nimah: How would you describe your relationship with hip hop, I know you’ve said a lot already but how would you further describe it?

Qba: Hip Hop is my vehicle, it’s my clothes LOL it brings me to the world; it’s my entry point into the world because through hip hop I have a voice, I have excess to like-minded people who I feel can relate to me and can accept me for who I am. I can be who I am through hip hop. Like I said I’m a mother, I’m model, I’m a lyricist, I’m a performer…

I can be all of those things within the hip hop space. But every other place I have to censor myself, I have to be like I am now in a business seminar, we are dealing with international speakers and I am corporate. LOL 

But then in hip hop if I want to talk about the corporate and running events or whatever, I can take up that persona; I can be that, because I am that already, and whether or not somebody likes it or doesn’t like it, I don’t give a shxt, this is what I’m doing right now and this is what’s going on in my head and this is what I’d like to share with people.

Angela Nimah: Tell us a bit more about Get Bred Entertainment. What's all that about?

Qba: Get Bred as in ‘to breed yourself’, to become the best that you can be, but it also has a play on words; get bread as in get money, but that’s like, for me, to get bread or to get money or to get wealth; whatever it is will be able to take care of with the other things you want to do.

Angela Nimah: So wealth of the heart, wealth of the mind, of the spirit…?

Qba:  Yes. So you need to breed yourself to become the best you!

Angela Nimah: How are you finding the crowd or rather the people here different from the crowd/people in MP?

Qba: The crowd in MP is not really exposed to hip hop in a sense that they are just like how I was when I was there, just exposed to it through radio and TV and are not in a community where people want to discover other people in the world, the culture, what kind of lives they live, and the other kinds of art that hip hop people are involved in. So for them they cannot understand when you say you are a hip hop person, unless they are really ‘heads’.

I mean there’s a need for music and people at home will go to shows. If they know that there is a performer or an artist who is coming from Jo’burg or anywhere else, they have very limited excess to entertainment, so they are a good crowd because they are very receptive, they appreciate it because it’s always new to them.

Angela Nimah: Do you ever feel the need to perform at a peak to try to impress your crowd, your fans, people who love your music?

Qba:Yo! For me it’s like… I feel like this is a cliché because a lot of artists have expressed this before; but something like when they are on stage a character comes out. I’ve even gotten to a point where I actually believe that my brother who died he was a toddler when he died so he didn’t get a chance to live; he was gonna be about two years younger than me. I don’t know, I had this epiphany one time when I got on stage it was at Street Pop, and I was like that wasn’t me when I was on stage, that was Bonginkosi; you know, that was my brother, and then it explained so many things because I’m a tomboy, since I was a kid I’ve been a sports person, very agile. I felt like that was the boy in Qba as well. And I’m not just a tomboy, I mean; 

I’m very much a girl. It’s that duality within myself that why I’ve played around with Gutter Butter, The Grey Line ever since I’ve been doing music it was those contradicting sides that I’m always trying to merge.When I’m on stage I’m in full control.

Angela Nimah: You describe yourself as Bold, Fresh and Driven - and it shows.  How important is it for women to embrace themselves and their self-love and self-worth?

Qba: It’s thee most important thing. I’ll say it again, it starts with you! And it starts with you loving yourself, believing in yourself, trusting your instincts, trusting your ideas and not being so judgmental on yourself when you fail. There can be times when you’re on a winning streak and part of the reason why I said I felt so naïve when I came into Jo’burg is because I’ve been this good child, performing and doing sports, until I was confronted with finding myself and I was failing; I was failing in school, I was failing with relations to people at home, I was failing to have a functional life LOL

There were certain aspects I felt were working because I was charged up, learning how to rap, doing it well, meeting new people but there were other sides that were failing. And for a long time I couldn’t cope with that.

But it has taught me that you can’t be a complete human being until you find the duality in balance, you will have pain and pleasure, it’s all part of you and you have to embrace that and not be judgemental towards yourself because you’ll start doubting yourself when you are in teams so you need to trust yourself, but trusting yourself comes from preparation and preparation comes from learning. Listen, read, empower yourself with the things that really make you feel good.

Angela Nimah: Who are some of your best local and international FEMCEES and do you think we have enough females here representing the hip hop scene, tell us why?

Qba: The hip hop scene is grounded by females; and I’m not talking about performers or anything but just that it’s grounded by females. There is no hip hop show that is considered successful with no girls there. So now we as women need to unlearn this grooming that we’ve had since we were little that we are only meant for beautiful… or being just beautiful, I mean we have to be beautiful, we love being beautiful anyway, LOL and what’s more beautiful than a woman? But we have to unlearn the fact that we are not only that because we actually have skills, diverse skills, and not just performers; we are organisers, photographers, film makers, we are visionaries, we can do different things and I think that all of us are influenced by hip hop; so many women are influenced by hip hop and we just  need to acknowledge that it is actually there. Maybe there are not as many performers as the males but that’s because as women we are dynamic.

I do think there are dope female emcees in South Africa, people like Supa, Sky Wonder, I really think they’re dope, Ladies of the mic… and the internationally, there’s the legendary ladies, Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, MC Lyt… but I also think there’s a new breed of female emcees even Nicki Minaj; I actually think that she has a lot of battles to fight because of the image she upholds.

Angela Nimah:How do you remain consistent and relevant?

Qba: I don’t think I would have been one of those artists who are consistent, as artists I guess, consistency means continuously releasing music and consistently being in the public’s eye, uhm… I don’t think I’ve been consistent in that way, but I’ve been consistent in creating music and writing.

Angela Nimah: Who inspires your BUCK looks, I really dig them :)?

Qba: LOL, wow! Buck looks, what are buck looks?

Angela Nimah: BUCK! CRAZY! BOLD!

Qba: The city, just the fashion sense in the city right now is very inspiring, even in MP, people used to call me Brandy, they used to call me Aaliyah… Back in the 90s I was like Boom Shaka, MC Lyt… Salt and Pepper…

Angela Nimah: You've performed at a number of gigs: Johannesburg Stadium, SOWETO FESTIVAL, Street Pop, Back to the city. What can we expect from you this year at BTTC?

Qba: Yo! I’m so excited because I am; first of all, I’m going to host a fashion show, the Back to the City Fashion Show, from 1pm to 2pm. People need to come through, because it’s gonna be killa! That all I can say LOL

I am an A-grade performer, more than a rapper or anything, I consider myself  a performer, so if you wanna see me on stage… sometimes I don’t even like listening to my own tracks but you have to see me live, that’s my thing… so fashion and the main stage as well as Ladies of the \mike. So it’s really gonna be phenomenal.

Angela Nimah: What do you feel you represent in your music within the South African landscape?

Qba:I would say that relentless fight to be yourself and to do what you love, to embrace your contradictions, and just do what it is that you love with all your heart. I represent a youthful energy that has not been taint by uhm, life challenges.

Angela Nimah: In your understanding, what makes a great artist?

Qba: Somebody who’s not afraid; not afraid of change, not afraid to appear weak and wrong, someone who’s bold and brave, uh, to express and challenge people, someone who can affect people. You have to be able to affect a person to be an artist;artists a re there to inspire, to spark. There has to be an impact.

Angela Nimah: Should we expect an album soon, any projects, mix tapes?

Qba:  You should expect something, I’m not gonna say anything, but something very, very soon and regardless… we had a conversation earlier about people on teams that are not pulling their weight, so I’ve decided that I don’t care what’s happening, I’m going to bring  out a project for my fans and people who appreciate music, people who appreciate hip hop, I’m gonna bring out an album, I’m still gonna be working on more music as time goes on, but people should be expecting something very soon.

Angela Nimah: What’s your view on the South African music industry?

Qba: Being in South Africa, being in Africa where we are, our perspective is different in a sense that our music industry, our hip hop music industry has been at infant stage for a while and it is only now where it’s actually getting to a point where it’s like we have something stable here and hip hop is a force to be reckoned with now. 

We can now have hip hop acts at major South African venues. That recognition is now there, but it never really was there and that why hip hop artists have always been one foot in one foot out, trying to see if maybe we should have a back-up plan, if the music doesn’t work maybe I can do this… that is what has stalled most of our progress and I think the young bucks that are coming out now, these born frees they need to really appreciate the journey that has been covered by the artists that came before them, that kept doing it and kept that flame alive where they can go to clubs and say that I am a hip hop act and  actually get paid because they know that hip hop is gonna bring a crowed, it’s got an audience.

Angela Nimah: Where can people find you?

Qba: I’m on Facebook, if they need to get in touch with me about a particular project they can get it at qba900@gmail.com and if people want to book me they can call me on my number on 084 449 4650, and there is a page that I’m not managing on a regular but I’d like for people to keep liking the page, (The Official Qba) so that the more people there are I can post things and stuff like that.

© Angela Nimah 2014 Revolution Validates Life™