When Did It All Start with Rapper, Jalettua Nuune

Jalettua Nuune is a singer-song writer, rapper, designer, creative, entrepreneur and vocalist from Lenasia South. She’s been an artist from a young age but began writing and performing in 2008 going by the name Inceinati. Growing up as the shy type, her parents saw her forays into artistry as a taboo even though she was a child with a big voice which in some ways set the path for her journey into self-expression. In 2010 she started performing at open mic sessions where she delved into slam poetry, which evolved into her singing. By 2012 her vocal talents led to her working with Randfontein songbird, Suzan Rhubaab as a back-up singer where she briefly worked with a movement called The Ban'kok – (they host The Ban’kok Sessions).

Her presence and energy has been felt at shows and venues such as Ballissimo, The E.B.J Show, Juiced Out Sessions, Phenomenal Women's Conference, The BoomBox, Shikisha, Fochville and The Soweto Camp Fest.

We linked up with the songstress to find out more about her and her thoughts about the current state of the music industry.

Boom Box

RVL: For those who don't know who Jalettua Nuune is, tell us about her. Who is she?

Jalettua Nuune: Jalettua Nuune is a creative. I’m a vocalist, a songwriter and I rap. I started in 2008, where I was doing poetry then moved onto slam poetry. I broke into singing in 2012 as  a back-up singer for Elyza B. Jayne who is now known as Suzan Rhubaab and since then I have been singing, going to sessions, freestyling and attending gigs as much as possible.

RVL: You started out rapping and freestyling in ciphers and onstage, how has the transition been moving from performing to recording?

Jalettua Nuune: It’s a big step. Live performance and recording are totally different vibes altogether. I’ve actually gotten more used to recording now because I’ve gotten more comfortable with it. But live performance is growth; being able to perform in front of people and to portray your work in front of people is a very huge blessing and that type of transition is not an easy one, you need to really be sure of yourself, you need to really want to make that sort of shift.

RVL: It's usually seen as an easier stepping stone to get a foot into the industry as a House music vocalist. What's keeping you on the path that you're on?

Jalettua Nuune: Uhm, it is true. Once you’re on a House platform, because of the music, people kind of adjust to you better because they focus on the dancing. But in my path, I’m sticking to it because that’s where I excel; I can write how I feel to the sounds that I get. I get to be flexible; whereas with House music I feel I’m restricted because I have to give the instrumentals a chance.

People consider me a hip hop and soul artist, and i’m more expressive in those forms.

Photo by Angela Nimah

RVL: Looking at the queens of rap from the likes of Queen Latifah, Bahamadia, QBA, Yugen Blakrok, right down to Lauren Hill who paved the way for a lot of sisters musically, what do you feel you represent in your music within the South African landscape?

Jalettua Nuune: Wow! Those artists that you’ve mentioned are the queens of rap, and I do look up to them a lot. But I feel that I’m still a toddler, I feel like I’m still at the crawling stages of rapping, I still want to learn a lot. I just take it with each day, I learn different forms and ways of rapping, different speeds... I don’t even know the terminologies of these things… haha. I’m just doing it because it’s a passion I have and I love it. I just express myself through rapping, I try to teach the ladies, I try to even teach the males in this industry that women should not be put in boxes. A lot of people still listen to me and think that Jalettua can’t rap but to me Jalettua is a rapper, Jalettua can do whatever she wants to do and I think that’s what the ladies that you mentioned were doing, they were putting it out there that just because men should rap and females should sing - that’s what society thinks but this is what we can do. So that’s what I’m trying to prove to my country.

Photo by Rolem Mvubu

RVL: Do you think musicians nowadays give themselves time to study the history of their craft, or do you think they rely solely on natural talent, and is it a case of accessibility would you say?

Jalettua Nuune: I think a lot of people are just working with natural talent. I think a lot of artists in this industry that are popping up don’t really know much about this industry. That’s why a lot of artists that we knew ten years ago if you go back and look for them, they’re probably broke and they’re not who we knew them as.

And it’s basically about accessibility and because there’s so many of us that are trying to break into the industry it’s difficult to find a mentor who genuinely wants to teach you want you need to know. Somehow there are hidden agendas in everything, that’s why I advise people to go to workshops, attend gigs, do research, and go to school, study these things, find out what to do – vocal lessons… do it and do it properly!

If this is how you want your career to be, if this is exactly what you want you need to do it properly. It’s just like if you wanted to study business management or graphic design, you literally go through the three year process before you can be accepted by any company and if they feel that you are not ready, that again you are not taken in the corporate world, why should it be different with music?

It’s important to take it as serious as going through primary school and high school because this is your bread and butter.

RVL: Often there is a tendency to be masculine in rap style as a way of asserting oneself. How do you tackle being judged solely as an emcee and not as a female emcee?

Jalettua Nuune: Honestly, I can’t really say I take serious consideration to how people judge how I present myself. I do it because that’s how I feel at that moment, how what I’m saying is going to be understood and if it means that I have to make my voice sound a little deeper and start wearing baggy clothes, just to get into that character that’s what I’m going to do... (Watch clip for more)

RVL: How important is it for women to unite in a male dominated industry and why?

Jalettua Nuune: It’s very important. It’s not even just about females uniting, artists in general need to unite in this whole industry. It isn’t that thing of it works better for guys and it doesn’t work better for girls. A lot of people now are saying that us as female artists have a chance to ‘dominate this industry’ because females are getting a bigger platform. That said, it is important for us as women to unite in this industry because if we don’t who is? Who is going to stand up for us and say the things that we want to say? Who is going to express our feeling the way we want to express them and thats why I got into rapping because I feel like just because I’m a lady it doesn’t mean that I don’t get angry.

So it’s very important for us because we need to stand up and speak up for ourselves and not just the people who have been here for a long, long, long time; generations differ with each year, every child that is born is going to experience things differently from what we are doing, those females are going to be singing differently, they’re going to be expressing themselves differently. So we just need to to be firm with what we stand for.

RVL: Do you think we have enough females in South Africa representing the hip hop scene?

Jalettua Nuune: You know we have a lot of females in the hip hop scene and I feel like a lot of them... not me haha… a lot of them are going about it the wrong way. I’ve realised that a lot of women are about showing skin and rapping about all the money that you spend and the bags that you buy and somehow those female artists are trying to show off and there’s so much more to life than just the bags that you buy and the cars that you drive and the money that you make… and yes, that’s what’s making society function but there’s a lot more to this life than what we have.

RVL: Tell us about your EP and when it'll be dropping.

Jalettua Nuune: Twelve Nuune… it took me a good one and a half years to just decide on the sound, which direction to go, which producer to use, where to record… that’s my first born because I spent time on it. It was first a rap EP then I started singing on it and it’s gone through a soul phase. The producer I worked with was Blister Jay Pop, he’s from QwaQwa – the genre is African Boombap and it ‘s been a beautiful project to work on.

And dropping... I can’t really say because I’m fussy with it, although it’s done, mixed and mastered, I keep sending it back into studio to get fixed. But it’s definitely dropping this year.

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Twitter: @TheOnlyMsNuune

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