01 May 2017

Talent and lyrical prowess is paying off for local artist Thuto Ramphaleng popularly known as Dramaboi as his music continues to attract international recognition.

While songs from his album Township Music 2, will this month start playing as background music for South Africa’s popular television soapie Rhythm City, the rapper will pen down another contract with American producers.

In an interview, Dramaboi, who is working on an LP, has recently joined hands with Americans among them, one of the top selling American rapper, Pusha T.

The LP, which is anticipated to drop sometime this year, is already at complete stage.

“Although it is being produced by American producers, Dramaboi is using Setswana on his lyrics. They found it unnecessary to change the lyrical content because these are the very same people who loved his album and unplug while he was rapping in Setswana,” he said.

Dramaboi business manager, Itumeleng Garebatshabe said the producers saw Dramaboi’s unplug performance on social media.According to Garebatshabe, after views on YouTube kept on increasing, the producers could not resist but contact them for collaboration.

They were amazed of how a little kid can pull such massive crowd, clearly it showed there was something special about him,” he said.

Quizzed on the partnership, Garebatshabe said producers were only providing the instruments while the Dramaboi team would deal with the marketing and distribution of the LP album.

Projecting more on the youngster’s plans, he said they wanted to work more with other mobile networks all over the world, adding  that currently Dramaboi’s music was being bought by South Africans on Vodacom mobile network.

After realising that the 24-year-old rapper had a wide fan base in Tswana speaking areas in South Africa, Vodacom could not resist but give access of his music through their network.

“Apparently South Africans love Dramaboi’s music, especially his lyrical content and I am proud to announce that he is busy working on his poem/lyrical book which we anticipate to launch next year,” said Garebatshabe.

On why Dramaboi chose to write a book, Garebatshabe pointed out that the young artiste felt that a song is enough for him to express himself and therefore wanted a platform where he could verbalise freely without limitations.

He said the book will be more of an autobiography/anthology as it would feature short stories on the rapper’s life experiences  especially being raised by his mother in a township.

“It is high time people know the other side of Dramaboi besides music, for instance most people don’t know that Dramaboi wanted to be a cartoonist but never had time to start doing it, all this will be revealed in the book,” he said. ENDS