Who was Mcpotar?
The entire purpose of this blog is to tell the story about Mcpotar, a name I gave to myself at the age of 14 when I decided to become a hip-hop artist. Thus the entire blog is autobiographical in nature and aims to give a broader reflection of my ever changing perspectives and my life experience. The reason it is named, "Who was Mcpotar" in past tense is to answer the question for those who may search for it after I have departed from this beautiful Earth. Realizing that I have done a lot of things besides rap throughout my life. I needed a way to keep my History safe and also to tell it from my perspectives (which by the way are not infallible, as you read different articles you may notice contradictions and such is my human experience).
Who was Mcpotar? I came from a middle class family, born on 19 August 1988 in the City of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. I had a loving experience as a child from my parents Naison Mupotaringa and Sarah Mupotaringa (nee Mapiye). My father was from Mutare and my mother from Chivhu. Those are the respective rural homes I grew up visiting whenever there was a School holiday. My parents met in Bulawayo and worked there, thus we lived in Northend suburbs where they purchased a house. I attended Grimms Nursery School, Baines Infant, Milton Junior, Milton High School and later Dadaya High School.
My writing journey
Growing up, my parents regarded education highly (and still do), as such it was only right that they had an emphasis on literature, both the reading and writing aspects. The environment at Grimms Nursery School which they carefully looked for based on recommendation had teachers that were dedicated to improving our skills in terms of story telling, writing coloring and motor skills. We had no School Holiday and I attended it for 2 years. When I was home my father would give us yearly Diaries (which I now regret losing) where he would ask me to write stories for him. Simple stories at the time. I guess he wanted me to always be able to document my thoughts. This would help me by the time I got into primary school because I was one of the few children that could already read and write in Grade one. More-over when everyone was writing their first composition I had written several at home.
Early recognition as a writer
When I was in Grade 4 a composition we wrote as a class was short-listed to compete in a literary competition. I had no idea that I had been selected. I remember during the time, the teacher just asked me to rewrite my story as it was (adjust the corrections) and put it on a white sheet of paper. I had no idea what that was about. After several months I had a dream that I had won a rugby trophy and had been called out at assembly to receive it. It didn't make sense to me because I have never been good at sport. I woke up for the Monday assembly and that day I was called to receive a prize, not for rugby, but for exceptional writing. My mother was so proud of me and displayed it in the living room. This led to me applying myself more into writing, which led to more literary competitions yearly and more wins.
From writing poems to rapping
As a young man I was simultaneously falling in love with mainstream hip-hop. It must have been the days Puff Daddy (now Diddy) had a tribute Biggie Smalls. My parents had just bought our first 3-CD changer and had bought a CD of Puff Daddy and 112, amongst other artists such as Don Williams. Some of the CDs they bought had lyric booklets, which would allow me to see the song patterns. Thus I fell in love with listening songs for lyrics and began to pick out the similarities between spoken word poetry and rap music.
My first attempts at self producing
Since old cassettes and albums would have a habit of having an instrumental of the title track as one of the songs. I initially would rap to those instrumentals. Eventually at age 13 I had set up a method where I could Dub the beat from Deck A and record to a cassette in Deck B, whilst plugging a dynamic microphone (which I borrowed from a friend). The quality was poor but hearing myself on the other tape made me extremely happy but my folks felt different.
Trouble with the parents
Needless to say my parents were against this process and often indicated that it would harm the radio ("Unouraya radio"). My stubborn rebuttal at the time was often that, it was illogical for SONY to include a Mic Jack on the radio if the Mic Jack was not supposed to be used. Of course this often resulted in more trouble, a scalding or two. Ultimately I would still do it when they were away and thankfully my little sister Caroline was not a snitch. She didn't get involved. Her attitude was more of minding her own business and also making me aware that I was entirely responsible of any consequence. My other 2 sisters Pauline and Eunice were in boarding at the time. I doubt they would have allowed it. Especially after they found out I had dubbed DMX and Eminem on their West Life and Craig David cassettes. It had truly been a mistake, but they thought it was deliberate as I often used to criticize the boy band and R'n'B acts as too soft. My first professional recording I was fortunate in 2002, to have a friend (Michael Chikwanda) whose cousin had visited from south Africa with a music keyboard. He had initially offered the older members of my friends family to do a Gospel record at Moonlight Studios, however none of them had material. He already was aware of my little mixtapes, so he deployed me. I wrote a song called "I'm Fabulous" and everyone got a verse. We recorded as a trio, it was me , Michael Chikwanda and Kudana Kadenhe. My father loved my writing, but he didn't like the idea of music and show business so that's something I had to do under the guise of going to town with the home boys. He would later find out of course after the track was done and continually discourage it. The reasoning was that it would potentially affect my grades. However I persisted with it and simultatneosuly interest in computers was growing at the same pace. Kudana Kadenhe had taught me how to make an HTML website after he had seen a Poly Technic IT student do it. We were both between ages 13 and 14 and we already knew basic HTML code. We set up our websites on free webhosting sites such as 150m.com which would offer 150mb to put sites.
All of these skills would soon become part of a bigger machine.
From Milton High to Dadaya
My parents as aforementioned are very oriented toward academic success and they were not comfortable with my choice to be in a day school. I always had a good School report but Milton High School was rumoured to be notorious (even though it actually had a rich culture), on top of that my frequently recording and doing music was thought to be an outcome of being exposed to urban life. So my parents made a decision to transfer me to Dadaya High School. I loved Milton so much because I had been at Milton Junior and this was the senior school but none of my efforts to reverse that were accepted. Even then I would meet people who were rapping at Dadaya. It is in fact where I met my long standing friends Masimba Sigauke (Navy Seal) and Kudzai Masaire (DJ Jazzit). Over the Holidays we would use Kudzai Masaire's computer to make beats in FL Studio and Cubase to record. Michael Chikwanda and Kudana Kadenhe had also started making beats. So every term when I was in Form 4 (Grade 11) I would have a few songs. There were kids that had walk mans, cd players or laptops. Me and Kudzai had also managed to get the headmaster to open the computer lab which had never been used after Cde Robert Mugabe had donated several computers at the time. There had also been a computer donation by the father of one Alroy Ndlovu. His father I believe was an entrepreneur who used to own Cape to Cairo in Bulawayo if am not mistaken. With that our abilities to program, graphic design and so on would improve. We would also feed it into the process of marketing and packaging our mixtapes.
Branching into Animation and Comic Strips
Rapping was not my only passion growing up, as a Hip-hop fan I was always fascinated by the animated video for Do for love by 2 Pac. Rewinding back to Grade 4, when I would take a book from the Book Bus daily (which was an effort by the Bulawayo Public Library to bring literacy closer to the neighbourhood, I would take books that where about animation, film making, cinematography. My mother would always say she preferred me to take the story books but I was so fascinated by these types. So since I was allowed 2 books a week. I would take one story book and one book on anything that had to do with how movies were made. So by Grade 5 I was well aware that motion pictures were made of at least 25 frames per second. I was making animation flip books and had an idea how stop motion worked, however since this was the 90's cameras were expensive so I always told myself i would buy that when I grew up. Now fast forward to the time when computers became available I found out there were software programs that could make the process easier so, in my 20's I downloaded a copy of Anime Studio 7 (Smith Micro), which is now Moho 12 and I have been learning how to use it to this day. I have done several short animation clips (at least at the time of writing this).
Tsano Comics and Comedy
After realizing I could illustrate, I wanted to create comedy through it. Thus I began reading up comedy structure and one time I attended a comedy workshop hosted by Simuka Comedy upon being invited by Doc Vikela and Simba The Comic King (who founded the initiative). They taught me a lot and on my return from that workshop I started writing jokes to a character I named Tsano. (Here is his Facbook page)
Blogging and The Media
My article writing in my mid twenties became a medium for me to review other Hip-hop artists under a domain that was named after my stage name which I since stopped renewing. During its 5 years it reached multitudes and was nominated for multiple awards, taking home the Best Online Media for 2015.
In the blogging community I meant many media personalities among them Maynard Manyowa (who became a longstanding friend, Leroy Dzenga, the later Donald Marindire (DodgerZw) and Sp3kktrumn among others.
I also had Vlog that promoted urban culturewith Sharky (Soko Matemai : Marshall Muchenje), Tadiwa Chimbodza, Quinton Abraham Mutsinze (Quence Motion) and Raymod Rayobeats Sibanda. Whilst may hailed my achievements in that arena some felt that I was biased or there was a conflict of interest in me reporting and reviewing hip-hop whilst I was a musician myself. I was equally praised in some songs whilst dissed in others. Internet brawls with trolls were once the order of the day till I grew tired of the entire process and took a sabbatical from everything eventually coming back in 2018 with a changed style of rap. I have released rap songs frequently which I do within a short time frame since then. Whenever i am bored I record myself at home. In the blog section of this blog I will from time to time update different things I left out on this page as there are obviously may opinions and stories I skipped through. The idea of this resource is to equip you with knowledge about myself and my perspective, I acknowledge that some ideas are accurate and some are faulty.
Who I am to you is thus left to your perspective.
