Things Took Time: How YoungstaCPT Found His Voice
It’s been a long and hard road for YoungstaCPT. He might be one of the most notable South African rappers of this era right now, but circa 2012, he was just a struggle rapper handing out mixtapes on CDs with his name, website domain and email address scribbled in pen.
Today, though, on the set of Yo! MTV Raps Africa in Braamfontein in Joburg, he’s “not sure” if he has a hard copy of his newly-released debut album 3T with him. He’s a reluctant man of stature who masquerades as his real self: An ordinary, Coloured young man from Cape Town.
There is, however, nothing ordinary about Riyadh Roberts’ alter ego. To date, he has released 30 mixtapes, 8 EPs, 3 collaborative albums, and countless music videos. To this day, he still makes sure to kick a freestyle off the dome during his shows. Blame it on the city he’s from. Cape Town is where all elements of hip-hop are celebrated, and an emcee must pay their dues on the streets to earn respect.
Cape Town is the birthplace of hip-hop in South Africa, but pursuing the dream of being a rap star while staying there is a huge gamble. The city may have produced some of the country’s most talented and socially conscious hip-hop artists, but a majority of its artists never achieved nationwide success the way artists from other cities have.
YoungstaCPT did it. He has dropped show-stealing verses on songs by some of the country’s most respected hip-hop artists, from Cape Town legends such as Beat Bangaz, Jitsvinger, Arsenic; to top-tier acts such as Riky Rick, Stogie T, DJ Capital, DJ Switch, and more.
It took him many years of serious grinding to gain the attention of the mainstream.
After dropping 12 mixtapes and opening for Lil Wayne for his Cape Town show in 2010, YoungstaCPT’s team convinced him he was ready to release an album.
“And they were just pushing this thing that ‘but you can’t keep making mixtapes,’” recalls YoungstaCPT. “You have to make an album, that’s what people do; they make a mixtape, make a single, make an album…and I’m just sitting there like, shit, guys, I don’t think it’s time yet. Everyone told me it was time. So I tried the album thing, it didn’t work out, exactly as I said it wouldn’t. It didn’t. [There were] good songs on there. Two good songs came from the album, “Salute Ya” and “G-Spot”, produced by The Muffin Man.”
The failure of the album, which was titled Guy Fox (2011), meant going back to the old drawing board for YoungstaCPT. “I went back to the mixtapes,” he says, “I dropped another 12.” And then he tried releasing an album again. It was supposed to be called 3T, but an opportunity he couldn’t refuse disturbed his plans.
“Red Bull [Studios Cape Town] was like, ‘We want to make a project with you. Do you have anything?’ I was like, ‘Shit, I have these tracks that I was working on for my album.” The mixtape he released with Red Bull Studios went on to be called Fr3eze Time, and was released in 2013.
“Fr3eze Tim3 counted as my 25th mixtape,” he says. The 15-track mixtape, which had no features, played around with the theme of time — one of the most valuable things, and one that has not been able to be tampered with by human beings, even with advancements in technology. The emcee asked his listeners if they really understood what time is, and wondered if we valued it as we should. The second song on the mixtape was titled “3T,” and came with the hook: “Things take time, every night I go to sleep, I got this money on my mind.”
“So we rented a Quantum, and we branded, it ‘Fr3eze Time, YoungstaCPT,’ there’s photographs of all this shit, and we drove up to Joburg in the Quantum with the CDs at the back with the team. Drove here and basically came to promote this mixtape of mine, not knowing how we were going to do it,” he recalls.
The rapper had done his first mainstream collaboration with Joburg-based rappers Tumi Molekane (now Stogie T) and Reason on the cult classic “What Have You Done, My Brother?” which was recorded at Red Bull Studios in Cape Town in 2012. Contacts were exchanged, and he remained on both rappers’ radar.
“So the first guy I call when I get to Joburg naturally is Tumi. Tumi calls AKA, and through AKA, I meet Khuli Chana by chance.” One artist led him to another, and being the prolific rapper he is, he became the go-to guy for guest verses. “Those features helped me a lot,” he says. After focusing on features for a whole two years, he started working on his album again around 2015. “I made three tracks, ‘Salutas,’ ‘Floppy,’ which appears on [the EP] Kaapstad’s Revenge, and another track, it’s not out, it’s just lamming there in the studio. So those three tracks were going to be 3T,” he says.
Around 2012, Swiss producer Maloon TheBoom wanted him in studio. He had produced the Namibian hip-hop trio Black Vulcanite’s song “Drinking Life”, which featured a verse from YoungstaCPT. That’s how they linked up. They went on to release two mixtapes and an album a few years later: The Y?Fi Mixtape (2016) and To Be Continued… (2018), and 2017’s YungLoon Taliboom (as the duo YungLoon Taliboom).
Sonically, the projects favored the golden era’s production style; YoungstaCPT’s raps sat perfectly over soul samples. A European and an Australian tour followed in 2017.
In 2016, The Cape and Good Dope, a collaborative mixtape with the super producer trio Ganja Beatz (they’ve produced for Cassper Nyovest, Kwesta, Riky Rick) brought him even closer to the mainstream.
Naturally, this momentum led to the anticipation for the rapper’s debut solo album. Fans heard less of YoungstaCPT in 2018. He only released To Be Continued…, and dropped several guest verses.
The delay ensured that he had found his voice by the time the album came. The American accent he was once criticized for in his early days was long gone. He recalls a conversation he had with Shameema Williams of the legendary Cape Town hip-hop trio Godessa, who encouraged him to use his natural accent in his raps.
At 27, the rapper sees life differently to the 19-year-old who dropped Guy Fox. 3T has the depth that a project like Fr3eze Time didn’t have because, you know, things take time. YoungstaCPT’s story, which has been told in bits and pieces on his previous releases, gets to be finally told in full. Parallels can be drawn to Kendrick Lamar, whose Good Kid m.A.A.d City added color to the stories he had told on Section.80 and O(verly) D(edicated).
Just like GKMC, 3T is autobiographical and unapologetic. YoungstaCPT shares vignettes of being Coloured in Cape Town, and South Africa as a whole. He evokes the harsh realities of the city’s Coloured neighbourhoods while motivating his people; and he calls them out on their shortcomings.
He raps on the song “To Live and Die in CA”:
Every place has its pros and cons, and obviously, we got ours/ But the mental slavery amongst Coloureds must stop now/ I be doing everything and yet it’s like they’re not proud/ I’m always in the line of fire, always getting shot down.
Cape Town has a legacy of socially conscious hip-hop that stretches back to pioneering crews Black Noise and Prophets of Da City, who have been active since the 1980s. 3T builds on that tradition.
The album mashes YoungstaCPT’s influences, ranging from West Coast gangsta rap, boom bap and trap. He’s curious about his people and South Africa’s complicated past, aware of the challenges both face in the present, and is refreshingly optimistic about the future.
“Even though in the time that we’re living in, it’s hard to see the silver lining,” he says, “I don’t want people to think I was a bitter, hateful rapper because many of us, like in our old age, especially the hip-hop ouens, they get painted with that brush. Oh, you didn’t make it so now you’re angry at the world. And I know one day people are gonna look back on this album, because it’s the first major one I’m putting my all into, and they’re going to look back, and how do I want them to remember this?”
Skits consisting of his grandfather giving his takes on the same issues make the album an even more polarizing, and personal, body of work.
“I wasn’t close with my father, so I always got game from either other men like uncles and my mommy’s boyfriends, my older cousins and Grandpa. But my Grandpa’s advice, I always knew was gold. You have your elders and when they speak to you, they say things that just rattle your fucking soul. You’re like did you write this? Is this a fucking poem? What the fuck is this, my bruh? [For instance,] the part where he talks about the lily in the end of the album, he didn’t think about it. He just said it. And those are the kinds of gems I’m searching for as a young man.”
YoungstaCPT himself is a gem and a ray of hope for the Coloured kids of Cape Town. While Coloured people in South Africa have been reduced to caricatures and stereotypes in mainstream media, he has been providing counter-narratives to the stereotypes through his music and his visuals, which are usually shot in Coloured neighborhoods in Cape Town.
He acknowledges the moment he won the Best Lyricist trophy at the South African Hip Hop Awards in 2017. He celebrated it by parading the trophy in different locales around the city. Cape Town is hardly ever represented in the awards and many other platforms such as radio and TV.
YoungstaCPT was dressed in his Muslim regalia when he walked up to accept the award at the ceremony. He brought a childhood friend with him on stage.
“He lost an entire family — mother, father, brother, sister — and grew up on the street, homeless in my area,” he says about the friend. “And so to have him standing next to me… I mean this n*gga was in prison just the other day. We bailed him out cause that’s my n*gga, I don’t give a fuck how much the bail is. Tell me how much it is mei bru, he’s coming out today. And still now, there’s more brasse like that. So, for me to represent that and have him on stage with me before even touching the fucking award, that was something else. Then standing there saying what I said, dedicating it to my father, dedicating it to the ghettos and the places that don’t get fucking named.”
The term “Coloured” in South Africa refers to a diverse group of people whose mixed ancestry consists of the Khoisan, Malays, Europeans and other race groups who found themselves in the Cape Colony. A reasonable number of Coloured people identify as Black, but being Coloured comes with a distinct set of experiences that Black people aren’t familiar with. Coloured identity is just as complex as its history. In present-day South Africa, Coloured people feel like the country’s middle child; they feel let down by the Black government as they were by the White government. A new generation of young Coloured people is celebrating its identity boldly, independent of any other race affiliations.
This comes with more questions than answers. History has been told through the perspective of the conqueror. The history that’s taught in schools is watered down. This means that many young people of all races aren’t aware of why they find themselves where they currently are, which in turn makes the future a scary place. Hip-hop drove YoungstaCPT to dig deeper into history. His own research and curiosity about his people, alongside his personal experiences in his journey, are what he presents on 3T.
Songs such as “YVR” and “V.O.C” reference colonialist Jan Van Riebeeck and his Dutch East India Company — Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie in Dutch) — which made Cape Town a pit stop for colonizers, hence starting the colonization of South Africa in present-day Cape Town. The legacy of colonization and hence apartheid has its deep roots in Cape Town for this reason.
Towards the end of our conversation, YoungstaCPT questions a few history theories and ridicules them before scoffingly dismissing them.
“So you know,” he says, “these are the kinds of things that inspired me to take the album where I took it with those two songs, and just in general, because I feel like that’s the root. If you want to understand why the tree bends to the left, then look down at the fucking root and see how it grows. Maybe it’s growing into stones, maybe it’s growing into the concrete. Maybe there’s a rock there that’s actually blocking it and preventing it from standing up straight. And also I knew that the only way I was going to make people understand the situation in these ghettos like Grassy Park, Ottery and Lotus River is to take them right back to the start, and if I’m wrong, go do your own research.”
And he’s aware he may not always be right. “But as long as we’re starting the convo,” he adds, “as long as we have the idea now, as long as we have that thought of like, shit, I want to go do my own research on this motherfucker.”
3T doesn’t play out like a history lesson, but the thoughts of a young man trying to make sense of his surroundings and who he is.
“The song ‘YAATIE’,” he says, “that’s me introducing you to Riyadh (his real name). Like, they need to meet Riyadh. They don’t know who the fuck I am, you know? So that was number one. But if I’m going to take it to the start; I have to take it all the way back to the start. And the start is not Apartheid. The start is colonialism because colonialism opened the doors for slavery, and slavery opened the doors for Apartheid to exist. If there was not that, who knows how we would have been living?”
Listening to 3T will give you a clear picture, which is by no means the only picture, of how life is now. A picture of what it’s like to grow up in post-apartheid South Africa for young Coloured people. And the emcee keeps these thoughts interesting with catchy hooks, a vicious delivery that will always command your attention, clever lines and verses, lyrical Easter Eggs and old school hip-hop references that may be an inside joke to some. As he chants on the song “V.O.C,” he really is the voice of the Cape.
