Nasty C & Tellaman On Their Fear When It Comes To Music Reception

The post Nasty C & Tellaman On Their Fear When It Comes To Music Reception appeared first on SA Hip Hop Mag.

Nasty C & Tellaman On Their Fear When It Comes To Music Reception. Nasty C and Tellaman have opened up about the uncertainty that comes with releasing music that does not necessarily fit within South Africa’s dominant musical trends.

“Always, yeah. Always,” Nasty C said when asked whether he fears his music might not connect with listeners when he takes a different creative direction. “You get scared because you don’t know if it’s going to connect. Times change, people change.”

For Nasty C, the concern comes with the territory of constantly evolving as an artist. Despite his established position in the South African hip-hop scene, experimenting with different sounds still carries the risk of not receiving the response he hopes for.

Tellaman echoed that sentiment while pointing to the challenges faced by artists working in R&B, a genre he believes does not enjoy the same level of mainstream popularity in South Africa.

“The type of music that we make isn’t something that’s particularly popular in South Africa, especially from my side,” Tellaman explained. “R&B is a very tricky space to operate in. So, knowing that people actually care about what we do is amazing.”

His comments underline the uncertainty that comes with creating outside the country’s most commercially dominant sounds. While amapiano and other mainstream genres continue to command significant attention, R&B artists often have to navigate a more challenging path to reach and maintain an audience.

For both artists, however, the fear of their music failing to connect has not stopped them from taking creative risks. Instead, it appears to be part of the process of making music that reflects their artistic direction, even when there is no guarantee of how audiences will respond.

The admission offers insight into the mindset behind T’s & C’s Apply, the joint project that brings together Nasty C’s hip-hop background and Tellaman’s R&B sensibilities. The two artists have known each other since their teenage years in Durban, with their musical relationship developing over more than a decade.

Rather than building the album around the sound audiences might traditionally expect from Nasty C, the pair leaned heavily into melody and R&B. Nasty C previously described the project as R&B-leaning and suited to winter, while Tellaman highlighted their intention to merge their respective musical worlds.

Nasty C has established himself as one of South Africa’s biggest hip-hop exports, while Tellaman has developed a dedicated following through his R&B catalogue. Bringing those two worlds together allowed them to experiment, but it also meant stepping into territory where the response could be difficult to predict.

Ultimately, their comments reveal that uncertainty does not disappear with success. Even established artists can question whether a new sound will connect. For Nasty C and Tellaman, however, that uncertainty appears to have been part of what made T’s & C’s Apply worth creating in the first place.

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