Retro Cover Story: iFani Unchained
A chain is an ambivalent symbol. Its connotation is solely dependent on how the person who owns it chooses to […]
Black News 
A chain is an ambivalent symbol. Its connotation is solely dependent on how the person who owns it chooses to use it. It can represent linkage and reinforcement; the intention to build and strengthen, as it did in many Communist images in history. Or, as in the case of slavery, it can represent confinement, shackling and restriction of freedom. One could say that this is the state of limbo in which this industry finds itself today while trying to forge an identity. As the local hip hop community, in our journey of discovery, we (the audience/consumers) will always have the power to determine what we use our metaphorical chains for.
iFani is a man who has had to resist the entanglement of these chains from day one. For starters, as a hip hop artist, you don’t just put on massive Steve Urkel frames and sport a loud bowtie and a cane, get in front of a camera, entertain thousands of people, make a fortune doing it and not expect to attract a swarm of disgruntled comments from ‘real hip hoppers’. No way. At least he warned us. His rap moniker (iFani: a Xhosa term meaning ‘not the same’ and also a phonetic pun because it is pronounced ‘I-funny’, referring to his jovial persona) is about as literal a description of himself as anyone could give you, and a prophetic omen of the main themes that have come to define the rapper’s counter-flow relationship with the music and the industry.
Where does one even begin? This guy is weird, man. Refreshingly weird. Not ‘comes-off-as-a-nice-guy-but-ends-up-on-an-episode-of-Carte Blanche-for-hoarding-human-body-parts-in-his-fridge’ weird. First of all, he is early for our appointment, which everyone knows is a violation of the first chamber of the unwritten rules of rappers charter. It’s just after 11am and iFani is wolfing down a Steers burger as we make our way to the location in the Vaal, south of Johannesburg. He explains that he hadn’t gotten a chance to eat because he woke up extremely early to shoot an episode of Takalani Sesame (yes, the educational kiddies show with all the weird puppets). I chuckle because I think it’s a joke but my laughs are not reciprocated and instead returned with a deafening silence which speaks louder than any explanation could have and makes me realise that he is being very serious. Those are the kinds of situations one finds oneself in when one is presumptuous about what is acceptable for rappers and what isn’t and then you encounter a guy who doesn’t give a f*ck about precedence.
“You know, Mizi is the reason there’s an iFani today. It’s crazy ‘cause when he called me to tell me I was picked for the HYPE Sessions CD, I
was working in the south; and I’m on my first HYPE cover now and we’re on our way to the south so this is crazy right here.” The Mizi he is referring to is of course the former editor of HYPE who iFani credits for being one of his first believers. He is basking in nostalgia as we enter the highway and he wins his battle against a mouthful of beef and starch to belch out the rest of the anecdote. “My friend had submitted my song to Mizi but it was not being used. And then The Naked DJ chose it out of
a pool of songs and Mizi asked him ‘why are you choosing this song when it’s been here for so long and every other DJ has rejected it?’ He
(Naked DJ) was like, ‘Yo’ this is gonna be the next big thing, trust me.’ So then Mizi called me up and told me. And when C-live heard it, he
played it on his show. So he was pretty much the first DJ to play my song on the radio. And the rest, as they say, is history.” Only that it’s not just ‘history’. Unless every time someone says ‘the rest is history’ it means
that between the situation they just explained and their current situation, they were paralysed in hospital for a month, got their car stolen, got kidnapped by thugs, lost a record deal with Sony Music, and were embezzled out of R200,000 of their hard-earned money by their publisher. Then yes, it’s just ‘history’.
At what point did you realise that this was
all possible? I think with everything that happened in the past four years, most people would’ve given up somewhere along the way. I knew there was no other option after my accident. I was in hospital for three weeks and you’ve got a lot of time to think when you’re in bed and you can’t walk. You have nothing else to do but think. I thought it all through there and knew exactly what I was going to do. I didn’t know how, but I knew what it is I wanted to do and that was to make music. I never once
doubted it after that.
What happened exactly?
I had a car accident on my way to Durban back in 2010. The car flipped and landed way off the road. I was in hospital for about a month. Nurses had to change me, feed me and bath me. It was crazy. My spinal cord was fractured, probably still is. So yeah. I’m glad I can walk, let alone jump on stage.
That’s pretty hectic. This was before or after the hi-jacking?
Before. That happened about a year or so after. When the car accident happened I hadn’t recorded anything. I wasn’t too serious about the music, it was just joints I was making for the boys, you know? The hi-jacking was crazy because it happened during a time when I was just starting to gain momentum and my song was playing on the radio and everything.
There were a lot of different reports on thatincident. What exactly went down?
I was watching Live on SABC 1 and Pro was. launching his album Continua. I’d always been a fan of his and was thinking that there’s no way I was missing it. So I switched the TV off, got in the car and left for Sedibeng in Soweto where the launch was happening and parked the car. I needed to pee but the toilets were so far. There was a tree right next to where I parked so I went to it and that was one of the biggest mistakes of
my life. That’s when three guys pulled up with guns in my face and they took me with the car. (He pauses.) MY GOLF 6 GTI!
I remember that car. You gave me a ride once from Teargas’ event in December of 2011.
Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, they had three guns to my face. I knew I was gonna die that day, as far as I was concerned. We drove for a while and then we stopped in the fields somewhere. They took me out the car, head covered in a bag so I couldn’t see anything and during that walk I made peace with the fact that they were going to kill me. And through what seemed like the longest moment of my life (but was really a short walk), all I could think about was my ‘Chocolate & Vanilla’ video which I’d shot on the same day as the ‘Ewe’ video a year before. I mean I went to the trouble of shooting it. It’s done and it’s on my computer. If I could only just tell someone so that they could drop it after my funeral or something. That was my biggest frustration and all I was thinking about in that moment.
Damn. So you escaped or…?
They left me tied up so I had no idea that they had left. Only when I started hearing the sound of traffic from a distance, I started to think
that it must be morning. I thought to myself, I will move and at least if they shoot someone will find my body ‘cause they’ll hear the sound of the gun. Finally I got the thing off my eyes and realised there was no one around. I never recovered the car. The next morning I got up and thought “sh*t, life is way too short.” I shot the video for ‘See Live’ that same day. Of the most obvious different things about the Eastern Cape rapper is his look. And I waste no time in finding out how it originated. His quirky look makes him an easy target for his detractors. With words like ‘gimmick’ and ‘clown’ used to describe him, the accusation of being a one hit wonder crossed everyone’s mind at first. Mainly because when an artist enters the scene with a song that is so massive that it precedes the artist himself, the artist spends the next few moves chasing the popularity of the first single and very seldom manages to get there again. But the steady incline of iFani’s music and exponential credibility as an artist has already proved that his costumes are the only thing funny about him. In fact, iFani is an actual scientist by profession.
Not an experimental scientist like Einstein or anything (although the hairstyle suggests otherwise) but he did spend a couple of years in university obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree and the subsequent years after that in a lab holding down a nine-to-five. And he insists that his time in class back then forms the foundation for what he does in the booth today.
I think it’s fair to say that because of your flamboyant get-up, it’s sometimes hard for people to view you as a ‘real’ MC because it’s so different to what people expect from rappers. People underestimate my rhymes ‘cause of my look. I go deep. I go really deep. It doesn’t help that I rhyme in Xhosa and it can be a little difficult to keep up with what I’m saying. I always felt like I wanted the music to be a mirror reflection of me. I’m educated. I can’t and won’t run away from that. I graduated.
It’s who I am. So when I craft my rhymes, I want people to not just enjoy the music but also recognise that there’s a level of intellect that has been applied to these lyrics. There was a thought process involved. I can’t be like ‘Pop champagne! Pop champagne!’ There’s no thought process involved in that.
You have to tell us about your sense of style. Settle it once and for all.
It’s a crazy story. At the time I was doing mixtapes. I had just shot my own video for ‘Ewe’ and sent it to Channel O and Live on SABC 1. They
rejected it. Everywhere I went everyone said no to it. And I was like “F*ck! There is no way I’m letting this go. I have to get the video out for this song. This is the song that is gonna blow up, why won’t they see this?” Then I saw Maraza’s video for ‘One Foot in the Game’ on Channel O and thought maybe they just wanted a different type of video. So I hit up Maraza and he told me Chris Green had shot his video and I asked him to set up a meeting for me with Chris, which he did. (We’re interrupted by the sound of one of those high-pitched monophonic ringtones that no one has heard in years, which turns out to be iFani’s old school black and white cellphone. After he assures the person that he’ll call them back he continues.) So I went to see Chris and I showed him my video. I told him the whole story about the album, my music, who I was and what I was trying to achieve and he said “Okay, give me a day. Come see me tomorrow.” The next day he told me that he listened to everything I said and then he pitched me the concept and I was convinced this white guy was insane. He was talking about insane colours and eccentric makeup and vintage clothing and I was like “Whaaat? I’m a hardcore rapper. I don’t see how everything I said to you, you translated into that concept. You clearly don’t understand me.”
What was your original music video for ‘Ewe’ like?
It was your conventional rap video at the time. Torn, baggy jeans, caps and cool kicks. You know? Swag, ‘cause that’s how I saw myself. I shot it somewhere in Newtown and everything. I guess when he listened to the music he felt that what I was portraying didn’t do justice or accurately represent the music that was coming out of my mouth. So we argued and went back and forth for a while and he ended up convincing me.
So you went through with it…
Yeah. They sourced the wardrobe, combed my hair out and I got in front of the camera. Mind you, this is the first time I was shooting in front of anyone except myself. I was like “what do I do now?” And he said “just rap the song.” And in my head, I swear my mannerisms while rapping were the hardest, most gangsta movements ever. I was gully. That’s how I delivered that sh*t. Then I went behind the camera and looked at that sh*t and I was like “What the f*ck? There’s no way that this is me.” I looked at Chris and thought, how could this guy have seen this in me? Next take, I was free. I went in and we knocked it out the park. After that, I was so into it that I was choosing my own crazy clothes and all that [laughs]. Then in a week or so I came back for the viewing and it was the worst video I had ever seen in my life. I cancelled it. I was like, I spent R6,000 shooting my own video and the industry told me they didn’t want it. Then I spent R60,000 on this video and these motherf*ckers made it look like this? So I was like, “f*ck the industry and its expectations, and f*ck this video. I’m done!” So they called me and insisted they make a few changes. At first I wasn’t trying to listen to him but he did what he did and when I came back to view it the second time I was like “Mmmm, I don’t know. It’s okay. It’s not great and it’s not what I envisioned but I can live with it.” Next thing I know we dropped that sh*t and it caught fire. It was trending everywhere and I couldn’t believe it.
So after that you just decided to stick with the look?
I wouldn’t say Chris came up with a new persona for me. He just took what was already there and made me aware of myself. I think sometimes as musicians we’re too involved in ourselves or the perception of what a typical or archetypal rapper should be that it ends up hindering us from who we really are. So he didn’t manufacture fake gold, he just polished the diamond and showed me that if I hold it up at a different angle, it can shine a lot brighter. At the time I never thought of how I was perceived as a person. Those thoughts never crossed my mind. I only thought about the music. And Chris opened up my mind to that spectrum. He made me realise that there are other ways to communicate with the human consciousness and that I could be more to people than just the music.
These days there are so many labels and classifications as far as music is concerned because everything sounds so different. How do you perceive yourself as a musician? Are you a rapper or does the label not matter?
Of course I am a rapper. When you listen to my music, that’s what I’m doing – rapping. Think about all the criteria that people look for when they talk about good rappers and I will tick all those boxes. Punchlines are there. Flow is there. Delivery is there. Rhyme is there. There’s nothing that anyone can take away from me. You know what it is? If you asked a group of kids to draw a picture of a car, the teacher would have to ultimately dictate what a car looks like and what a car does not look like. When looking over all the pictures, you’re likely to see the similar features in all the images. My point is, they already have a preconceived idea of what a rapper is. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking that a rapper must fit into a specific mould or box that they have in their head. That’s why they talk about the topics that they talk about. That’s why they dress the way they dress. They look to people who have no context in our country for visual, lyrical and artistic references and if what you create does not tick those boxes, you are not a rapper. They are followers.
So you reckon that your detractors struggle to understand you because of the lack of originality they’re exposed to then?
We are at a very exciting stage in South Africa where anyone who is making music now has the opportunity to help define the identity of our sound and our aesthetic as local hip hop artists for years to come. We don’t have a fixed identity like in the States where they know who they are and there are clear movements with their respective histories and unspoken rules and codes; whether it be crunk, screw music from the South or West Coast gangsta rap. Here we are still figuring it out but people are scared to be themselves so they take from what they see elsewhere. Who says rap artists must look like Tupac? They dress like that over there because they are a product of their environment. But that is not my story… Me, iFani, from the Eastern Cape. What I did was, I looked at them, borrowed the elements that were cool and then I said that is not who I am. Who I am now and what you see, this is me. I don’t look like other rappers because I am me. It looks strange to you because you don’t know me as a person. But my music will express that. I’m changing that stereotype.
Did Sony Music not support that vision? Last year you were signed to them for what seemed like a few weeks and before we knew it, that deal just vanished.
We fought… A lot. In retrospect, when I think about it, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. It happens to every artist. You have to prove yourself. But I think because I was so broke, so frustrated with the industry and everything else that I felt like I was ready to go immediately. After all, they called me and not the other way around so I’m sure they wanna do this. But I forgot that this was a business. That you still need to prove that you are worthy of their investment and they could put all of their resources into you and put you in the forefront.
What was the nature of the deal you signed with them?
It was a licensing and management deal. My biggest problem at the time was like: “listen guys, I’m bringing the music already done. ‘Shake’ had just kicked Mafikizolo’s ‘Khona’ off the number one spot on the charts. I don’t have any gigs coming in. I’ve been with you for months and the only gig you got me was in January and all I got was R1,500.” I was a man in debt. I had minus R60,000, I had nothing, so I needed to get work and these guys weren’t making it happen. I was impatient. Eventually they said “f*ck you, iFani. We can’t deal with people like you” and I was cool with that.
And at what point did Dreamteam Talent come by?
Coincidentally almost immediately after that deal went down the drain, Refiloe (Ramagase – also manager of Khuli Chana, Ms Cosmo, Kabelo Mabalane and more) hit me up on some “who’s managing you?” I was like, damn if he only knew the drama I’d just been through. So we spoke and he said “sort your ish out with Sony. In the meantime, I’ll give you these five gigs.” He was the first to give me gigs. I mean REAL gigs that didn’t pay in peanuts and I wasn’t even signed to him at the time. I was like, wow. I went and did those gigs and after I came back, he told me that as soon as Sony released me on paper, I could come to Dreamteam. Two months later, Sony gave me those papers and I was out of there. It was bananas after that. Strawberries. Peaches and pears.
With a career that looks like a colourful bowl of the juiciest fruit of his labour, this is a man reaping what he’s sowing, one hit at a time.
