B4Now (Deluxe)

While stuck in Joburg—unable to travel back to their hometown of Durban during the first COVID-19 lockdown of 2020—all Blxckie and his boys did was record. They flooded the internet with sharp singles and visuals. “Big Time Sh’lappa”, a freestyle by Blxckie and Lucasraps, quickly went viral and put the two MCs on the map. Later, when Dr. Peppa’s “Mntase” (featuring Blxckie, Chang Cello, Aux Cable and Lord Script) became a hit, it became clear that the recurring X factor was Blxckie. A collab with Flvme on “Stripes” followed, and when it resonated, a full project was inevitable.
“B4now is a mixture of stuff I was doing before I got into the ‘Big Time Sh’lappa’ era, and then some new songs also,” Blxckie tells Apple Music. “I’m also telling people a story about how things happened—me being in Durban for a while, and then coming to Jozi to work out a plan to do everything. It’s basically an introduction.”
Released three months later, the deluxe version of B4Now adds eight new tracks, including fresh collabs with Rowlene, Oxlade, Alone, Leodaleo and Christer. Below, the artist born Sihle Sithole traces through his story of leaving his hometown to try his luck in the City of Gold with agile bars and polished melodies on key tracks from the album.
“Mama It's Bad” “I did this song within the first few days of [moving to the Johannesburg suburb] Midrand, where I’m staying now. It’s basically an ode to uMa, my mother. I'm trying to explain to her that the plan I had, [moving] here…it’s not really working out anymore. And I couldn't really tell her that over the phone. So this song is about basically explaining to uMa that things are getting tougher and tougher each day, and it’s bad.”
“Stripes” (feat. Flvme) “After ‘Big Time Sh’lappa’, I needed a song to show people that it's not really about just rapping the whole time. There's also some chilled stuff; not the same type of beats. It was to show versatility. The song is about respect, earning your stripes; it was a way for me to get into the game and prove that I’m not just the ‘Big Time Sh’lappa’ guy.”
“David” “I think I recorded ‘David’ a day or two after ‘Mama It’s Bad’. It was when [my friend] Leo, who I moved with to Joburg, had to leave. I took the concept of David and Goliath: fighting something that's bigger than you and being able to overcome it. And for me, that was the story of how I came here with a friend; we were supposed to do this thing together but now things are happening in a way that's not allowing that to happen as planned—and it's bigger than me, and there's nothing I can do. It's either I leave or he leaves, and it ended up being me that was closer to getting to where we wanted to be together.”
“Gas” “During lockdown, we made a lot of songs that are ‘new’. We wanted to make our own sound that would make people say, ‘Okay, this is really a new era for hip-hop.’ Especially with producers like Hercules and 808 Sallie; they have their own kicks and snares and stuff like that. They’re trying to do their own thing. ‘Gas’ is still lyrical, but you can only feel it if you know ‘Big Time Sh’lappa’ and if you know those other songs. It's basically me talking my s**t.”
“Hut” “[Here] I'm talking about how I came from nothing to something. But more than anything, in most of these songs, the story isn’t as important as the melodies, and the way that I’m saying what I’m saying. There’s stuff going on within the lyrics, but it's the way I do it that's important to me.”
“Sika” “The melody for ‘Sika’ is something I've been working on, I don't know, since I was in grade 10 or something. I wanted to make a song with that melody, but the lyrics were bad. I was on Instagram live once and I had just finished recording a song, and thought, ‘I need to make a song like this.’ I'm lucky enough to have a person like Christer in the studio, where if I have an idea, he can actually play it because he's good at listening and playing. It’s a song for the people. I decided it was going to be a birthday song. And I'm also talking about how enjoyable it is to be in the space that I’m in, and being content with everything I'm doing.”
“Hold” “‘Hold’ is something that came out of me listening to a lot of neo-soul because [my videographer and photographer] Ntando used to play a lot of it in the house. I heard Musiq Soulchild’s ‘Halfcrazy’ and I realised that for most of those old neo-soul songs, on the hook, the main vocal [was] made up of a few voices, and one voice ‘backing’ them. That's what I wanted to do with that song. I had to find a topic, obviously; there was a lot of stuff going on in terms of relationships, so I thought I needed to make a song like that.”
“Big Time Sh’lappa” (feat. Lucasraps) “Lucasraps and I were like, ‘What are we going to call this, because there's nothing going on in the song.’ It's just raps, just punchlines the whole time, so we were like, ‘Yo, it's a sh’lappa,’ like, ‘a slapper’. At first, the song was less than two minutes, and I was gonna drop it as is. But we had a little thing going on: who can do it better? Maybe this is the fifth or sixth song where it’s me rapping, then he raps after. No hook. I was like, ‘Yo, come listen to this thing,’ because I knew that if he listened to it, he would want to be on it. He wrote his verse, we went outside, we took a picture of us shirtless (which we used as a cover). Same night, we dropped it.”
“Steppin” “‘Steppin’ is one of the hectic songs, one of the songs we trying to create with 808 Sallie, who’s the first producer that I linked up with when I was here in Jozi. ‘Steppin’ is basically a confidence thing. It's from the phrase ‘stepping on necks’. It's basically me just saying that that's what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to just change the game and just be as savage and as ruthless as possible, to get to where I'm trying to be.”
“Uppity” “‘Uppity’ is the oldest song on the album. It was recorded in the first 21 days of [South Africa’s March 2020 stringent COVID-19] lockdown. I wanted to put out ‘Uppity’ and ‘Big Time Sh’lappa’ close together, because they have that 808 Sallie sound. When I was making it, I was trying to manifest the whole thing of going up to the top and being the best I can be in terms of making music. Now more people will be able to hear it, because back then, not a lot of people were listening. That's the whole point of the album: for some of the songs I was doing then to be heard [now].”
“Ye X 4” (Blxckie & Nasty C) “‘Ye X 4’ is an anthem, a turn-up song I needed, because ‘Ye ye ye ye’ is my tagline: On every song, if it fits, I'll do it. I recorded it in September [2020] with GeekFam. I was lit; I had a lot of energy that day. I think it took me one hour to record it. At first, it had two verses as usual and I was just running with it. At every show or live performance, the hook is so catchy that by the time I’m done, everyone is singing along. And then around my birthday, in November, I needed to have someone else on the song. I went through different options, but one morning around 3 am, I thought, ‘This thing can only go to Nasty C. There's no other way, this has to happen.’”
“Tall” “‘Tall’ and ‘Uppity’ were recorded within that [first] 21 days of lockdown; [it was] the first time I was in Joburg. It’s just about advice people gave me before I moved here from Durban. Just putting all that advice together and putting it on a song. And I actually produced the beat.”