Hit maker and award-winning producer with the magic touch. Charismatic and yet humble, Tumelo Thandokuhle Mathebula also known as Tweezy is by far the most talented new age hip hop producer this era has ever produced. His journey started in 2013 when he started producing for the likes of the Fraternity and E-Jay, a former member of Ghetto Prophecy that branched out as a solo artist. During the same year a friend realised his talents as a music producer and gave him contacts of affiliates in the music industry which included AKA. Having contacted him, they started working together and produced AKA’s hit single called Run Jozi in 2014. Their musical chemistry also resulted in the release of Sim Dope and All Eyes On Me which both charted number one locally on the South African Electronic Music Africa Charts. Other artists Tweezy has worked with include Speedsta, L-Tido, Casper Nyovest, Emtee to name a few.
Once again, we invited Tweezy to come chill with us on the Kas’lam couch of legends to talk about his journey so far, as well as his future plans.
You’re currently the main hit maker in terms SA hip-hop right now, everything you touch becomes a hit. What is it that you have that everybody else doesn’t seem to have?
I feel like it’s something we all have and that’s passion. Every single day of my life I just spend time growing this passion into something fruitful for me, whether it’s a song, whether it’s visual arts or whatever the case is I just find the means to grow this passion.
Well right now everybody knows your name and people are playing your hits but this all started somewhere be-fore all that, take us back to the beginning of your journey.
I first fell in love with music when I was about 8 years old, back when I was introduced to genres like ‘Kwaito’ and stuff. So, I became passionate about sound but at that point I wasn’t into making music, I was just a really big fan of it. Fast forward to like 2008 while I was studying visual arts at the National School of the Arts, I got introduced to this software called FL Studio 3 and I thought I was playing a game. At that time, I thought it was a music making game until I did some research and came to find out that it’s an official Software that’s used by your big time producers like Timbaland, Pharell, T Minus and everybody. So, from my interest of loving music and being presented with the platform of learning how to make it, I just dedicated my time into understanding the software a bit more and then every single day I just spent time using this soft-ware till fast forward I became this producer guy.
So, from just messing around with a software, when or where was that moment where you thought I’ve actually got a career in this?
It’s funny how it happened actually. In like 2009 I moved to Parktown and bumped to a close friend of mine, now he was a big fanatic of raping and I was a fan of producing. He discovered my production skills when I took one of our church lead sister’s MacBook and started making beats, so he was like “Yo, you make beats! I rap, we should do something together”. He later introduced me to some of his friends (members of Ghetto Prophecy) and we started making music for the fun of it. As we con-tinued to do so, the music got out there and all of a sud-den we had a few followers. The next thing our music is playing on Metro FM and all that, so it was that point when I was inspired to take this music thing seriously.
You were in the group ‘Ghetto Prophecy’, how did you make the move from being a group member to being ‘Tweezy’ the solo act we know today?
You know the trick about being in a group is that every single person within the group has to have equal contributions, dedication and passion. So, it got to a stage where there was about 8 members in ‘Ghetto Prophecy’, because vele we were trying to be like Skwatta Kamp or something like that yabo *lol*. Eventually one by one people started dropping off for whatever reason, for some it was school, some thought this was never gonna work, some thought they had a better chance of making it somewhere else rather than with this group, so people dropped off until eventually there was like 3 of us. For some time the 3 of us pushed this ‘Ghetto Prophecy’ movement and it seemed like things were happening but when you’re pushing music independently you run across so many challenges especially financially, because you need some sort of financing to move to the next level, to be introduced to stuff like PR or brand management or whatever the case is. So, we were just some kids from high school we didn’t have the finances, at the same time at our homes they just wanted us to finish school rather than this music thing. Eventually I just found myself being the only person who kept fighting for this dream.
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