Bonginkosi Ntiwane06/13/2018
“No one can whistle a symphony, it takes an orchestra to play it,” Halford E. Luccock once said.
You would presume Dizzy Monks was present at his sermon when he said these famous words, looking at the way their artists operate.
Dizzy Monks Entertainment is a record label, studio and a home to rappers, in-house producers and sound engineers. Top Gogg, Young Nativv, Dust and Ginger Trill are the four rappers that were introduced at last month’s launch of their respective videos, which were presented as one movie directed by Aytch.
The idea to start a collective came through Top Gogg and Young Nativv who went to high school together. Dizzy Monks was founded by Gogg in 2010. But the company established itself two years later because studies took up most of Gogg’s time during that period.
“My studying didn’t work out. I was studying law at first and then I studied advertising at Vega, where I met Dust- he was singing at the time, he wasn’t rapping.”
The Vaal native in the clique, Dust, doesn’t actually remember Gogg asking him to join Dizzy Monks, but had always been part of the crew without being active in the music production because he was still trying to figure out his style.
“Gogg found out pretty early that I’m a singer and I’ve been singing since I was a kid and I’d like to think I’m good at it- I think he saw something in that. Also, he and I connected over another subject which is anime and manga.”
One of the reasons he decided to rap is because, “I’m a Sagittarius and I consider myself a bit of a knowledge dropper. I realised I can deliver a lot more stuff, rapping than singing because singing takes up a bit more space. It’s allowed me to express a certain kinda self-confidence because as a singer you gotta be laidback.”
Young Nativv who is a project administrator at an I.T company, is depicted in his video throwing a party at his workplace and says this is a conflict he battles daily. “I’m going to work tomorrow- I called in sick today,” he says.
“A 9 to 5 takes so much from you- you can tell yourself that you’re going to studio after work, but when I get to studio I’m tired and the guys have been in there for hours”. Despite this though, the storyteller never holds back on his bars “Rap is very competitive, don’t get it twisted-all four of us think we’re the best in the world but that doesn’t bring any clashes, we’re just lucky that each of us has their own style,” says Nativv.
From their mutual relationship with Kool Out, Dizzy Monks and Ginger Trill built a relationship which is about a year-old now, but only started working together late last year. “The guys invited me for a video launch. Then they invited me to be in one video and then invited me to studio where we did one song, then it became two songs- me and Gogg started vibing because he’s like a robot rapper he just switches it on…next thing, we got like four songs. I wouldn’t go there every day, but every time I visited we finished a song,” says Trill.
Gogg was also perplexed as I am that the four of them haven’t recorded a song together, although they’ve worked on each other’s songs. “I just realised that, since we started that project we haven’t sat down and made a track. There’s definitely been ideas…ideas that I’ve been cooking up as a producer but I haven’t presented it to the guys yet. I’ve got 13 tracks already that I feel are ready for that idea,” says Gogg.
Gogg and Trill’s project is expected to drop later this month.
