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Cal_vin

Bongani Ndlovu, Showbiz Correspondent
THE South African Gqom music craze has proved too much to resist for rapper Cal_Vin as he has come up with a potential club banger in the form of a single titled Jeki.

Gqom is a new generation of house music that has taken the region by storm and has birthed stars like Babes Wodumo who calls herself the Queen of Gqom. Songs like Gobisiqolo are also part of the danceable tunes that Gqom music has unleashed on dance floors around the country.

Gqom, which evolved from Kwaito, tribal house and hip-hop, with the word meaning “hit” or “drum” in Zulu, originated in the coastal city of Durban.

Now Cal_Vin has played around with the sound with the help of GTI and Mawiza who feature on the track that will be released today on Skyz Metro FM’s Vuka Vuka Breakfast show.

“The word Jeki is a slang word that’s popularly used to refer to a friend or an acquaintance. I’ve been interested in Gqom music for a long time. And as fate would have it, last Thursday, we’d gone out for a birthday party and on our way to the club, we were playing Gqom music.

“I ended up free styling and I realised that I could actually rap over the music. I whipped out my phone and started recording myself. As I was doing this I kept on saying Jeki and that’s how the title came about,” said Cal_Vin.

He said after the night out, he decided to play around with a Gqom beat in his studio on Sunday.

“On Sunday I listened to my recording more and I started playing around with a Gqom beat. When I finished making the beat and putting vocals I sent it to South Africa to my friends who were blown away.”

Cal_Vin has since emailed the single to a couple of radio stations with the hope that they will play it so it gets popular.

“I don’t want this song to be the biggest in Bulawayo only, but throughout the country. This will be my third biggest track after Bebengakholwa and Zikhupan’ and judging from the response, I think I can achieve that this year,” said the ambitious rapper.