The Art Of Breaking Records

Coming off of arguably his biggest year, Cassper Nyovest is a force. Whether he’s making history by filling up unfillable stadiums, or signing multimillion rand deals, everything he touches seems to turn to gold. We found out how he did it.

Confession: I have always felt somewhat uncomfortable writing, hearing, using the word local. It’s a strange one for me – no other country I can think of finds it necessary to self-classify their athletes, artists, entertainers, musicians, or separate ourselves into these local versus international tiers, with the implication that one is inferior to the other (spoiler alert: it’s not). Who knows what causes us to draw those lines – when the world itself has for years looked to us for inspiration – but for some reason, we do. We do it in the media industry, and it determines what programming we see on television, or who fronts our magazine covers, or what music is included in our advertising. We do it in the fashion industry. We do it in the music industry, and it delineates what we listen to on the radio, who gets priority at our stadiums, or who headlines our festivals. And when it comes to those spaces, that bordered-in thinking has for a very long time prevailed. People won’t buy tickets to see local artists. People don’t go out to see local films. People won’t spend money on local labels. That’s just a small sampling of the beliefs that have often become dictates, shared wildly through the offices of industry gatekeepers for years. When choosing what to watch, what concerts to attend, what albums to download, I wonder, how many times have we even had the same thoughts run through our own heads?