Johannesburg - To most of Mzansi, DJ Mobi Dixon is the man behind the super smash hit, City Rains. But behind the cool exterior lies a man who has beaten the odds to take his place at the table of success.
Mobi reveals in a chat to The Juice recently that his career as a DJ was almost derailed completely after a battle with drug addiction four years ago.
"I'm overcome a bad drug addiction," he tells us. "Four years ago I was down and out. I had nothing. I was in rehab. But I came out of that and believed in myself and my talent, and within four year I had the biggest song in the country".
Fear
When asked what kept him going during those long, dark days in rehab, he says he owes his life to music and to a realisation that he was about to lose everything he ever loved.
"I work hard now because I've been right at the bottom. I've lost it all. I almost lost my family. It only really hit me when I realised that I was about to lose the thing I loved the most: my family. I had disappointed them so many times and I had relapsed a couple of time. It was now do or die. They had given up on me and I realised that if I didn't clean up my act I would lose them forever," he explains.
"The fear of not being able to be with my family or use the talent for music God had given me scared me. I would have been reduced to nothing more than a junky," he says.
It was then that he decided to change his life, giving up smoking, drugs and drinking. And he hasn't looked back since.
Hope
Mobi says he hopes his journey can other people who are in a similar situation.
"In life, when you make a mistake you have to get up dust yourself and get back on the path. I want kids out there to learn from me and not make the same mistakes. You don't need drugs and alcohol to be cool. You can be something in society without going through that."
Mobi was recently lambasted in the media for apparently paying studio musicians a paltry R200 for their help on the track. It's a claims he has dismissed, saying that isn't the case and he paid each member of the studio musicians R200. About the criticism that followed, he seems less than concerned, saying he has 'been through so much worse in my life.'
And judging by his life story, we guess he has a point.