CITY PRESS REVIEW: Cassper Nyovest - Thuto

Cape Town - So, the most overrated MC in the country went gold in a day with his latest offering, Thuto, trending on social media when it dropped. It has a few heavy hitters in terms of featured artists and there are plans to fill up some stadium -- all the same old stuff really. Oh, and he now has clothes for you to wear while bumping his mediocre raps.

I thought the production was at least going to steal the show, but it was about as hard-hitting as Cassper’s rhymes. That means soft. He managed to rope in Goapele to sing Malaika’s Destiny. And that’s literally all she did – sing that song with the beat breaking for Nyovest’s verses. There wasn’t even a fresh new sample change. Why did he not just get Matshediso Mholo from Malaika to sing, or sample the beat and use Goapele on something else – maybe sample her biggest track Closer perhaps?

The big surprise for me was the inclusion of The Roots frontman Black Thought. If you’ve heard Black Thought alongside his legendary band or on features by himself you’ll know that he’s no ordinary rapper. I’ve heard this man spit out 32 or more bars on the same song as two other rappers who could only manage 16s because they couldn’t keep up with him. This same man appears on Thuto’s Ng’yekeleni, and sucks. How do you put Black Thought on a trap beat? Dumb.

Nyovest’s last album, Refiloe, had catchy numbers on it, like Le Mpitse, which would get stuck in your head even if you didn’t like it. The illest thing about this album is the stolen adlib “sha-sha!” That’s it, a whole record and the only quotable I recall is ... “sha-sha!”

Shame, this boy really tries to be deep on this. He talks about love and fatherhood, like on the track Superman featuring Tshepo Tshola, but it just doesn’t work when you’re lyrically poor. The man himself is rich and doing mad numbers, which is good for the local game. He even performed in London this week at the Africa Music Festival. I’m just not sure about this particular brother having the whole nation on his back like that. But I’m a hater, so..