His destiny has always been written in the stars.
No matter how long it would take, singing to heal people is what his heart wanted.
Ever since he became a recording artist about 15 years ago, he had been counting down to the day when he gets to make a career out of his love for music.
When he finally got his breakthrough in 2020, Mthandazo Gatya never looked back.
In fact, his most notable leap of faith was daring himself to participate in John Legend’s #OpenVerseChallenge on TikTok where he made a duet of John’s Nervous and earned the opportunity to perform with him live on stage in 2022.
His career has been on an upward trajectory ever since.
After four Metro FM award nominations and no win, Mthandazo is finally reaping the fruits of his hardwork.
Modest backstage, he can’t stop telling Drum how happy he is to be an award-winning artist.
“I’m really excited. Eventually, it was bound to happen [because] we’ve put in so much work, it comes from a genuine place as well. We’re not trying to fit in the norms of the industry, we’re just trying to be ourselves and to see it bring us these results is really [amazing].”
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Battling against the likes of Tyla, Filah lah lah, Nomfundo Moh and Blxckie, the Senzeni hitmaker won the Best RnB song of the year with his ‘In 2 U’ single.
To get to this victorious point, he says he has had to quit every job that couldn’t accommodate his love for music.
“I’ve quit almost every job that I had because I felt like I was suffocating. I’ve had a couple of jobs and in between all those jobs, I couldn’t find space for music. It felt like they were depriving me of the opportunity that I wanted [to venture into music]. When I got into al those jobs, I wanted to feed into this dream and when I saw that it couldn’t happen, I decided to quit.”
The 34-year-old adds that he was once a cleaner, pizza chef and communications personnel.
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“None of these fulfilled me.”
To him, finally winning a Metro FM award is not just about him but for other artists to learn from.
“This is my first win after four nominations. It says so much about my patience and I feel like it’s something that if a lot of artists could have, there’s so much we can achieve as artists. It’s a game of patience,” says the Senzeni hitmaker.
