Cape Town-based rapper Middelvinger (real name Jéan Labuschagne) recently teamed up with SA music icon, Mango Groove’s Claire Johnston, for the summer anthem, Good Times.
South African music royalty
According to Texx and the City, he has collaborated with numerous heavyweight artists from Jack Parow to Distruction Boyz in the past, but this one is special.
“This song was one of the best tracks I’ve ever recorded. Having Claire jump on the track was also so surreal, I never thought I’d get the honour of working with South African music royalty like her and she just took the track to a whole other level,” Middelvinger explained.
The publication describes their sound as “transcendent enough to make you forget the chaos of 2020, and will have you counting down the days until summertime”.
More about Middelvinger
According to Running Wolf’s Rant, Middelvinger started rapping in his teens but made his mark on the SA music industry behind the drum kit for rock bands like Dead Lucky and Goodnight Wembley. After a shoulder injury forced him out of performing, he was encouraged by those who know him best to make the rap album he’d always wanted to.
Stepping into Fred Den Hartog’s (Die Heuwels Fantasties) Cape Town studio, The Nothing Club, the result is Boland Boys Vol. 1 – an 18-track rap opus with an all-star featuring cast.
“This is feel-good music with some crazy rhymes. It’s a blend of that old school ‘90s early 2000s style productions with a modern college hip hop feel to it. It sounds like the beat up system in the Conquest we used to drive around Stellies and sell weed in,” Middelvinger said.
Middelvinger’s first single “Weskus Boi” also features heavyweight artists and also has “one of the catchiest choruses of any song you’ll hear this summer”.
“Me and Parow go way back to like high school days when we all use to hang in Onrus for school holidays. Our lives have always intertwined in the music world and finally we got a chance to work together. It was Lekke,” Middelvinger explains when questioned about his debut single.
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