A 17-year-old Simon’s Town matric pupil is making a name for herself as a rap artist.
Earlier this month, Phindile Dlamini, who goes by the stage name FleeQy, released an eight-song album, Poppingtin, on SoundCloud. In a matter of
days, it was streamed more than 1 400 times.
Phindile was born in Durban and when she was about five months old her parents moved to Cape Town and settled in Ocean View for a few months until they moved to Simon’s Town seven years later.
Phindile says she found it hard settling into her new neighbourhood.
“Simon’s Town was, and still is, so different from Ocean View. There are no kids playing in the street, and the neighbours aren’t as neighbourly.”
Finding it hard to make friends, the 8-year-old turned to books and fell in love with reading. Jodi Picoult is one of her favourite authors.
Phindile’s love for rap started with the late American rapper Christopher Wallace – aka Notorious BIG. She says she relished the poetry she found at the heart of rap.
She was inspired to write her own lyrics and in 2016, she and friend Erin “Toolegit” Khumalo worked on a single for several months. Phindile says she was thrilled with the positive response it got.
“We received a lot of love from our schoolmates and friends. I am not going to lie, I was scared, like, what if people don’t like my work?”
She worked on more collaborations but then decided to do something on her own and that, she says, is when Poppingtin surfaced.
But compiling her mixtape wasn’t easy – there were several big setbacks along the way: she lost her recorded work; a camera with photos of her album cover was stolen and she had to switch to another producer.
Now that the album is finally out there, she says, “things are looking
up”.
This year, she has signed up for a new challenge: Miss Teen South Africa, and she has made it into the top 35.
“I am pretty excited because top 35! Dude! What you mean?”
She says she you will also be able to see her as a judge on The Kissing Booth 2, coming out on Netflix this year.
