The Drealnova story …struggle of an unknown artiste

The Drealnova story …struggle of an unknown artiste

I met Drealnova, real name Vuyisile Moyake,  through a mutual friend sometime last year at a CookOut event.

When he found out that I was a journalist, he told me about a song he wanted to release and that I might be of help on the publicity side of things.

There I was, just enjoying the sun and fine whiskey, eyes darting from side to side trying to scout the available ‘talent’ and this kid was trying to put me in work mode on my day off. (I am in work mode 24/7)

Well, I told him it was not a problem, I mean, what else could I have said to a new friend, but deep down inside I knew this conversation would be forgotten after a few sips of the wise waters.

Guess what, this fella was willing to convince me that he was the next big thing in the music industry and would not let his opportunity to get in the newspaper slide just like that.

So we had a brief conversation about his craft, exchanged numbers and agreed that we would continue the chat some other day without the drinks doing most of the talking.

I don’t know how many aspiring artistes I meet on a daily basis and promise to make them famous, then I have to spend the greater part of the week dodging their phone calls and penning evasive WhatsApp responses.

It is not that I don’t want to write stories about unknown artistes, trust me, I have written my fair share and some of these musicians have gone on to explode after I put them on the limelight.

The thing is, every other day I am trying to look for the best story that I think my readers would be interested in and just like any human, there are stories that I might feel like they don’t warrant my attention.

To be honest, I low-key brushed Drealnova off without even making an effort to listen to any one of his songs. (Not that I do that a lot, I just wasn’t convinced he was as good as he said he was)

A few months later, the video for his debut song “Honest” dropped. That was around August last year.

I felt like a total douche for not having attempted to listen to his music. Honestly, the song was really good and I immediately realised the reason why he was convinced that he had the potential to really go far in the industry.

Unfortunately, I was entangled with something else at that time and didn’t get around to writing a piece on this talented young man.

This is just but one of the many talented artistes who have not managed to get the exposure they probably deserve for one reason or the other.

Even if he had gotten space to be published in several newspapers, there is no guarantee that he would have blown up, but at least that would have given him a chance.

Sometimes that is all it takes. A chance.

While I regret not giving this lad a shot at fame back then, I am glad I eventually got around to listening to his music.

He might not be that popular now, but what I can say is that he has the potential to be among the best R’n’B artistes in the country.

We recently reconnected and I figured that he might as well one of the first artistes to tell his story through this new platform. Check out the video below