South African Hip Hop Award nominee Meg Mafia contemplated hanging up her mic in exchange for some screen time. But now she knows she can do both. These days fans of the rapper who was born Megan Opperman can be found on MTV Base’s You Got Got.
Here, she is a part of Tol A$$ Mo’s Outlawz, a group of comedians who play pranks on celebrities and regular folk alike. You Got Got is not an avenue that takes Meg Mafia out of her comfort zone. As she says: “I think I have been funny for as long as I can remember. Comedy has always been a part of my life. My family was always my audience and I’d crack jokes for them all the time. Comedy chose me, it wasn’t something I chose, to be honest.”
So she entered the online competition where the show was looking for new pranksters and then she won.
“It was an online audition and out of 25000 entries, I made it to the top two,” she recalls.
“It was meant to be only one person who won but I managed to get 80% of the votes and so they chose two people. I was surprised, to be honest. I didn’t think people would engage on that level but they did.”
On what the seasoned comedians she gets to work with have taught her, Meg Mafia says she now knows “it’s important to be natural and to be yourself. Tol A$$ Mo is always himself. I learnt how to put my ego aside”.
She finds herself in tasks that are close to home. Like when she has to prank a rapper.
Meg Mafia’s most memorable scenes included making fun of Emtee. “In the prank, I have to take shots at Emtee and as a rap artist, that’s not the easiest thing to take. I think I made him feel a little inferior. It was funny for me,” she laughs. Meg Mafia says she would love to prank 5FM DJ Ms Cosmo because “she’s very straightforward as a person. She has a very serious personality. I’d like to see if I can prank her and see how far I can take it”.
Being on You Got Got doesn’t mean Meg Mafia will never rap again - even though she almost stopped. She’s just released a song called King of Hooks. “King of Hooks came on the day I was about to give up on music. I told myself that I’m going to make one more song and base it on what I am really good at: the chorus. Choruses are really my forte in music.
“So I decided to make a song that was just full of choruses one way, so that’s why King of Hooks is just a bunch of hooks.”
I ask her why she wanted to quit in the first place. “I felt people don’t recognise me but that’s not their fault because I don’t have public relations,” she explains (PR). “I don’t have that financial injection.
“Pushing myself in that direction to move forward was just very hard. So I had to tell myself that I tried and did my best and let it go. But music seems to be pulling me back all the time. I don’t want a record deal. I have been sold too many dreams too many times. I want PR because that will be my backbone.”
Right now she is using her social media to be her own PR for music as well as for health and wellness.
She tells me: “Depression is something I was born with and aside from through music, I have never known how to release my anger.
“So this fitness journey I’m on has taught me how to take the anger I have in my body and released me.
“My mother is the one who encouraged me to get up and try something new so I would like all the people who follow me on social media to join me on that journey.”
* You Got Got airs on Tuesdays at 9.30pm on MTV Base (DStv Channel 322).