Lektion treats his music like a muscle. He knows if he doesn’t keep working out his flows and practising over different beats, he can’t be fit for the rap game. The Rustenburg-born, Mafikeng-raised rapper who is now based in Joburg, also knows that being in shape doesn’t hurt his career either.
When I visit him at his makeshift home studio, a circuit trainer sits close to his PCs. The Drop It hitmaker shares that ideas come to him while he’s working out. So when that happens, he needs to be close to his recording equipment in order to lay them all down.
“When you have a good body, everything turns out good. Even jobs,” he says.
“I remember there was a lady who works for Colgate who wanted to put me in an ad because she liked my smile, but she wasn’t happy with my belly. So I thought, ‘how about I start with these routines now?’”
His routines mirror his music making schedule in that he goes equally hard at both. While in his home, the motswakolista plays me a few tracks that might make it onto his debut album which is due for release next year.
“I kind of co-produced the album with Thaso,” he shares about working with the producer who was responsible for HHP and Morafe’s earlier sound.
“I looked at Khuli and thought, ‘he’s got nice flows’,” Lektion breaks down his inspiration.
“Jabba’s stage presence is out of this world and Tuks is solid with his punchlines. Then I looked at Ludacris, Bone Thugs and Busta Rhymes and turned all of that into a Tswana rapper.”
Having started out performing regularly (and in English) at Times 4 in Pretoria, Lektion decided to try rapping fast – and in Tswana – in an effort to stand out on a song by 2 Fresh (which Afrotraction was a part of) featuring AB Crazy and Lektion. Eventually, he’d go on to make Basadi– which he confesses as a “dumbass gimmick” – channelling Migos’s Versace flow.
Unfortunately, this as well as another gimmick, uGogo by DJ Cleo, which is a vernacular version of OT Genasis’s Coco, threaten to paint Lektion as the kind of rapper who is afraid to be original. But his new music is going to shatter that canvas. He features Ntukza, samples Letta Mbulu and Lira and pulls out flows that are unexpected to complement lyrical content driven by baby momma drama, freedom and straight up skill.
So musically, Lektion is shooting in the gym. But it remains to be seen if the public will cheer him on in the stands.