Last month I watched from the crowd as the mercurial singer and producer Una Rams killed his set as the headliner of the latest instalment of Feel Good Series. He drew the crowd in, held us and blew our minds with his emotive, composed and highly entertaining performance.
The name Una Rams has been thrown around in my circles for a while now. He's been publicly cosigned and billed by several high profile artists as the next big thing. After watching him live, I get it. He's worth his salt.
"It's very different every time," he says, when I ask him if this is how his live shows usual go. "I just love to go on stage and remember where I was mentally while making the song and perform from that feeling. I just want to have fun on stage, especially since people get to connect to me and what I'm saying."
Later today, Rams will be one of the star acts at Back to the City festival, the biggest hip hop festival on the continent. He first performed at the show last year and he's glad he got the call to hit the main-stage again this year.
"I'm very excited and keen to see everyone come out and support me, keen to exchange energies with the crowd and translate the music from just something people hear to something they experience."
The festival will also see performances from the likes of A-Reece, The Big Hash, Cassper Nyovest, Emtee and Riky Riky.
2018 was another progressive year for Una Rams following the release of his critically acclaimed project, Wavy Baby. 2019 has kicked on from that momentum. "The year's been going well, man. There's a lot of things in the pipelines, features are coming out, people are recognising what we're doing and they're catching onto to it."
I ask him if we can expect new music, especially considering that Wavy Baby only consisted of six songs. "I'm actually working on multiple projects at the same time, which is kind of tacky. I feel like there are different personalities coming out on the music and you can hear it. We play around with a lot of genres. I'm just experimenting and having fun doing this. But I'm definitely gonna drop a whole lot of music."
Two weeks ago, Rams was featured on the video for No Stress, DJ Speedsta's latest single. No Stress is already on high rotation and looks primed to keep him going until he's ready to give us that new music.
Rams and his label, Airborne Records, for which he's a co-founder, has a joint venture with Black Coffee's Soulistic Music. "It's been quite the learning curve. It's brought so much perspective into what the industry is and how the music business actually works.
" Black Coffee operates as somewhat of a musical mentor for Rams. They chat often about how to navigate within the music industry and Coffee adds his input on Rams' music. With Black Coffee's support and an ever growing audience, it'll be interesting to see how far this young star can push the boundaries this year.