South African hip hop star Tellaman released his debut album earlier this year and this month the star released the much-anticipated music video for "Whipped," the first single off the album which features Shekhinah and Nasty C.
"God Decides" is a labour of love which took Tellaman to two years to put together. "I started writing new music but I didn’t do so with an album in mind. I was just writing and about a year later I decided to put an album together and God Decides started forming," he said.
He said that the album is broken into four parts and speak to where he was in his life when he was putting the album together. The first part speaks to someone who has just found love and is happy with their partner, heard in songs like Whipped and Head Over Heels. "The second part is when I struggled with love and did stupid things within the relationship and then fell out of love. Songs like Extra fall within that space I was in," he said. The third part is dealing with the breakup and the fourth is when he realised he made wrong decisions and wants to get back to himself and move on.
Known for hits like No Sharing and S.A.P, the Durban born star said he named his debut album because God has already decided what will happen in his life. "It isn’t some deep religious meaning, it’s just me saying that God decided that this will happen. Even this interview we are having now".
Speaking on the video which was recorded in Hartbeespoort on the set of an old movie, Tellaman said he wanted the video to be fun. "We found this place in Harties that had this old movie set, the set was never destroyed. It has a old diner vibe and I liked it very much because it’s a place where you would go to on your first date and that’s the concept of the video," he said.
The video is filled with colour which Tellaman said sets the mood of the video. “It’s a happy song so the video needed to communicate that and I think we did that well”.
Tellaman said he hopes God Decides will let people see that no one is perfect. “I think we live in a world where people want to strive for perfection. They over edit pictures, they look and others and think they have it together but no one is perfect and that is perfectly okay so I hope this album shows them that we all have flaws and deal with life differently,” he said.