Artist Profile: Shoka Sunflower
Shoka Sunflower, the rapper from Johannesburg, South Africa, has been refining his experimental approach to music-making since he was a teenager, and, now, with the release of his latest album For Now Keep Dancing, Shoka has taken another step further into the world he has constructed around his raps, honing in on the qualities that make his sound unique.
As a child, Shoka was exposed to hip-hop music for the first time by his brother, who had discovered a host of artists through the Internet. As a younger brother, Shoka soaked up anything his older brother thought was cool, and, within a short period of time, he was regularly listening to artists like Tyler, the Creator and Kanye West.
Around the same time, hip-hop had seen a rise in popularity in South Africa, with artists such as Riky Rick helping to establish the genre as mainstream in that region of the world.
While Tyler, the Creator specifically had a “visceral and tangible” influence upon Shoka’s style, he has also taken influence from other artists from his country, citing the founders of Kwaito, a South African spin on house and disco music, as providing more recent inspiration.
“Recently, I went back in our history as a country and kind of got into Kwaito… and I look at what they wore, and I look at the music videos, and I look at the imaging, and I just think that these guys, they understood something. I can tell that not all the resources were there, but they still figured out how to make this thing exist in this space. It's pretty interesting to think about, and I think I subconsciously took a lot of influence from just the approach in that music.”
In fact, Shoka’s journey into hip-hop can be characterized by a trial of finding his voice and confidence. As he became more immersed in the genre as a teenager, people around him would tell him that he should give it a try himself, but he would always laugh it off as something that was out of his reach.
That is until he met a friend, Dan, who was also interested in rap, and they began writing rhymes together, pushing each other to develop their craft. Through these experiences, Shoka fell in love with the process of introspection and wordsmithing involved in lyric-writing, and, as time went on, he began to upload his songs to Soundcloud.
His 2022 project, SOMETHING FROM NOTHING, represents the culmination of this era of his artistry. With nine songs centered around lo-fi introspections that are reminiscent of artists like Earl Sweatshirt and Mavi, the project showcases the early lyrical talent of a budding artist.
Yet, with his new project, For Now Keep Dancing, Shoka has taken a massive step forward, displaying the three intervening years between the two projects in the manner in which he has incorporated dance rhythms, bumping lyricism, and innovative flows into his repertoire.
From the inflective cadences of “Soup” to the indie-rendered musings of “Skin”, the project shows a wider range than his first while maintaining the serious intention and talent that has underscored all of his output to this point.
“I think I attach a lot of imagery to the music, and I think that's probably what kind of makes me stand out. I really give a f*ck about everything that I'm doing… I have to always kind of be pushing myself as far as I can… It's easy to get brushed off and kind of be taken unseriously because I think a lot of the work sometimes can be kind of childlike, like running around in boxing gloves and stuff. But that's where I think I'm building in a way that not everyone else is building.”
