What is the price you pay for being unapologetically real with yourself and the world at large?
The answer to that question is one Donne wouldn’t have to think too much on before he frankly refocuses your worldview. A blessed victim of hip hop’s double standard love and hate for authentic artistry in an African American art form, Donne is a rapper and actor who writes cinematic ballads for the boys in our hoods.
Inspired by the ethics and culture of 90s hip hop that was pushed to him by the hustle of Jay Z and Master P, he embodies the art form in a manner few can emulate and the rest can’t appreciate. A commendable student of the game that taught him to plug himself into the socket to gain the power to control his career, he spent the mid-2010s building up his rep on the regional freestyle circuits, with regular appearances on The Fix killing freestyles for a Zimbabwean audience neck-deep in Zimdancehall’s choke-hold. Everything added up to culminate into a run that blessed him with placements on South African media platforms from radio to films. It would seem that he became an overnight star in the midnight clubs along the coasts with a tour that turned his mosh pit banger Jimmy Snuka into a cult favourite.
Murphy’s law reared its ugly head as he had to endure the universe test his resolve with management issues, COVID-19 and unresolved creative endeavours due to inefficiencies in the creative workflows of his collaborators. His music is deeply drenched in the New York street lore that infected the world at large with the rhymes and crimes of mafioso rappers, street corner poets and project house babies who bought back the block.
The hallmark of an artist is their fan base, which for me is the true testament of an artist’s greatness. Alas, we live on the internet where a list with SEO on steroids, the right design aesthetic and enough social media clout can become the source for the world’s fake news and definitely the opinions for naïve kids. Thus opinion pieces going forward should do more than just commentate on the culture but validate the culture. That’s my value system when it comes to cultural journalism.
Artistry remains the fuel for the world’s progression towards better human conditions, and the beautiful moments of seeing artists rewarded for pushing the human race further can be fulfilling.
For a fan who has genuinely supported an artist from often at times near-death experiences of poverty, addiction, abuse and crippling anxiety to the peak of artist self-actualization, they deserve to be the measure of great artists. The ultimate price for a fan to pay is unconditional love for the art and the creator.
I remember when I found out Mac Miller passed. I was at my friend’s CJ in his dorm house in the leafy suburbs of Muzari in the valley of Chinhoyi. I was still a sophomore holding on to the dream of buying a car off my internship. As tears dotted my screen getting swept into the river of grief on my Twitter timeline, I tried to come to terms with the unbearable facts of life. As CJ slept after a night of heavy drinking, I was moved to cry alone trying to process how I found out through Twitter that I lost my friend I would never meet. Mac Miller, like many great artists before and after him, left behind fans who have been essentially scarred by the PTSD of their passing. Mac Miller’s greatest virtue was his empathy.
For Donne, an internet sensation in the US with buzzing radio airplay and social media coverage in the Atlanta rap scene, the virtue of patience is quite evident in him. He has come a long way from teenage heydays as an internationally vetted rap battler who aided and abetted the Zim rap scene credibility’s beyond the teapot borders. His transition into being a radio presenter shows a level of calculative content creation that is primed towards collaborative synergy with traceable value exchange parameters.
There is a price to be paid for cementing moral excellence within yourself for the collective betterment of others, and the price to be paid for an artist’s virtue is violence. Violence, as we understand it today, is the answer for everything that everyone has the social right to effect in extreme cases of…well anything really it seems. Violence in the music game can be a different beast altogether with fickle temperaments and long-reaching repercussions being the effects of the war going on that nobody is safe from.
Donne hasn’t been safe ever since he picked up the mic to battle rap high-level battlers who could have always acted upon their rhythmic threats had they less restraint. Yet he walked away relatively unscathed carrying his stripes of honour for technical excellence in a sport that glorifies brutality. Every cut, blow and shot aimed at him has only served to fortify his strengths, open his eyes to blind spots and helped him realize his weaknesses, as a rapper, as a creative and as a businessman. The lessons learned from the Ls he’s picked up in his lengthy career can only be known by him, but the moves he’s made since the pandemic show a level of maturity and growth in artistry that is being reciprocated by an audience that has found a prodigal son.
