How a Nasty C and A-Reece feature was destroyed by ‘ego’
In this documentary, we are going to talk about two very prominent figures in South African hip hop, great wordsmiths.
A while ago, my detective skills discovered that Cassper Nyovest and AKA have an unreleased song together and until this day, we need to find out what that song sounded like.
In this documentary, we will discover something unknown about A-Reece and Nasty C
2014
The year is 2014, when rap music in South Africa was starting to blossom.
At the top of the year, we had songs like ‘Run Jozi’ and ‘Caracara’, the latter starting the first hip hop dance craze in South Africa and being the biggest song until it was overtaken by Cassper Nyovest’s monster song, ‘Doc Shebeleza’.
But at the time though, you could literally count the mainstream South African hip hop artists on one hand.
Seeing the success of rap artists at their pinnacle, you had younger artists like Priddy Ugly, Emtee, and YoungstaCPT already planning their entrances to the game.
However, the kid with the most buzz definitely was A-Reece.
A-Reece
Twenty-fourteen was the year that A-Reece’s buzz was really starting to bubble under the radar, he was hot enough to be brought in by one of the hottest record producers in South African hip hop at the time, pH Raw X.
Since A-Reece was doing very well, the one person that people on Twitter could compare him with was a kid from Durban, Nasty C.
At this point, A-Reece and Nasty followed each other on Twitter because when the former tweeted the following;
Nasty C responded with;
A few weeks later, a fan tweeted the following;
Nasty C responded to the fan by asking for their music thinking that he was asking for a feature for himself.
But Twitter has this weird glitch where it replies to the tweet and the person who was tagged in the tweet, so A-Reece mistook Nasty C’s above reply to the fan as Nasty C asking him for the links to his music. A-Reece then responded to Nasty C’s above tweet with;
Nasty C responded with;
A-Reece then responds with;
Nasty C then responded with the mundane, “Standard”.
Now the above tweets clearly show how ego and miscommunication went on to kill one of the hottest features that we maybe would have gotten in South African hip hop.
Turned Tables
Fast forward to 2016, and Nasty C is one of the greatest and hottest new rappers in South Africa, whereas A-Reece had the up-and-comer status having just been picked up by Ambitiouz Entertainment.
But even though this was the case, fans kept comparing the two rappers, Nasty C and A-Reece.
Fast forward to the 29th of September 2016, A-Reece would have an interview with Zkhiphani in promotion of his debut studio album, ‘Paradise’.
During the interview, A-Reece said something that would fuel up even more comparisons between him and Nasty C until Tuesday 11 October 2016, when Nasty C also had an interview with DJ Speedsta.
Now during Nasty C’s interview, he was asked whether he would collaborate with A-Reece in the future. Nasty C responded saying that he’s not one to feature people who sound like him.
Three days later, MTV Africa would release a cypher featuring Ambitiouz Entertainment rappers including A-Reece.
So during this MTV Base cypher, A-Reece would respond to Nasty C’s interview with the below lines;
First of all, let me get one thing clear, I do not sound like David get the f**k outta here. I’m the best to ever do it, I’m the king, I’m the heir, it’s A-Reece I’m outta here.
As if that wasn’t enough, A-Reece rubbed salt in the wound during a short outdoor interview at a gig. He held the microphone and said;
Yo, first of all, let me get one thing clear, I do not sound like David get the f**ck outta here. David is Nasty C.
Airport
Almost two months after this incident, A-Reece would cut ties with the record label he was under, Ambitiouz Entertainment, and Nasty would also have a similar situation by cutting ties with his record label Free World Music.
On Friday 17 February 2017, A-Reece made an announcement on Twitter as he tweeted;
A-Reece further tweeted;
The following day on Saturday 18 February 2017, Nasty C also made an announcement on Twitter by tweeting;
A-Reece would then go on a promotion tour with ‘The Wrecking Crew’
Nasty C would mention the airport incident from two months before, which would have been a couple of days after A-Reece’s freestyle on the MTV Base Cypher.
Ivyson Tour
I’m going to speed-run through this part because most of you already know what happened here.
So Nasty organized a tour of six major cities around South Africa and there were Cape Town, Durban, Bloemfontein, Vaal, and Pretoria.
Nasty C had actually booked A-Reece to perform at the Pretoria but in the end, the ‘Paradise’ rapper did not perform.
The next day Nasty C went on to post a video clip on social media in which he said the following;
I know A-Reece wasn’t there and I know Emtee wasn’t there because they were booked for other shows in Johannesburg so they couldn’t make it, so yeah that’s that.
On Monday 2 November 2020, the first episode of Khuli Chana’s hip hop show ‘The Originators’ aired on TRACE Urban with A-Reece as the guest. He would then explain why he didn’t perform at Nasty C’s Ivyson tour show in Pretoria.
What happened at the ‘Ivyson Tour’ was that I arrived, I think I arrived late but I told my booking manager to tell him (Nasty C) that even if we are late, I can do like one song, even if Nasty C is on stage I can get on stage and do one song while he is there and then I’ll get off, that’s it. And I think that couldn’t happen, so we were still at the parking lot while everything was happening at the show and we were like, we had nothing to do because they said no.
Nasty C’s official DJ, Audiomarc, would then react to A-Reece’s statement by taking to his Instagram Stories where he posted;
I don’t know why 2018 things are topics in 2020 , but since I’ve been tagged I’m just gonna say that you can’t arrive at 8pm for a 6pm flight. It’s that simple. No bad blood.
So that is how ego destroyed A-Reece and Nasty C’s feature.
