Nasty C and Tellaman Open Up About Fear of Music Not Connecting With SA Fans
- Nasty C admitted he always fears a new sound might not resonate, saying times and people constantly change
- Tellaman pointed out that R&B is a particularly tricky genre to navigate in South Africa's music landscape
- Both artists opened up about creative uncertainty surrounding their joint project T's & C's Apply
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Two of South Africa's most respected artists have spoken candidly about the anxiety that shadows every creative risk they take. Nasty C and Tellaman, who have been friends since their teenage years growing up in Durban, revealed that the fear of releasing music that does not land with audiences is something neither of them has been able to shake, even at this stage of their careers.
Nasty C responded when asked whether he worries about listeners rejecting a new creative direction:
"Always, yeah. Always. You get scared because you don't know if it's going to connect. Times change, people change."
R&B's tricky place in SA music
Tellaman was equally honest, framing his own anxiety around the specific challenges of working in R&B, a genre that struggles to compete with the mainstream dominance of amapiano and other commercially popular South African sounds. He explained:
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"The type of music that we make isn't something that's particularly popular in South Africa, especially from my side. R&B is a very tricky space to operate in. So, knowing that people actually care about what we do is amazing."
His words paint a clear picture of what it means to operate outside the commercial mainstream in a music market where audience attention can be hard to hold. For artists whose sound does not align with whatever is trending, building and keeping a fanbase requires a different kind of persistence.
What's behind T's & C's Apply
The conversation sheds light on the thinking behind their joint album, T's & C's Apply, which leans heavily into melody and R&B rather than the harder hip-hop sound audiences might typically associate with Nasty C. Nasty C has previously described the project as R&B-leaning and suited to a winter mood, while Tellaman spoke about their goal of weaving their two musical worlds together into something cohesive.
The two artists have nurtured their creative relationship over more than a decade, with Nasty C cementing his reputation as one of South Africa's biggest hip-hop exports and Tellaman building a loyal following through his R&B catalogue. Bringing those two identities together on a single project meant stepping into genuinely unpredictable creative territory.
What makes their admissions compelling is not the fear itself, but the fact that it did not stop them. For both Nasty C and Tellaman, uncertainty seems to be part of what drives the process; the knowledge that a project could miss the mark is, perhaps, exactly what makes getting it right feel worthwhile.
Nasty C and Tellaman dropped their joint album
Nasty C and Tellaman released their long-awaited joint album T's & C's Apply, years in the making.
The album title is a play on both artists' names, with the T representing Tellaman and the C representing Nasty C.
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Source: Briefly News
