@YoungstaCpt Makes His Album Debut With #3T, 'Things Take Time'

YoungstaCPT has been building anticipation for his debut album over the past few months. Granted, fans weren't starved for content because Youngsta has a discography of music that entertains even before his album dropped this morning. Now, fans and hip-hop heads can spend time working through his 20-track about his life and his reflections on the lives of people of colour, namely the coloured community, in Cape Town.

The album opens with a 7+ minute intro, featuring sounds from a Muslim mosque as well as a conversation between coloured men. This moment alone gets listeners into the mindset of Cape Town's people and community, more specifically the lived experience of Youngsta. The Cape Town rapper dropped three singles from this album, "VOC," "YAATIE," and "YVR," however the latter two were both extended for the album. These three singles adequately relay the themes of THINGS TAKE TIME, being what Youngsta describes as a project that is "based on a true story about history, victory and struggle." 

In conversation with Youngsta at a party, once, he shared why he continues to center his work, and subsequently maintain a residence, in Cape Town. For him, Cape Town's music scene is burgeoning with talent, but the narrative that one must relocate to Johannesburg is still something with which artists must contend. Secondly, seeing success in Cape Town, on a coloured man, operating in entertainment at that, is almost unheard of, and by staying in Cape Town, he is an example to those that see him. Bearing this in mind, it comes at no surprise that his debut solo album comes across as highly personal, but also as a type of ode to the Mother City. 

The album is long, it's not easy to get through, but that's because Youngsta isn't discussing simple or fun subject matter. The state of Cape Town's race relations are seldom discussed outside of hyper-politicised spaces, making the problem seem governmental; instead of a collective social ill that needs public discourse and participation to rectify. However music can bring certain conversations to the public without dancing around South Africa's tumultuous political environment. YoungstaCPT's THINGS TAKE TIME does the work of making difficult conversations possible, through his decision to be candid about his life and share the lives of others he grew up around.