AKA Had A Lot To Prove In His Lesser-Known 2012 Mixtape, ‘The Exclusives’ Mixed By DJ Fanatic

At the height of his career, AKA felt he had nothing to prove as a rapper and pursued Pop superstardom instead. AKA explained in an interview with The Sobering a few months ago that he wasn’t trying to rap competitively anymore. “I just want to express, I want to talk my smooth shit, I wanna sound cool. I wanna represent how I feel. I don’t necessarily sit down anymore and think I want to rap rap rap, beat, technical… for me that’s not worth anything anymore because I’ve done that . I’m 34 years old, I wanna go do some other jiggy shit now.”

You could hear it in his recent offerings; ‘Bhovamania’, ‘You’re Welcome’ and the ‘Mass Country’ singles that AKA wasn’t gunning for verse of the year. 

‘The Exclusives’ 

His lesser-known 2012 ‘The Exclusives’ mixtape, however, is a time capsule from a time AKA still cared about dropping bars, at a stage when he had something to prove as a rapper at the age of 24.  

2012 was AKA’s year. It was the year after his breakout hit ‘Victory Lap; and critically acclaimed debut album ‘Altar Ego’. All eyes were on him after such a massive year; he had swept the Metro FM Awards against stiff competition like Zahara. He was on every platform; he made the cover of HYPE and won GQ South Africa’s Best Dressed Man award. He was breaking barriers. And being a first generation blog-era SA Hip-Hop star, leveraging the internet to his advantage was second nature. AKA had a strong online presence. He ran Twitter Q&As with fans and released freestyles regularly. 

In that era it was still really cool to reuse instrumentals and drop unofficial remixes of bigger songs. In 2012, AKA jumped on the popular beats from that era; from Rick Ross’s ‘BMF’ and ‘Stay Schemin’ to A$AP Rocky’s ‘PE$O’ and  Kanye West’s ‘Cold’ (also known as ‘Theraflu’ and ‘Way Too Cold’).  

On the last two, he worked with Reason, another rapper who was having a massive year. It was a great year for English rap in South Africa. After years of being the stepchild of SA hip-hop in the mainstream, English rappers were making hits. 

For ‘Schemin' (Lames)’, AKA jumped on ’Stay Schemin’ by Rick Ross, Drake and French Montana for a bar fest with Cashtime Fam rappers KiD X and Smashis (you call him Zingah now). 

On ‘Don’t Stop (Bang 2.0)’, AKA used Hip-Hop supergroup Child Rebel Soldier (Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West and Pharrell)’s ‘Don’t Stop’ with Khuli Chana with whom he had made the ‘Altar Ego’ hit ‘Bang’.

A Lot To Prove

AKA still had a lot to prove as a rapper who came into the game without any accreditation from the streets unlike Reason who had started out as a battle rapper and earned the respect of the streets. Smashis and KiD X had built a name for themselves on YFM’s The Full Clip With Siz ’N Scoop. 

AKA was willing to rap alongside and against anyone. From his appearance on Cape Town rap duo Ill Skillz’s 2010 pH Raw X-produced rappity rap posse track ‘F.U.1.2 (Coz We Want To)’, which featured AKA alongside Reason, Mothipa & Hyphen, the dopest spittas of that era, to going against Blaklez over Ja Rule’s ’New York’ instrumental. ‘See Me Coming’, his diss track to Blaklez, was hard as nails.  

The freestyles that would later be released as ‘The Exclusives’ mixtape in May 2012 were AKA’s own platform, he was playing by his own rules. He had bars like ProVerb but chose beats that were jiggy enough to dance over with his lively delivery. The metaphors and similes were witty without making reference to esoteric subjects and his pomposity gave him an x-factor. 

He rapped, “So, turn the volume up up in your speakers/ Don’t let them tell you anything is out of your reach cuz/ Two years ago, ain’t nobody believed us/ Now, everybody on the phone, calling for features,” over Kanye West’s ‘Good Morning’ which he delivered on 5FM’s Hip Hop Power Nights then hosted by C-Live.  

The freestyles were how AKA kept fans engaged and fed while his hits like ‘All I Know’ were climbing the charts and engraving his name in South African households. All those freestyles were dropped for free on platforms like Mp3twit, tweetmysong etc. (IYKYK!), and after a few months of dropping them one by one, AKA linked up with DJ Fanatic to drop them as a mixtape titled ‘The Exclusives’. The cover was designed by Mzo Gcwabe who is also the co-founder of Head Honcho, an era-defining clothing label that AKA was affiliated with. When 'The Exclusives' came out, AKA was still managed by Tibz. 

Download AKA’s ‘The Exclusives’ mixtape, mixed by DJ Fanatic below.