5 Artists That Received The Riky Rick Co-Sign & Where They Are Today

Uncle Vinny 

Riky introduced Uncle Vinny in an On The Ground SlikourOnLife interview at Back To The City as one of the youngest niggas doing radio. At the time, Vinny was still at Hillbrow Radio, hustling. Riky took Vinny under his wing and had him host Cotton Fest the following year. Uncle Vinny has gone on to become a TV presenter, event host, recording artist and an overall iconic cultural figure alongside Major League DJz who he embarked on an international tour with, taking Amapiano to the world. Uncle Vinny has kept the spirit of Riky alive as he and his close friend and producer Yumbs worked with a number of up-and-coming artists on Vinny's debut EP 'Youth League' dropped in 2022.

Dee Koala

In 2018, Riky shared a video of Dee Koala kicking a freestyle on Twitter and supported her from there, putting him on the radar of the whole game. Dee Koala became the leader of Cape Town’s new wave Xhosa rap scene and opened doors for a whole generation of rappers who are still enjoying the shine today. She dropped her debut album, ‘4 The Khaltsha’ in 2019. Dee Koala is still killing it and remains one of the most respected new age rappers from Cape Town.

The Big Hash 

Riky was impressed by the young rapper from Kempton Park who he spotted online. He jumped on a song with him, ‘Dark Horse’, in 2018 and, word on the street is, he put some rands behind Hash to assist him in his career. The Big Hash, then the frontman of the collective innanetwav, dropped the project ‘Young’ in 2019, and we can all agree it’s one of the best SA Hip-Hop projects of the 2010s. The Big Hash has had a few troubles with his label and went for a while without dropping music but he’s still very much relevant and his pivot into R&B has proven fruitful. 

Frank Casino 

At some point, Riky and Frank Casino were inseparable; Riky dropped a fire verse on the remix to Frank Casino’s ‘The Whole Thing’ in 2016 and the song became a serious hit and remains one of Frank Casino’s biggest songs. In 2017l, the two rappers worked on ‘Family’, a song from Riky’s 3-track offering ‘Scooby Snacks’ and shot a fly video for it. Frank Casino hasn’t been that active in the game in the last few years, but he still shows up for performances and shuts it down each time. He dropped another massive collaboration with Riky, titled ‘Forever’ (a fitting title in retrospect) in 2021. Hopefully, 2023 will see more music from the unique Kempton Park rapper this year. 

KLY

Riky and KLY collaborated on numerous songs but the most notable has to be ‘Too Much’ from KLY's 2016 debut tape 'KLYMAX reup'. Riky gave a free verse to KLY for the song and later went on to fund the music video. KLY went on to deliver some dope bodies of work such as the 'Keep Love Young' album in 2018 under Ambitiouz Entertainment and the '2minutes2late' EP, which he dropped independently, in 2020. Hopefully we see the return of KLY this year as he only released a few songs last year, some of them being 'Siyabonga' with Aubrey Qhawe to his latest 'Pamela Riddim'.