Allow us to introduce Tallrickyworldwide

Cape Town has seen an abundance of rap artists make a name for themselves in the SA Hip-Hop scene with the likes of Dee Koala, Tembipowers, SimulationRxps, Lookatups, and countless others representing the Mother city.

Tallrickyworldwide is a talent we had seen making a steady rise in the local scene. With the success of his latest hit single “CHOM” making waves all over Mzansi, we just had to have a heart-to-heart with the rising sensation.

In this interview we had the opportunity to explore Tallricky’s rise in the game, starting from his roots as a kid with a dream to becoming one of Cape Town’s most promising musicians.

Who is Tallrickyworldwide and what does your art represent?

Going into this interview, all we really knew about the lyricist was that he was primarily based in Cape Town, so it was only fair we got to understand a bit more of his origin story and get a clearer image of how his childhood developed him into aspiring to take on the world as a rapper.

“Basically, I grew up in Cape Town my whole life, but I was born in Queenstown (Eastern Cape) and was raised in Khayelitsha (Cape Town).”

Continuing our discussion, we wanted to know with this background, where his inspiration for becoming a musician stemmed from.

“The inspiration for music was from my mom. She used to always buy me CD’s. I was probably so young, like ten or twelve but that’s when I really got into music.”

“I started falling in love with Hip-Hop around this time and it was actually the rapper K.O and his track “Cara Cara” that got me into rap. Like after that song I was like fuck this I want to start rapping.”

“That’s when I started to dress like K.O and the rest of Cash Time. I even used to use a kokki to draw a black dot on my face like K.O’s pimple. All my homies used to dress like them so he was a big inspiration to me.”

Your hit single “CHOM” is performing outstandingly. How did that song come about?

With the hit-single “CHOM” racking over hundreds of thousands of plays over streaming platforms, we wanted to know what the creation process was behind the tune.

“There was this time I was invited to a party, and I was informed they had everything. All I needed was to bring the baddies you see.”

“And I actually brought the baddies, but when I arrived, we got lit. I kept hitting shots after shots until we were told we had to gather our money to buy more shots and we didn’t have money. That was crazy bro.”

“We did manage to organize the money for it, and we started to enjoy our drinks until we realized our one homie didn’t contribute anything, but he still wanted to drink, hence he was taking the piss out of us.”

With this amusing backstory behind the track, it made sense why he’d find this an entertaining story for a song.

“I didn’t think of it as a song, but the next day I hit the studio and I hit the freestyle over the beat and bang.”

“Inkosi’s verse was actually crazy. I didn’t know the bro and it was actually Bravo’s (Bravo Le Roux) manager that got him on as a verse. He was like “bro put this guy on” and the work started there. We then had to make sense to the people, which had us do an open verse challenge for the public and ever since then it’s been up.”

You can listen to track down below:

You were fortunate enough to perform at Cotton Fest. How was that experience and how has that benefited your career?

It’s a dream of many rising talents to grace the stage of South Africa’s biggest Hip-Hop festival, Cotton Fest, and Tallricky was able to achieve that goal in such short time in his rise.

“Damn Yoh! The whole experience was crazy bro. In fact, I didn’t even believe I was winning that shit, but everybody was telling me I was the winner!”

The talented lyricist was able to achieve this dream via winning the Cotton Fest Open Mic competition which had multiple rising artists all battling it out against one another with the eventual winner grabbing a chance at performing at the actual event.

“There were like ten other performers, and I went up second, but I killed it though. I just didn’t believe I’d actually win it, but everyone was so sure I would. Even my mom was there, my brother, my sister, everybody bro it was crazy.”

“It was a moment bro. I even cried on stage; my mom was there for me.”

With this golden opportunity achieved, Tallricky was seen hanging with popular TV personality and musician, Moozlie.

“The Moozlie link up happened there (Cotton Fest) and it went sky up. We went to Jozi with Moozlie and did the Cotton Fest there. It was crazy bro, I got to link up with Stilo Magolide and others and it was just epic bro.”

How do you differentiate yourself from other Xhosa Rap artists?

The Xhosa Rap genre has seen loads of Xhosa artists elevate their status in the Hip-Hop scene, bringing their own flavours into the game. We wanted to get an idea of how Tallricky separates his style from others.

“For me I don’t define my sound as Xhosa Rap. Its Loxion Hype.”

“I’m just talking about the ways of Ekasi, but in a cool way bro. If you hear my raps its Loxion shit but in a cool way, but sometimes you do get me talking about the burbs.”

“It’s just international shit, in Ekasi, and in a cool way you see. My sound is not Xhosa Rap and I don’t think I fit under the Xhosa Rap category because it’s not what I’m doing.”

“I’m doing the 2K type shit!”

While you’ve already had such a busy year so far, can we expect anything more from you for the second half of 2024?

While having one of the hottest songs in Cape Town so far, the talented lyricist also released his stunning EP “NDIYEZA” earlier in the year. We wanted to know what else he has to offer the music world.

“The visuals, yeah they’re lined up, but I can’t say too much.”

“People do know there’s a track coming up with me and Bravo Le Roux, so that’s coming with other things as well that I’m not going to mention.”

“We’ve got a “CHOM” remix also, visuals also, projects also, and yeah we’re gonna go crazy. A lot is coming from me to you guys. It’s going to go down bro!”

Having this conversation with Tallrickyworldwide was a truly inspiring story to listen to. It just proves that with continuous hard work and grind, the rewards will follow.

We look forward to seeing what else the Capetonian talent has stored in his vault.