{"id":3042,"date":"2017-03-14T15:46:48","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T13:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studentnewsgrid.com\/?p=3042"},"modified":"2017-03-14T15:46:48","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T13:46:48","slug":"student-hip-hop-group-looneys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/2017\/03\/14\/student-hip-hop-group-looneys\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Hip-Hop group The Looneys"},"content":{"rendered":"

KwaZulu-Natal is arguably the biggest household name in South African Hip-Hop, boasting the likes of Nasty C, Riky Rick and Okmalumkoolkat. Perdeby<\/em> managed to catch up with one of Ladysmith\u2019s rising Hip-Hop groups, The Looneys. The group has four members: OBZ, Bzurk, Skitos and SaNa MLK. Perdeby chatted with two of the group\u2019s members to find out more about this Hip-Hop collective, which has been making music for seven years.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How long have you known each other?<\/strong>
\nBzurk: Round about 2005, I was in Grade 3 when we met.<\/p>\n

Who would you describe as your biggest musical influence?<\/strong>
\nBzurk: Kanye West, yeah…Kanye West. Taking a lot of songs as well from different sub-genres of Hip-Hop. It\u2019s not just only one type of Hip-Hop. If you listen to a lot of our songs, sometimes we incorporate Trap… It\u2019s like a new sound, sort of like that\u2019s coming out here in South Africa. Like Tribal Hip-Hop.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the story behind your stage name, The Looneys?<\/strong>
\nOBZ: It was round about 2011 [when] we started making music as a collective. At first we thought this is some crazy stuff, lunatic type of stuff. It started off as Lunatics and we switched it into something that\u2019s not as hardcore.
\nBzurk: It also goes back to the way we started as individuals as well. It was around the whole idea of crazy reactions we\u2019d get from battle raps. People would go crazy. That\u2019s why [even] my name is Bzurk, for example.<\/p>\n

Your hometown, Ladysmith, is very small. From your perspective, do you see a lot of music talent coming from there to the big cities?<\/strong>
\nOBZ: Yeah, in terms of Hip-Hop there are some really cool artists from back home. A lot of talent in that town, very small town, but the talent there is like crazy.
\nBzurk: And the thing that we\u2019re trying to do is instil that sort of belief into people that are from Ladysmith [that] stuff can actually go beyond…I think that there\u2019s so many talented people in Ladysmith, but they see it as a phase in high school.<\/p>\n

With the whole team being students, how do you juggle between music and academics?<\/strong>
\nOBZ: We started in high school, so when we come here it\u2019s more self-discipline. It\u2019s a hustle when it clashes, but when it\u2019s time for school, it\u2019s time for school.
\nBzurk: It doesn\u2019t feel like work when we\u2019re doing the music. It\u2019s not really difficult, it\u2019s not that hard anymore. You can\u2019t force it, in a way.<\/p>\n

What are you guys currently working on as individuals and as a collective?<\/strong>
\nBzurk: I feel like it\u2019s a lot better to introduce us as a collective. We are dropping a sort of introductory sort of project. Like this is Bzurk of The Looneys, this is OBZ of The Looneys…We\u2019re dropping projects to make the group bigger.
\nOBZ: You venture while you\u2019re within the group. We\u2019re working more on individual things which will of course come up to a point where it\u2019s like a collective as well. Once everyone is recognised individually, yeah.<\/p>\n

Are there dates for any of those projects?<\/strong>
\nBzurk: I have a [mix] tape titled Loading, dropping end of March. It\u2019s almost done. I\u2019m actually waiting for a verse from OBZ. It\u2019s like a fire verse, he\u2019s going to drop it soon. Thereafter, it\u2019s getting the right promotional material out for building the hype for the mixtape. We\u2019re working on projects \u2013 a lot of work.<\/p>\n

How can your fans keep posted and show support for you?<\/strong>
\nCheck out our social media networks, Facebook, Instagram [and our] website. We want to have an organic relationship with our fan base \u2013 they are a part of this nationwide clique, it\u2019s like a movement type of thing. The Looneys is in everything that we do \u2013 we just want fans to be a part of that.<\/p>\n

Written by:\u00a0Lindo Khoza<\/p>\n

Originally published:\u00a0perdeby.co.za\/sections\/entertainment\/music\/5371-student-hip-hop-group-the-looneys<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KwaZulu-Natal is arguably the biggest household name in South African Hip-Hop, boasting the likes of Nasty C, Riky Rick and Okmalumkoolkat. Perdeby managed to catch up with one of Ladysmith\u2019s rising Hip-Hop groups, The Looneys. The group has four members: OBZ, Bzurk, Skitos and SaNa MLK. Perdeby chatted with two of the group\u2019s members to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":3044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[166,198,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}