Remaining dedicated to his career as a rapper, Teboho Sokopo, from Jeffreys Bay, has seen his hard work pay off recently when his debut album, Fresh Prince Of JBay, was streamed at least one million times since it was released in May last year.
As previously reported by the Kouga Express, Sokopo began his career as a full-time rapper in 2011, and recorded his first song, Money Bag, in his bedroom, which he released on various digital platforms in 2017.
Since then he has released multiple singles and between the years 2018 and 2020 digitally released three extended plays (EPs) titled Trap Bible, Roses From the Trap, and Roses From the Trap 2.
After hard work and dedication, Sokopo, who is better known by his stage name, Keemo Bankz, recorded his debut mixtape, titled Fresh Prince Of JBay, which he released to the public in May last year and can be streamed on all digital platforms such as iTunes, Apple Music and Spotify.
The mixtape, which was released by his independent label, Big Dreamz Entertainment and his digital music distribution label, Slumnation Distribution, consisted of 10 songs, which covered a variety of genres such as trap, R&B, and drill.
To his surprise, one week after releasing his album, he reached more than 100 000 streams and by December last year he noticed that the number of streams increased to 800 000.
When he followed up on his streaming statistics last month he was in disbelief when he discovered that he had 1 021 870 digital streams.
“Seeing the number of streams made me happy and emotional because I never thought my music could reach millions of people. I thought big live stream artistes, like Drake, Kevin Gates, Lil Durk, Jay Z or Kanye West, were the only artistes to receive these high streaming numbers,” said Sokopo.
After reaping the benefits of his hard work, he now hopes to encourage young artistes to remain consistent with their music as he did and pray for what they want in their careers.
“I am still on the road to reaching success but because of my consistency I managed to see my music streamed by millions of people. All of this was done independently,” said Sokopo.
He said he plans to release new songs sometime this year which people can look forward to.
“At the moment I am not focused on making money, instead I am focused on branding myself so that when people mention my name, they know that I am an artiste who has reached over one million digital streams,” said Sokopo.
“My new goals as an artiste are to be the number one selling artiste in Kouga, to make history in the Kouga music industry and to inspire others who have been following my story for years.”
