•SAD MUSIC• °HEADSETS° •LONG WALKS•
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Lafayne Wae
Want to hear music like nothing you’ve heard before from the local industry? Look no further than Lafayne Wae. A unique sound which he described as ’emo-trap’ – that’s if you really needed to put a name on it. Lafayne Wae, born Daniel Damien Lungu, described his music as a product of his ‘shadow’: two personalities in one.
“Daniel is an academic person – a nerd, but Lafayne is a mixed guy with rage and a negative aura and positive vibes simultaneously. He puts in work and emotions in his music. His delivery is one that is such that it makes you understand his emotions.”
Lafayne is a shadow of Daniel
Lafayne in one sentence
Lafayne has been doing music since he was in Grade 7 and the epiphany to make music incidentally happened in dire circumstances
I had beef with the head boy who was popular at the time and I was just another guy. He wanted to fight me after school. As it turned out, my friends made a plan with the headboy. The plan was that when I go for the fight, he [the head boy] only has to land one hit and then everyone was going to pull us apart. He threw a punch, missed, I threw one and missed and he threw another and hit me and thats when everyone stopped the fight. I was a laughingstock afterwards and even my friends made fun of me. I was so mad as I headed home.”
A young Lafayne headed home with his tail firmly between his legs and his confidence nowhere to be seen. Indeed the rage he felt was indescribable. But what does this have to do with music? As Lafayne muttered all sorts of ‘evil’ and unkind words about his backstabbing friends, he noticed a pattern.
“As it turned out, my winnings seem to be rhyming. All I was saying is really bad things out of anger, but they seemed to rhyme.”
It was then when Lafayne realized he can rap!
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I started to write down raps, mostly about what I wish would have happened that day
Despite realizing his ability to rap in Grade 7, it wasn’t until Grade 9 when Lafayne really started to get the hang of it thanks to a certain YMCMB rapper;
“I started to listen to Lil Wayne, he was huge at the time. Before listening to him, I hadn’t realized that there was such a thing as punchlines, metaphors or wordplay. Lil Wayne changed that.”
So Lil Wayne made a difference in Lafayne’s music life when he was 15, but Lil Wayne is not the artist who best describes Lafayne’s emo-trap style. The artist who does is the now deceased XXXTENTACION.
“X is someone who I felt I could relate to on a personal level. His music and mine could really coexist. He was the first artist that I saw myself in. After listening to his music, he had an impact on me.”
Even before Lafayne discovered XXXTENTACION, his style already resembled the style of the late rapper. Finding XXXTENTACION was more of a eureka moment; he found someone who he could relate to emotionally and musically.
By Grade 10, Lafayne did a few songs with old friends FLEX, Sleek and VG which attained relative popularity in his circles.
Talking about influencial figures who impacted Lafayne, we have to make mention of his producer and father-figure-like friend VUE SMALLZ.
I first I thought he was cheeky, he was into rappers that use English. I reached to him and he was super cool, he wanted to record with me despite knowing nothing about me at the time. He was eager to see what I can do.
VUE SMALLZ charged Lafayne half price to record, such was his confidence in raw talent.
VUE SMALLZ
We were working on a cypher with a few friends, the song was a little popular at school. I then did my first solo after and he still charged me half the price. He believed in me.
“VUE SMALLZ taught me how to balance school and music, I got the sense of a father figure. He taught me how to push myself to the limit.
People like him are needed in the game most producers are in it for the money they dont care about talent
If all producers were like VUE SMALLZ we would have more talented people famous”
Lafayne’s song Effort is a prime example of his style. The song is based on a past lover who put very little effort into their relationship, yet ironically berated Lafayne for doing just that. Most of the lyrics are based on real conversations which the two shared:
They’ll look at you like a snack, and I’ll look at you like art
“We were so in love until everything crashed. She was too focused on what other people thought about her.”
Source: https://thesouthernhype.wordpress.com/2020/08/14/lafayne-wae/
