It has been a month since season two of South Africa’s biggest hip hop talent competition The Hustle came to an end. And yet, people are still talking about the winner of the competition. We sat down with winner Flex Rabanyan to discuss rap, life and the future for the talented rapper.  

Taking the crown

For many of his friends, Flex winning The Hustle wasn’t a total shock. In fact, it was more of a confirmation of what they already knew. After all, it’s his friends that entered him into the competition in the first place.

“When sending my audition on Facebook, I didn’t put in the correct hashtags. It is actually my friends on Facebook and their friends who fixed it. That’s how it got through to the judges.”

For the rest of us who met Flex on our television screens, we knew he’d reign supreme as soon as Content got eliminated.

From the moment he got on our screens, he grabbed our attention. He had this mini afro, with these circular sunglasses looking like the young King Kai from Dragonball Z and random dance moves that quickly turned into his signature dance throughout the show.

“Nobody wins when you put them next to Flex” said season 2 contestant Content

It was his skills as a rapper that shined throughout. He won challenges left, right and center; putting the other rappers in panic mode when they had to go up against him. He could freestyle about anything and everything, perform with no qualms and looked like a superstar; even the Super Mega himself was impressed.  

Bringing back Hip Hop

Rap for Flex started at a young age, when he was still in primary school. His brother and his friends used to write bars and he thought he could do it better, and so he did.

It wasn’t until his teenage years when he decided to take it seriously.  His friends decided to start a group called Peer-prejja. The group only stayed together for a year, splitting in 2012.

Clearly he was the Beyonce of the group cause he went solo and it is been “all the way up” from there.

Despite his talents, the question remains, does he have what it takes to last in this industry?

We wonder if Flex will keep pushing music that he knows; music that talks about struggle, the game and music the evokes emotions, or will he write the same old bubblegum music about girls and money, that so many of our rappers are already doing.  

We can’t say for sure, what we can say is that he has big plans to shake up the SA Hip Hop industry.

“South African rappers are too safe. Cassper is the one. He came in and challenged AKA. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Everyone else is shying away from beef and I don’t understand why. It doesn’t have to be personal, continue making the music but just weave it in somewhere. I just want to do that, I want to jog it up a bit, it’s too stagnant.”

Rabayeezy Rabayeezy

Taking a look at his lyrics for the popular song Rabayeezy he speaks about working hard to make it and get into the rap scene.

“Im working way way harder harder, I aint tryna be no average and so to my nigga savage but we made it out the trashes and we never had to do much, we just placed our focus on our talent and the next thing they all yelling Rabayeezy, Rabayeezy”

Looking ahead, he says he doesn’t have any immediate plans other than basking in his new found attention. However, he does mention maybe making a new video for Dlala.

Whatever his plans are, I can’t wait to hear his music.  
Watch Flex perform Dlala on Spotlight

Image: Ezra_Mogotsi