Full biography (The Nuhtkayz story)

"No smooth sea ever made a skilled sailor"

Nuhtkayz's first appearance on the scene was in 2015 at the SA Hip Hop Awards Show cypher alongside Patty Monroe, Fifi Cooper and Tazz. She went on to perform at the 2016 Back To The City Hip Hop Festival with the band Mo and the Rays after a big performance at Trackside Thursdays in Soweto. Her love and affinity for poetry led her into the craft of copywriting, where she gets to communicate ideas and write for brands, something that she has grown to thoroughly enjoy.

Now creative entrepreneur, lyricist & copywriter. Nuhtkayz has upgraded her blog into a monthly mini mag that goes to print and gets sent to people who have signed up to the Nuhtkayz database. Here is where the journey all began, and what the Nuhtkayz story is.

Born in the small town of Harrismith growing up as the child who preferred to paint, draw and craft instead of joining other kids play. Thembi Molaba better known by her creative identity "Nuhtkayz" started her journey in the early years of school, excelling in languages and exploring her affinity for poetry and music.

Thembi went on to study Politics at the University of KwaZulu Natal in Pietermaritzburg where she later left politics to major in visual arts and film. After doing exceptionally well in new media studies, Thembi got together with 2 other Digital arts students and started up "word ent. media" and "Nuts about rap blog" The team of 3 would organise and film the regular campus cyphers and poetry sessions that happened every Friday of the week and blog about them.

After winning the DFL Poetry challenge and walking away with a R1000 cash prize and entry into the nationals, heavily influenced by Lebo Mashile, Ben Sharper & Crooked the Warmonger, Nuhtkayz compiled her first Mixtape "Schematic chemistry" which was a 13 track body of work that can be described as a crazy concoction of clever wordplay and mesmerizing rhyme. Attending Player Poetry shows and gigs at the Jamesons pub in Durban, Nuhtkayz continued finding her self and her place in the local underground.

By the end of the second year of study, Thembi left the institution to go out and do her own thing and find her own path in life away from structure, conformity, social control and overall institutional-ism, a world where it felt like you weren't taught how to think for yourself and reason, but rather taught "what to think", something that Thembi described as the socio-political and psychological manufacturing of human beings.

Exploring new worlds, she relocated to Johannesburg where she teamed up with Kanif the Jhatmaster, a renowned producer and beatmaker who produced music for the formidable Hymphatic Thabs, Shorty Skills, Fifi the Rai Blaster, Gin-i Grimes and Yugen Blakrok. Together with Kanif, Alkebulan and Gemini from Cashless Society, Deity Speak the mixtape was cooked up. The project is an introspective and thought provoking body of work centered around personal experiences, loss and change. Released on the 20th of June 2017.

"the right to liberate ourselves through our ideas, passions and desires is what life should really be about!!"

All this is about learning how to love, respect and embrace your individuality. There's nothing real or amazing about existing as the prototype of somebody else or existing in uniform with the rest of the world like how society trains us up to be.

And so the journey continues....