Kenyan rising star Xtatic: who is she?
Gloria Mecheo, aka Xtatic, drove into The Galleria Mall on a motorcycle, dressed in royal purple with a matching helmet and I couldn’t wait to get started on the exclusive interview with the young musician, who is about to release her latest track via Sony Music Entertainment Africa.
At just 21, Xtatic is reeling from the whirlwind year she has had; from putting up an unfinished track on YouTube in March 2012 to signing a record deal with Sony Music, a management deal with Rockstar 4000 and recording her first ever album produced by The Fahrenheitz – all in the span of five months.
Though she has been busy, she takes it all in stride with her motto for life: ‘to be comfortable’.
Let me explain. It’s been a bit of a hard knock life for Xtatic, and that has taught her to take life as it comes without flinching, and making the most of what she had. Luckily, her heart is still in the right place.
Gloria confesses that she never really knew she would settle on music, with a wide array of interests while growing up that even lingered on gymnastics at some point.
“My father wanted me to go to the Kenya School of Law, but that wasn’t me. Maybe I’ll take it later ‘cause education never ends. I did a small course on radio production and another short course at the Multi-media University. To me though, music was on my mind,” she said.
“I don’t need to be filthy rich, or hang out in the cool spots; one thing I always want is to be comfortable with my life. I don’t wanna be Jay Z or Beyonce or nothing, I just want to be comfortable. I didn’t do music knowing I would get a deal. I was doing it because of the love I have for music.”
Xtatic gives the example of her video Prep Track, which she said was shot at the rooftop of her mother’s apartment block.
“Pinye took it and I didn’t know he was going to play it. Then some websites took it and like a month later I got a call from Rockstar. I didn’t pay attention because I thought it was someone trying to prank me so I was just like ok… They said they’d call me back in three days time.”
Rockstar got Xtatic’s number from Porgie of Code Red, who got it from musician Bamzi, whom they did a song together with. She went to South Africa to sign the deal and the rest is history.
“I’ve been recording since I was 16, at Jiganje studios. My father didn’t like that I was doing school and doing music. But I was only doing music for mix-tapes, for the purists. It’s only like the WAPI crowd that would listen to me. I would record songs and during my first show ever at WAPI in 2009, I ended up free-styling.”
A year before that, music promoter Buddha Blaze secretly put Xtatic’s name on the list during Emcee Africa auditions at the Choices Pub. It was a dismal show but she learnt from it. After a few interviews to join several hip-hop collaborations not long after that, Xtatic was faced with the crucial question of whether or not she could make a career out of the thing she loves.
“To see if I could, I decided to study music very hard. I would get mix-tapes, listen to them and listen to the various styles of rapping and observe people’s musical journeys as well. That’s how it started.”
Xtatic’s voice is tough and so are her lyrics and attitude, but she insists that when someone is mad at her she would probably try to hug them rather than fight.
“My dad taught me to reason before doing anything like that. So that’s what I do. I reason. I rarely do anything without reasoning.”
In Prep Track she spits out lines like ‘some of these emcees need confrontation, or better yet just a long vacation…’ and she backs the words by telling Capital Lifestyle that a lot of artists don’t give out their A-game in their music and this should change.
Apart from the record deal, the greatest thing in Xtatic’s life is her baby daughter, Eden, whom she had after making a hard decision about having a baby young.
“It was out of a health condition I had and I had to have a baby when I did. It was complicated and I had to really think about it. I had a tumour in my uterus that would grow and then disappear, grow and disappear and it was painful. I was told that I would rather have my uterus removed because it would give me trouble in future. So I was like, should I have a baby now. I had always wanted one but I was like I’m only 19 why would I want to have a baby now?” she told Capital Lifestyle.
When she did decide to have the child, the doctors still told her that it was a risky venture but she decided to go ahead with it anyway.
“After I gave birth, we waited six months; one year and the growth never came back! So I was like, this baby is a miracle,” she says of her angel.
Her mother was okay with it, her father not so much and her former schoolmates judged her for it.
“People would give you the judging eyes, they would be like sh#$*, she’s pregnant and she barely just got out of school…people would be like, you don’t even know who your baby daddy is and I was like who told you that?”
Looking forward, the musician is anxious and eager to have her new album sampled, after which she says ‘things can only get better’.
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