Cape Town singer, songwriter, and producer, Bryan Cheru, gave us the opportunity to chat with him, and we tried our best to get to know a little bit more about the rising star.
What we learnt about Bryan Cheru in our interview
Bryan had a lot of interesting facts about him so we wanted to dive as deep as possible into the world of Cheru.
From Producer to recording artist
Getting into the chat, we discovered that Cheru’s first steps into the world of music was through beat-making and posting them to his Soundcloud.
This is where he discovered underground American artists, becoming a fan of them, and eventually working with them, however, this is where he realised his true calling.
“That time I wasn’t really invested in South African artists so I was mainly looking for underground artists in the U.S, and I was a fan of a bunch of artists who I’m now working with,” he explained.
“I used to send them beats and my beats got to a point where I knew deep down that I wanted to be a recording artist but I didn’t know how to deal with that or how to do it.” added the singer.
After realising his new path, Cheru went on to buy all the equipment with the aid of his father buying his first recording microphone.
This is where he started his process of becoming an artist going on to find his sound and eventually by the age of nineteen would he finally put out his music on Soundcloud.
“I put out my first song, it was called always knew, nobody else knows that it was on Soundcloud and it did about 5000 streams in two days,” he stated.
“That was crazy, I never expected that kind of reception ,” he excitedly continued.
How did his childhood inspire his path into pursuing a career in music
We got to learn more about the singer, finding out that he grew up in Strandfontein, going on to attend a school in Mitchells Plain and that it was both his parents who had influenced him when it came to music.
“They were both creatives and both into music when they were younger, and when I grew up I was constantly listening to music, they were always playing music from vinyl’s to cassette tapes to cd’s,” Cheru stated.
“When my dad got internet I was constantly listening to a huge variety of music,” he continued.
“Eventually I got curious on how to make music and that’s where the journey started.” he concluded.
How was Cruel Intentions made?
Wanting to know the creative process through the creation of his 2021 EP Cruel Intentions, Cheru stated how it was a difficult process, having gone through a breakup.
However, most of the songs had been done the year before (2019) with his hit song Hit Me Up done in 2020 having DazeOnEast from Carolina, USA, help him on the track as he had been the first artist to show him love.
“We’d been making music for a while already and we had tons of records, and basically I sent the beat to him and the song was actually meant to be for his album and it was just supposed to be him,” he started.
Having jumped on Hit Me Up, Cheru also made Struggle Love, knowing he wanted to release a project regarding relationships.
“I knew I needed to make an EP on something that had to revolve around that topic.” he stated.
With this knowledge and the completion of Struggle Love , Cheru knew he had to have Hit Me Up, and contacted DazeOneEast to find that the U.S artist hadn’t planned on using the song due to his label already picking his sounds for his project.
The other two songs had also already been made with Cheru having other tracks planned for the project however he couldn’t get the beats cleared in time but after having the project on his laptop for two months, he finally released it.
The singer has gone on to claim that the project helped him heal from his breakup and he still listens to it to this day as therapy.
“I just kept on listening to it and it helped me through the break up, it helped me through a lot of sh*t to be honest, and when I felt ready I had to put it out.
What are Cheru’s plans for 2021?
In recent times, we had been seeing Cheru working with popular rapper Indigo Stella.
We got to find out Bryan has been working on a joint EP with Stella as well as a deluxe version to Polaroids, more singles on the way and we found out that he has been producing beats for Blxckie, Dee Koala, and Stella however he couldn’t mention the other feature.
“I have a couple of beats that I produced for major label artists that I cannot say who it is at this moment in time, but when the music drops I’ll post about it,” he stated.
“I’ve been working on a lot of things, especially on the producer aspect.” he finished.
Although he diverted his attention for producing, Cheru has gone back to his old roots as he feels he enjoys doing it spontaneously and would like to continue producing and songwriting for other artists.
What hope does Bryan Cheru have for Cape Town R&B?
R&B is a difficult path to follow, especially in the Mother City, however, Cheru expressed his real goal to bridge the gap, wanting to push his music even further than the borders of South Africa and reach the international level.
“I want to push internationally, that’s the vision about making music, it’s never local it’s always international,” he confidently stated.
“I’m really trying to work with a lot of artists internationally and I feel like that would also open up doors, especially for Cape Town artists and just the Cape Town music scene in general,” he added.
Although Cheru is proud and reps his city, he wants South Africa as a whole to do well and to get more involved in the international music world, and get more attention towards all kinds of genres, especially in Cape Town.
“We have so much talent out here, like a lot so yeah that’s kind of my goal for growing the R&B scene in Cape Town, but not just R&B but music in general.” he concluded.
From this interview, we realised that this young singer has big plans for not just himself, but for the nation as a whole trying to get Mzansi on the map.
We cant wait for the release of his upcoming music throughout the year and we’ll be sure to keep a look out for them.