Photography by Nyiko Baloyi
Pho’netiQ aka Pharoah Pho' (real name Motau Tshepo Ngoasheng) is a young cohesive spiritual revolutionary underground Hip Hop Emcee and an activist from Polokwane, Limpopo Province. His style is of complex lyrics & delivery, internal and multisyllabic rhyme schemes that challenges the listener’s intelligence. The Unique Selling Point about him is that even though he is not recognized by many, he has a strong command of his music.
He started writing raps early 2008 as a crew member of Da Carnivores alongside Ryder better known as Da Capo, who is currently a house DJ/Producer and Brian better known as Brinco. Pho'netiQ was only interested in higher education when he moved to the Vaal in the Gauteng Province in 2009. Freestyling back of the café at V.U.T and performing at local poetry sessions and various hip hop shows, this started to build his street credibility. With his passion and desire for hip hop this young man managed to get his skills recognized by most and as time passed DisMental Thee Axemple of One-2 noticed the boy’s potential and introduced him to Dig It Deep Production.
Performing around the country, He got himself sharing stages with South Africa’s most respected artists such as Last Days Fam (East Rand), Golden Shovel of Optical Illusion (Vaal), Beat Oven (Pretoria), Cryogenic (Vaal/PTA), Zakwe (Durban), Zeeko (Free State), One-2 (Vaal), The Soil, AKA (JHB), Projektah (JHB), Mothipa (Vaal), Liquid KZN (KZN), Revivolution (JHB), Ntja Pedi (Vaal), A_Huge_Impakt (JHB), Baleloko (Vaal) and many more. He also had an honor of getting a spot to share the same stage with an international rap icon Copywrite of MHZ from Columbus, Ohio alongside Naked eYe on the 3rd December 2011, the same day of the release of his first project titled “Beginning of a New Era (Street Soul UnMixtape)” consisting of 17 tracks.
Being his own songwriter, he worked with various super producers such as Instro of Motif Records, Cyrus Beatz of GSF, Tempo Beatz of We Make Music, Frost Beatz of A Huge Impakt , Naked eYe (The Beat Bender), Eyecon of Dig It Deep Productions and many more. The project got him a lot of buzz in the game and was rated the best underground tape to come out in 2011 in the streets.
Him and Naked eYe representing Dig It Deep alongside We Make Music crew toured Swaziland during the festive season of 2011 promoting the Vaal To Swaziland Mixtape and both Beginning of a New Era and Catharsis by Size Killa. They left the country going crazy with the singles from all the projects on radio rotation and had mentions on the Swazi Mirror and Times of Swaziland newspaper which happens to be the biggest news reading paper in the country.
He later formed a clique with his close friend Antidote (real name Themba Robert Ndinisa) and together they call themselves A&P (Antidote & Pho'netiQ) and they released a Free EP December 2012 titled "True School Preservation Free EP" which serves as a prelude to the official EP of this dynamic duo coming out December 2013.
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