Having been quiet throughout 2018 on the music front, save for the Florentino Mariachi music video, South African rapper and producer Luna Florentino has opened the new year with some good news: he will be releasing his new mixtape, Fresh Prince of Rustenburg, this year.
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In typical Luna Florentino style, the mixtape will not be released in the standard format. Instead, it will be rolled out through #MariachiMondays, a weekly free music release that will see Luna drop one new song every Monday starting from January 21st.
“I’ve been working on a lot of music and visual content and I needed a way to deliver that without bombarding everyone while still keeping a level of consistency,” says Luna. “In today’s day and age, people’s attention spans isn’t too long because there’s a lot of content to consume, especially on social media. We scroll past a lot of stuff very quickly so the way we consume content is different from how we used to. I didn’t want to drop a mixtape only to have people skim through the songs. I want people to give each song a proper listen before playing the next one and by the time they play the full project, they will have a better understanding of the tape and the sound that I am introducing to the game”
The mixtape features 11 songs and is executively produced by The Urban Lunatic and PRXFND, with additional production work by Zolile Radebe. Two hugely talented breakout artists of 2018, Manu WorldStar and Touchline, make up the mixtape’s only two features. If social media is anything to go by, the streets are waiting with baited breath for the Fresh Prince of Rustenburg to open up the floodgates and release some new music.
“It’s extremely exciting and refreshing to have Luna finally give out a new offering,” says Punchline label manager, Wandile Madondo. “I appreciate the maturity of his sound which we mainly hear on the second half of the tape. I can’t wait to see how people receive Fresh Prince of Rustenburg.”
Since establishing himself as one of the brightest young artists in the SA hip-hop industry with his impressive 2016 debut mixtape, Papi Florentino, Luna has rapidly grown into one of the new wave’s leading artists. As a producer and mixing engineer, he goes by the alias The Urban Lunatic.
Still only 22, Luna has already worked with the likes of DJ Switch, Rouge, Ganja Beatz, Maraza, Tweezy, Red Button, Felix Morton (USA) and Oshea (USA). Luna made his presence known in 2018 with the release of the music video for his hit single Florentino Mariachi, which saw him document the Rustenburg lifestyle from his perspective. He was later nominated for the prestigious Hype Freshman 2018, a list which profiles the top up-and-coming artists in urban South African music.
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