ON THE RISE
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — South African artist Gr8ful’s name displays how he feels and his two-single project, “Perspectives,” talks about how he got to where he can feel that way.
“Perspectives” is two songs, “Pop Off” and Carry On” with two completely different sounds that relates to the artist’s journey and development into the singer he is now.
“The message behind ‘Carry On’ is basically having faith, believing that any difficulty only breeds change and through that change you’ll eventually feel the ease and be able to reap the pleasure of life,” Gr8ful said. “‘Carry On’ carries that message, where as ‘Pop Off’ is more of a let loose, allow yourself to be in order to find yourself kind of song. I’m saying take the time that you need in order to be the best version of yourself.”
Gr8ful said the video for “Carry On” carries a message as well starting off with the artist jumping out of bed early to an alarm and joining a friend to work in a food truck. He seems to question where he’s going in life, saying “I’m greatful, but I didn’t sign up for this shit.” Then the scenes change rapidly to as the young man becomes more successful.
“With ‘Carry On’ we used Scarface as the genre we were trying to show, going from being in the food truck to a massive amount of success,” Gr8ful said. “The question is how do you handle that success.”
Gr8ful said music has always been a part of his life, from primary school when he started playing the violin. As he got older he tried other instruments like the drums, the piano and the guitar.
As he got older, his brother encouraged him to start writing his own music.
He counts his musical influences in the old-school giants of hip hop, Tupac, Biggy and LL Cool J. Today he listens to the likes of Kendrick Lamar, J Cole and Lil Wayne.
He started taking his speaker to the park around the age of 13 and 14, practicing raps with friends to get more comfortable with free-styling.
“I’d go on to playing beats on my speaker, like normal beats and then I started rapping over them,” Gr8ful said. “It was just me and my cousins and I started rapping about what they were wearing and eventually I started being able to be very fluid with my words and being able to say whatever I want. It wasn’t really like nursery rhymes type stuff anymore it was more like I'm able to rap about actual stuff.”
Gr8ful said “Carry On” and “Pop Off” were released in November, but he wrote them about a year ago. Those two songs show him in transition from that kid in the park to the musician he is now.
“‘Carry On’ and ‘Pop Off’ were very different to how I approach my creating of music,” he said. “It was the first time I actually sat in the studio and the producer was making the beat in front of me. While he was making the beat I was writing my lyrics. It was the first time it had gone like that. Usually I would get a beat and I would go home and write my lyrics to the beat and come back and record. This was completely different, it changed my perspective on music and my stance.”
Gr8ful plans to release more music in the new year showing how that transition has continued and the artist he’s become.
“I say that ‘Perspectives’ was the biggest project that I’ve released at the moment, but it’s not going to be the biggest project I’m ever going to release,” Gr8ful said. “That’s definitely cooking up now and it is for next year. We have something that's much bigger coming. This is only the start and it’s part of a much bigger picture. It’s setting the tone for what is to come. You have to have a perspective for what’s to come.”
Be sure to stay connected with GR8FUL on all platforms for new music, videos, and social media posts.
Websites:
Spotify
Apple Music
YouTube
Gr8ful.co.za (Coming soon)
Socials:
Instagram
Facebook
ON THE RISE
As Belle & Sebastian share their buoyant 2026 Scotland World Cup anthem ‘It Only Takes One Lion’, frontman Stuart Murdoch has spoken to NME about capturing the feeling back home and his hopes for the team since childhood.
Released today (Tuesday June 2), the Scottish indie heroes’ bid for their nation’s tournament anthem was written after the team’s surprise 4-2 qualifying win against Denmark.
“I felt like we were watching history in the moment, like the hand of God from the old National Lottery adverts was pointing at us,” Murdoch told NME about that game-changing victory. “It was meant to be. Scotland aren’t a terrific team and Denmark are better, but it just felt that day that Scotland were destined to win. Three out of the four goals were things of beauty.”
Produced by and co-written with Pete Ferguson and premiered at the band’s recent London Royal Albert Hall show as part of the anniversary tour for their classic first two albums ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, the soaring song is intrinsically Belle & Sebastian as it morphs from a hymn to a an orchestral disco jam as Murdoch sings of a nation’s hopes and his own boyhood dreams.
NME spoke to Murdoch from the band’s North American tour, where we found him in a graveyard in Texas. “I was just looking for a park because Austin is a pretty scary place downtown now, so I’ve ended up in the Texas Cemetery,” he shared via Zoom.
Was there anyone famous buried there?
“I was looking around and I found the founder of Austin City Limits, which is pretty cool as that’s where we’re playing tonight. I’m looking at one now and it just says, ‘Martin: he loved the law’. Then underneath it says, ‘Billie Louise: she loved the lawyer’.”
We joke that there’s the opening to a Belle & Sebastian song if there ever there was one. “It’s great! It’s given me inspiration.”
For now, read the rest of interview with Murdoch below as he tells us about Scotland’s chances, 30 years of hurt, if fans will be singing it at the top of their lungs in Canada, the US and Mexico this summer, and what’s next for the band.
NME: Hello Stuart. Here we are with ‘It Only Takes One Lion’ Who needs three?
Stuart Murdoch: “Who needs three? Good question. I wouldn’t know!”
What’s the mood been like in Scotland since you qualified?
“It’s funny. I’ve noticed this everywhere: with the World Cup there’s a mixture of cynicism and anticipation. When the actual tournament starts, everyone will get excited about it. Because of FIFA, the peace prize, the ticket prices, people seem quite down about it. I found that in Mexico. They were quite fed up with the general hype about it. I’m in the States just now and you shouldn’t believe all the hype: people are people. The States are just as ‘great’ as ever. We love coming here, we love the cities. The general sense of North American optimism will make for a good tournament.”
“With Scotland though, people will definitely be excited about it. You have to understand, it’s been 30 years since Scotland qualified so I think everybody and their dog has written a song for the team.”
How do you meet the challenge of penning a World Cup anthem, when there have been so many legendary bangers and absolutely shite duds?
“I never planned it. I woke up with a tune in my head and a feeling. That’s the way it should always be for songs. I couldn’t control myself and it was quite straight-forward. I wrote this initial bit about how I felt about the current World Cup team and the qualifying game. It was more introspective.
“When it starts off with, ‘The days are dark and long…’, it’s just my general feeling about football. I’ve been going to see my own team quite a lot recently. It’s my little anthem for how I feel about football and following Scotland for the last 50 years, just the ups and downs. It’s quite a heartfelt thing. When I was eight or nine, the Scottish team meant so much to me, it the thing I was most invested in. There’s a line in there about how I used to memorise the whole squad before ‘78 and 82.”
Tell us about lyric: “This is Scotland, where everyone knows you start with nothing… where you can join an army for peace”…
“My wife made the video for it and she said, ‘I’m not sure I like that line about everyone starting with nothing’. Our first game is against Haiti and they really have nothing. Their country is pretty poor and they’re going through hard times. It was almost a throwaway line and I’m not sure what I meant by it, but in a footballing sense every game starts with nothing. Even if it’s against Brazil, you’ve always got a chance!
“The army refers to The Tartan Army, which has really been quite a remarkable institution for the past 30 years. We changed from drunken buffoons that used to wreck things to this excellent supporting brigade.”
It’s not your standard football sing-along. Can you see it being sung in the terraces?
“I’m not sure, I didn’t cynically design it for that. Many people have said to me in the past, ‘None of your songs have a chorus, you need to write one’. ‘This is Scotland’ is a chorus! They things need to happen organically. I’m sure the fans will still be singing ‘Yes sir, I can boogie’ for years to come.”
What do you actually think of Scotland’s chances right now?
“With the last Euros, they maybe got stage fright or didn’t have that tournament experience. I think Andy Robertson [captain] will be telling them, ‘We really need to produce our best stuff’. If they do and we see them actually playing football, then I don’t really care about the results that much. I just want to see Scotland exceeding our expectations of them. That Denmark game was so crazy that everything after just feels like a bonus.”
If miracles do happen and Scotland make it to the final, how will you celebrate? A free gig in Glasgow?
“Of course, yes! Free everything. If we even got close, I think the whole country would shut down for a year and the GDP would drop. We’d go into a massive recession but no one would care.
“We were playing a gig in Mexico City and I told the crowd, ‘It’s you and us, Mexico and Scotland in the final’. Mexico have never really got close either. I told them it would be five goals a piece, even after everyone takes a penalty and we have to share the trophy. I would settle for that.”
You released two albums in quick succession with 2022’s ‘A Bit of Previous’, 2023’s ‘Late Developers’ and then your debut novel Nobody’s Empire in 2024. You’ve been busy! Is there any progress on new material?
“We went through a period where we recorded a lot and we said, ‘Let’s not record for a while and give ourselves a couple of cycles off’. We’re doing these 30th anniversary shows so we’re just going to lean on the back catalogue and cruise for a while. We’re doing a year on and a year off so everyone can focus on different things.
We’re not looking at new Belles stuff for a while. I’m meant to be developing Nobody’s Empire into a film, so that’s my next task. It’s a long way off from being made but I’m going to write the script for that.”
Scotland’s first World Cup tournament match is against Haiti on Sunday June 14, before they go on to play Morocco on Friday June 19 and Brazil on Wednesday June 24.
The band’s ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ anniversary tour continues throughout the summer, performing the iconic albums in full during across the UK, Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Japan. Visit here for tickets and more information.
