World of the rich and famous is something that we all like to give a peek at. Their stories and life experiences are sometimes so big and incredible, that one “not famous person” couldn’t even imagine them.
Being a celebrity is not always easy and we have to know that.
Reading though their biographies we get the sense of how hard it is for them and how much pressure they endure.
When you are a celebrity in a foreign country, it is sometimes hard to break the barriers and bring your fame beyond the borders.
In today’s text, we are going to talk about a famous African singer and rapper Cassper Nyovest.
We are going to talk more about his net worth, biography and career path, so stick with us if you want to find out more.
Early years
Refiole Maele Phoolo was born on 16th December 1990 in North West Province in South Africa. Growing up in South Africa, Cassper had a normal childhood and spent most of his time with his friends and family.
He grew up with one sister, Tsholofelo Phoolo and a brother Khotso Phoolo. Sadly, he lived through a family tragedy in 2003, when he lost his brother.
He often speaks about this and expresses how devastated he felt after this. Nyovest loved sports very much and was very athletic from an early age. He loved playing all kinds of sport, so he couldn’t say that one or the other was his favorite.
Besides being in love with sports, he also loved music. When he was only 12 years old, he began rapping. He started writing his own lyrics and began practicing, as he knew that one day he will become a famous rapper.
Nyovest went to the Sol Plaatije Secondary school and there he was a successful athlete, while still practicing music on the side. When he was in tenth grade, he failed to pass his exams and to punish him, his parents sent him to live with his grandmother.
His grandmother’s house was in Potchefstroom. Even though he wanted to play sports and go to school, due to his poor grades and bad performance in school, he was forced to drop out when he was only 16 years old.
In order to pursue a career in music, specifically rap, he moved to Johannesburg and began taking his career more seriously. He told his parents that he is going to focus on his music career and that his school days are definitely over.
He didn’t want to regret not making this decision his whole life, so he dropped everything and poured his heart and soul into music, which turned out to be a good decision. There isn’t any more information about his early years, so we are going to continue on writing about his career path and personal life in the following part of the text.
Career path
Nyovest began his career in 2004 when he was a part of the group called Childhood Gangsta. He was only 13 years old at the time and the group was formed together with his friends. The next group he joined, after leaving his primary group, was Slow Motion and the group had a total of eight members.
When he finally left school, he was able to fully commit to his music career and focus only on rap. He then moved to Johannesburg and started taking his career more seriously. He signed a contract with motswako record label called Impact Sound. This label also had some famous singers like Tuks Senganga and more under their wing.
The contract between tem didn’t’ last long, and he left the label in 2008 because of creative differences. In 213, he came out with his debut single called Gusheshe that he recorded together with Okmalumkoolkat. By 2014, he already started his own label called Family Tree Records and his second song came out the same year.
The reviews of the songs were extremely positive and Nyovest started gathering his fan base. In 2014, he released an album called Tsholofelo which was named after his sister. The album made a huge success in South Africa and was number 1 on all the charts.
He later released a platinum edition of this album featuring some of the hottest South African artists. In 2015, a song called Mama I made IT came out and announced the release of his second album.
The same year, he managed to do what very little artists have managed to do in the past, and that is filling up the Dome in South Africa with 20 thousand people.
For the third consecutive year Cassper Nyovest has shown that South African artists have as much pull as their famous international counterparts.
An estimated 68,000 tickets were sold for the hip hop superstar #FillUpFNBStadium show, according to his management, breaking his 2015 record of selling the 20,000 TicketPro Dome and selling around 40,000 tickets for last year’s #FillUpOrlandoStadium. Each of these achievements was without an international act.
Although Nyovest did not reach its goal of selling 75,000 tickets for its December 2 show, it managed to sell more tickets at the venue than the global superstars. If the estimated 68,000 tickets are correct, Nyovest would have sold more tickets for a musical concert at the national stadium than almost all international artists to organize a concert there.
In fact, the only group that would triumph over Nyovest would be U2, which sold more than 90,000 tickets when they performed at the venue in 2011. While Golden Circle positions began filling at noon, seat holders began arriving at the stadium from the afternoon. At nine o’clock at night, the stadium was illuminated with camera flashes and cell phone screens that captured hits from this year’s Tsholofelo, Refiloe and Thuto albums.
The latest projects he has been working on are his album Sweet and Short and another Fill up event that took place on December 1st 2016. Nyovest was endorsed by many famous brands, one of the biggest ones is the vodka brand called Ciroc. He began the cooperation with this company in 2017 and so far they have been working together on promoting the brand.
He also advertises the MTN and AG Mobile Company, but Samsung, Coca Cola and Nike SA as well. His company, record label, Family Tree Records, was founded in 2014 and has been working successfully for several years now.
Nyovest net worth is estimated at around 3$ million. He often posts photos of his expensive cars and his lavish home in South Africa.
Considering the fact he left everything behind and poured his entire heart and soul into music, he has managed to achieve such a big success and all of that with his own two hands.
Personal life
Cassper Nyovest is the star of the townships. The South African rapper can hang out the “Kanye West of Africa” and start his own trends. Hip-hop became mainstream compatible with him in South Africa. At the first Urban Africa Festival, the South African superstar celebrates its Germany debut.
When Cassper Nyovest takes to the stage in South Africa, he delivers an unforgettable show. Attached to a crane with a wire rope, the 25-year-old floated more than 20,000 enthusiastic fans last November and offered many in the audience the first pyro show of their lives. Through live streaming, he lets his two million followers on Facebook regularly participate in the life of an African pop star, holds his golden Rolex in the camera and tells of his adventures in America.
On a visit to Los Angeles’s popular hip-hop radio show “Sway in the Morning”, Cassper Nyovest has no secret that he is emulating the American hip-hop stars. His thesis: It’s okay to be Wanna-Be.
Finally, he would offer his fans in South Africa, a pop star who was always withheld from his generation.
In South Africa it would be a compliment if he is called the “Kanye West of South Africa”. His statement then caused a sensation in the social media under the hashtag #SameChairAsKanye.
If you accuse the South African rapper of only looking to America, you’re wrong. Together with his two DJ colleagues Major League Djz, he has “New Age Kwaito” lifted from the baptism. Cassper Nyovest’s songs are not just based on the sound trend trap from Atlanta, but he also reanimates South Africa’s pop grooves with which the country celebrated the end of apartheid in the mid-90s.
In addition, Cassper Nyovest can rhyme with Motswako, a mix of local languages, in addition to his English-language flow. Above all, his mentor and companion, the South African hip hop guru Hip Hop Pantsula alias Jabba, had made a name for it.
Cassper Nyovest has started to break records. Only his debut album “Tsholofelo” as the first hip hop album in South Africa was awarded platinum. Then he filled the concert hall The Dome in South Africa last year with 20,000 fans.
Now he wants to be the first South African to sell the Orlando Stadium in Johannesburg with 40,000 seats. We keep our fingers crossed for him and are looking forward to his first concert in Germany.
Cassper has been linked to many famous women over the years. Some of the reports have been rumors but others turned out to be true. In 2015 he admitted that he is in a romantic relationship with Boitumelo Thulo, an African actress. They came out with their relationship in July and the fans were absolutely thrilled.
Even though many magazines wrote that the couple is getting engaged and planning a life together, Nyovest denied the claims and the couple ended their relationship in 2015.
Nyovest is a rapper, and they are bound to have some disagreements with each other once in a while. In 2014, he started a feud with another South African rapper called AKA.
The feud started over popularity and who has the most popular song of the year. They exchanged several tweets and argued about who a bigger has hit that year.
Since then the feud has only been growing larger and it came to the point of Nyovest accusing AKA’s guards of pulling out a gun on him and his team.
So far they weren’t able to reconcile and they are still very much in feud. In 218, another singer used a similar hashtag to promote his concert as Nyovest’s Fill up, but the accusations were left at that because it was proven that Nyovest doesn’t own the trademark yet.
He is definitely one of the most successful and richest celebrities in South Africa, and he continues to put out great songs. Whether his career will grow even bigger in the future, we have to wait and see, but so far, his career has been a total success.
Quick summary
Full name: Refiloe Maele Phoolo
Date of birth: December 16th 1990
Birthplace: Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England
Age: 29
Profession: Rapper, Producer
Height: 1.85 m
Weight: 88 kg
Net Worth: 3$ million