ES: What inspired you to become an emcee?
Lee-ursus: The opportunity to express self, through a medium that has so many elements/ dimensions and the most important being, my belief that hip hop is an art form sent to us by the Creator as a means to build and mobilise ourselves as a people.
ES: What do you find to be the most challenging thing about your art form?
Lee-ursus: I guess I find it a fun challenge, being able to present ‘something’ on a platform that is open-minded, yet so stagnant in terms of language and more specifically in Afrikaans. I personally don’t associate or perceive the language as a tool of oppression while quite a lot of people do. It’s like when you get shot by a gun, you don’t blame the gun, you hold the person using the gun to inflict harm accountable? That to me is the same with the language: hold the oppressor accountable for his ‘ideology’ or ways of thinking.
ES: What is it about hip hop that resonates with you as an artist?
Lee-ursus: The fact that it actually kept me from partaking in a lot of bad activities as a youth as I somehow felt the artform in itself would keep me accountable and still does. I'm definitely not perfect and think I could be up to so much worse without the sense of being ‘looked over’.
ES: What inspires your writing?
Lee-ursus: The fact that I think there’s still a difference between emceeing and rapping. My inspiration therefore striving towards becoming an emcee, I think the journey never ends though. Mine is slow, but I still feel that I am developing holistically, slowly but surely and that sort of excites me, though emceeing and the whole concept annoys me and is draining. More importantly though, I feel that it feeds my spirit.
ES: If there’s one boundary or misconception you could knock down about being a hip hop emcee, what would it be?
Lee-urus: Emceeing, if done as it should is one of the most powerful mediums to reach the youth. I guess hip hop is a divine element allowing for human error in the hip hop of us growing through it all with a positive outcome.
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