Most performers spend years waiting for “the break.” ByLwansta didn’t. Instead of waiting for the industry to open a door, he built the room himself—then invited people to live in it.
- From self-belief to building a career on his own terms
- The “leave the internet” pitch
- Art without a single label: roles, music, and storytelling
- Choosing honesty over trends
- Your Weekly Touch Up: solving his own problem, then changing the scene
- COLORS, legacy, and what comes after recognition
- What people should notice first
From self-belief to building a career on his own terms
Before he became the first South African act to take the stage on COLORS, before he launched the creative collective NORMVL, and before he grew the platform Your Weekly Touch Up into something widely known, he was simply a young creator who refused to accept that industry limits were fixed for him.
“Right now is always the right time,” he says. “My phone wallpaper reads, ‘Create the things you wish existed.’ When I look back, I realise that’s exactly what I’d been doing from the beginning.”
That mindset has served as the blueprint for what he’s built. Rather than asking for permission, he chose to generate opportunities—believing that genuine work would naturally bring people together.
For him, the clearest proof that he was right to bet on himself came from getting people to leave their screens and experience his art in person.
The “leave the internet” pitch
He describes the risk involved in asking an audience to step away from online life for a live encounter. “You’re asking people to leave the internet, spend an evening with you and trust your vision. It’s just you, your conviction, your audacity and your appetite for risk.”
Art without a single label: roles, music, and storytelling
Those risks have helped shape an artist who doesn’t want to be boxed into a single identity. “Every role gives me a different way of engaging with humanity,” he explains.
While creative direction lets him bring other people’s visions to life, music is the one space where he allows himself “complete creative selfishness.” He connects that approach directly to songwriting, arguing that a good narrative travels farther than genre gatekeeping.
“Not everyone is a fan of Hip Hop, R&B or Amapiano, but everyone is a fan of a good story,” he says.
Choosing honesty over trends
Staying loyal to his vision has not been effortless. “The cost was relevance,” he admits. “I needed time to live enough life to have something honest to say.”
Instead of chasing what was trending, he concentrated on building the systems that could keep an independent career running. Over time, he came to describe himself as “ByLwansta the infrastructure builder.”
Your Weekly Touch Up: solving his own problem, then changing the scene
That infrastructure-building way of thinking led him to create Your Weekly Touch Up. What started as a weekly residency—he says he wasn’t getting booked early on—ended up becoming a base for South Africa’s alternative artists.
- He says the original goal was simple: “We were simply trying to solve our own problem.”
- He adds that it turned out the issue wasn’t unique to him or his circle.
- Three years later, the platform has grown into one of the country’s most respected creative communities.
COLORS, legacy, and what comes after recognition
Ironically, even achieving a major milestone—being the first South African artist to perform on COLORS—didn’t deliver the emotional rush he expected. “At 8:00 pm. I expected the world to pause,” he reflects. “It didn’t.”
Instead of letting that moment define him, it reinforced a lesson he now treats as permanent: outside validation is temporary, while the work itself lasts.
Today, he believes legacy matters more than recognition. Through NORMVL, his book Really Listening, and the documentary that chronicles Your Weekly Touch Up, he wants to leave artists with more than motivation—he wants to leave them with a practical route map for building sustainable careers on their own terms.
- He wants people to look at his career and understand “what it takes,” then decide immediately that the path is still worth pursuing.
He also believes the next generation deserves legacy artists who demonstrate that music can be a lifelong career, not something people abandon for a “real” job. At the same time, he hopes to encourage others to create fearless, independent artistic careers grounded in purpose and sustained community impact.
What people should notice first
When he’s asked what he hopes audiences realize when they first encounter ByLwansta, he says it isn’t primarily about music. “What an emotionally intelligent human,” he says. “I like how he thinks, feels and articulates.”
In an industry fixated on visibility, ByLwansta has spent more than a decade showing that authenticity functions like infrastructure, community works like currency, and the biggest opportunities are the ones you create yourself.
