Many people know Runtown for his 2016 mega-hit song Mad Over You, which dominated radio charts and spurned international covers. But what many don’t know is that the singer has described the song as both a gift and a curse.
Runtown said in an unpublished interview with AfricaNow, “It’s really that song as a gift and a curse at the same time. It’s that song that just changed everything, not just for me, but for the whole industry.”
“So you now have to not necessarily live up to that, but a lot of people expect you to have another Mad Over You. You know me very well. I love being diverse with the sound, but Mad Over You taught me a lesson.”
“Most of the songs I dropped then didn’t make it to any album. So it taught me that I needed to focus on a body of work. So that’s why I kind of paused then I dropped Tradition, the body of work. So this body of works that are very, very, very key in your career is a story.”
Runtown also revealed why his music got more conscious over time. He says, “If you notice for my newer releases, if you really pay attention to this, I had to go deeper in the message. I had to be more conscious in the music. Not just conscious in a borrowing way, conscious in a way you’re turning up the act, you’re remembering, all right, you got signed.”
Listen to the full interview here.
