Kendrick Lamar once said he writes songs with prisoners in mind. These poor souls, unlike party animals waiting to hop onto the next wave, got all the time under the sun to process every layer and message dumped at their doorstep.

Now that the whole world is in prison, with the covid-19 lockdown, the Lamartian doctrine holds truer than ever and conscious artists are coming for everything. Poptain has emerged out of five years of unrewarded grind to take over Zimdancehall. At 22, Zim hip hop’s Holy Ten (born Mukudzei Chitsama) has hardly earned his stripes but he arrives with a depth that is worth a conversation.

Holy Ten’s latest single, “Ndaremerwa” is all things austerity and lockdown precarity. Sung with resigned vulnerability and spiraling bars, “Ndaremererwa” is a message and a moment. As hip hop blogger Donald “Dodger” Marindire has hinted, it evokes socially aware classics like Jnr Brown’s “Tongogara”.

The success of the song has driven traffic to the younger rapper’s earlier projects including the 2018 “Amai”. Admirers include Tsitsi Dangarembga whose Booker-nominated latest novel is among prize items for a “Ndaremerwa” challenge. Ten’s discography includes a 2019 EP, Suicide Notes, and, while oscillating between aggression and darkness, defies finer categorisation because of the young artist’s versatility with beats.

Fired Rock writer Onai Mushava (OM) got in touch with Holy Ten (HT) to peek into his creative process.

OM: Where does the name Holy Ten come from?

HT: When you take words and study them, the word that stands for clarity, the highest state of righteousness is “Holy” and the number that best describes perfection is “Ten.” By using that as name, I put myself in a mental state. I am reminded of all the things I that I have to achieve.

OM: Would you put yourself into a specific subgenre of hip hop or you prefer to keep things open?

HT: Like do I do trap, poetry, lyricism and everything like that? No, I wouldn’t do that. Genres are even defined by beats and I have already broken that cycle by using different beats. I am just generally a hip hop artist; I just rap things.

OM: Who does your beats and how do you work out which sound you want for a song?

HT: I am my own producer. I decide when I am gonna do the production, how I am gonna do it, what type of song I wanna do. Everything from the beginning has been directed by me. I have had a lot of help from a friend; his name is Jay D Zim. But that’s with teaching me the skills, how to produce myself. But everything from the making of the beats, to the engineering of the songs, the design of the artwork, the editing of the videos and the distribution of the songs has been done by me.

OM: You sound like a pretty dark rapper. Is the country putting pressures on you?

HT: No; there is no pressure on me. That’s my sound. I am like that. I have what you would call happy songs that I wrote in moments that I felt I needed to express that. Right now, I have translated the dark moments into the songs that I have now because most of it has been dark but it’s really not about the country putting any pressure on me directly. It’s the moments. I don’t know if that makes sense but yeah.

OM: How do you write a song? Do you have creative or meditative rituals?

HT: No; no rituals. For me everything is about a mental state. For me everything is about a mental state. I have come to love the idea of psychology so much that I really study how everything is directed mentally, how a mental state can write you the best song, because for me music is about expression; it’s about airing out to what.

So I have to do is to be in a real moment. And then I can translate everything that I see, everything that I hear, everything that I feel in that moment and turn it into a song. That is the ritual if you decide to call it that. How real is the moment for me: Is it a heartbreak? Is it a struggle? How impactful is an experience?

OM: What were you listening to, growing up? What music made you decide you wanted to be a rapper?

HT: I listened to Stunner and Jnr Brown, growing up. JB, it was the deep voice, calm delivery. Stunner it was the bars. I will not hold back any credit where it’s due. The Shona touch I have in my rap has been nurturing since I started listening to the gentlemen I’ve just mentioned.

OM: How did everything lead to your first song? What was the process and the moment of arrival?

HT: It’s always been about my friends. They started motivating me from a young age. Everyone I’ve ever rapped for had love to give, even at a time where no was listening.

So when the positive energy keeps building up, you start feeling sure. My first song wasn’t even hard to be honest. It’s about writing exactly what you feel and you feel a million different things in just a single moment. I just wrote the feelings down.

OM: And it had to be a rap song?

HT: Hip hop is an aggressive genre. Expression needs volume. So I’m with hip hop.

OM: What are you currently listening to?

HT: This is a screenshot of my playlist and all these are my demos. I feel like I have to deepen up about that ‘cause it could come out as if I don’t wanna support other local artists; no, it’s not that. I really spend most of my time working on my music. Every time I am just trying to write a song, every time I am just trying to write a project.

That’s why my playlist is gonna have the first 15 songs as mine. But as that playlist goes down you gonna find hits. You probably gonna find an album, maybe a complete package, because for most people – I don’t know, most artists probably – they diversify their music and sometimes you have this songs that’s really positive, and sometimes this song that just promotes everything that you are against. So you probably gonna find Takura hits in my phone, Jah Prayzah’s hits, Ammara’s hits.

OM: This has been quite insightful. Thanks for the interview.