WATCH | Kwesta on ProKid's legacy & why the #DankieSanConcert meant so much

"Without ProKid, there wouldn't be a Kwesta."

These are the words rapper Kwesta repeated on Wednesday afternoon in an interview with TshisaLIVE as he spoke about how Pro's music changed his life.

At the memorial service of Linda "ProKid" Mkhize, who died on August 9 Kwesta was one of the people whose emotions were written all over his face. He explained that it was because Pro's Head and Tales gave birth to the Kwesta we now know him as.

"I won't say he was my best friend, but be ka e'grootman yami. Whenever we met we would talk, so we were close like that but it was always whenever we met. And we called each other about songs and stuff."

Kwesta said he met Pro for the first time face to face around 2008. At the time he was still working with Slikour and Shugasmax at an event called Sprite Hip Hop show.

Kwesta laughed as he remembered just how scared he was to hear that Pro would see him on stage and he went on to give the worst performance in his rap career because of the nerves.

"The first time I met him, it was a big deal to me because he's the reason I am a rapper. If I hadn't heard Pro rap, I would have been just another hip-hop fan. He did that for me."

Luckily for Kwesta he recovered by the next time he performed and Pro was there.  

The Dankie San concert happened a week after Pro's funeral and Kwesta said it meant a lot for him to be part of it.

The industry came together to raise money that would go towards ProKid's daughter's education.  While the industry was praised for pulling together, the concert fueled speculation about ProKid's finances at his time of death.

Kwesta set the record straight.

"The thing about this (concert) is that people shouldn't just assume there wasn't a fund for Nonkanyezi in the first place. People just went about judging Pro, like we went to his family and found out there was nothing. But that is not the case. We don't know their financial situation, we just came together because of what Pro was for the industry, and doing something for his daughter was a no-brainer. We wanted to have our own way of adding to whatever is there.

"We just did it because we wanted to do it, not because the situation was dire."

However, Kwesta agreed that the conversation that was sparked about an artist's legacy shouldn't die down. He said artists needed to always have the bigger picture in mind when making decisions in their careers.

Is the rapper following his own advice?

Kwesta says he's not making decisions that will only benefit him today and that doesn't only apply to his finances and his legacy but his music as well.

Which is why, he says, two years after Dakar II we are still waiting for his upcoming album Dakar III.