Music artist Brenden Praise recently sat down with Kaya 959 radio presenter Thabo “T-Bose” Mokwele to chat about everything from starting off in a back room to getting married at 23 and making a name for himself in the industry.
Praise, who recently featured on “The Color Purple” soundtrack with his frequent collaborator, Mörda, told T-Bose how much work went into his marriage.
“When I think back and, if I knew what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have done it (marriage), just because we personally were not ready as people. There was a lot of work that I had to do in building my character,” he said.
In the same breath he added that having someone who he could reflect with, was very helpful.
The father of two shared that he grew up in the small town of Graskop in Mpumalanga Province: “It was beautiful. It’s a beautiful town, even to this day I still go there to sleep, because it is very misty weather... it’s cold and misty and there’s tons of mountains, it’s just very calm, so it was great but it was very liberating.”
The award-winning artist added: “You can imagine as a creative, there aren’t a lot of outlets, I think the town has about 3500 people, it’s mostly a tourist town, people pass through. It’s a small town life, which I like.”
Speaking about his children, Lethabo, 6, and Zani, 4, he admitted to being much tougher on Zani because he was a boy.
“The approach differs with each child ... personally I still believe in very strict parenting, I think I am harder on my son because I think generally the world is harder on men.
“If you do the wrong thing, if you don’t abide by certain values and principles, I don’t think you get a pass, and so, as a man you have to learn to take responsibility and not make excuses,” he said.
Praise, who blew up on social media after dropping a single titled, “God you keep on Blessing”, in October 2024, said, at the time, he didn’t feel “God was blessing him”.
“It was more from a prophetic stand-point where I knew somehow this was working for my good.
“There were just a lot of things happening in my life personally, we got robbed, we lost everything in our home, our house flooded, just a bunch of things that were going wrong, and God just dropped the song and it turned out to be a prophetic song and I’ve seen it ministered in other peoples’ lives, where people can express moments of joy and its taken me a long time to get to,” he said.
Watch the full interview below: