It’s through the band Tumi and The Volume that Tumi got his first real break. A band that was born out of jamming and improvisation, Tumi And The Volume released their seminal album Live at the Bassline in 2002 which was followed by two studio albums, 2016’s self-titled album and Pick a Dream released in 2010. The latter, the band’s most refined album in their catalogue, is the focus of this episode. 

Tumi was as much of a poet as he was an emcee. Calling himself The Poet MC to embrace both disciplines, he released his first solo album, Music From My Good Eye in 2006 after feeling overlooked as a rapper in the SA hip-hop scene. Two more albums, Whole Worlds (2010) and Return of the King (2015), followed. In this episode, we explore the significance of each of these albums and how they tell a story that culminated in Tumi’s rebrand as Stogie T.

Named after Tumi’s first-ever EP released in 2002, this episode is an oral history of how Tumi got into rap and became a regular at Le Club, a club in downtown Joburg that played a role in shaping the city’s hip-hop scene in the early 2000s. In the episode, Tumi also talks about growing up in exile and how being an avid reader shaped the emcee he would later become.