It’s no secret that Black Coffee has earned his spot in the dance music history books, but speaking candidly on a recent interview, the Grammy-winning artist opened up about how his life was almost cut short decades earlier.
Raised in the town of Mthatha, Nelson Mandela’s hometown, the South African superstar says that a brush with fate almost led to his death. During a public gathering celebrating the release of Mandela from prison in 1990, a taxi plowed into the crowd, leading to an injury that caused Coffee to be hospitalized for three months.
The scars from the devastating injury were lasting, and he was effectively left unable to use one of his arms due to severe dislocation. Speaking on Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO podcast, Coffee says the emotional anguish of that pivotal day made it difficult to talk about for years. He only revealed the injury publicly for the first time to his fans in 2017.
There was no easy fix for the severely damaged nerves in his arm. Nonetheless, the Subconsciously producer, who was never one to shy away from hard work, persisted. He always had an appreciation for music, and in the wake of his injury, he would learn to hone his craft with just one hand alone.
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Ultimately, Coffee recognizes the sheer height of that hurdle only forced him to work harder and remain unwaveringly determined. Even to this day, he only maintains 40% of the normal span of movement in his left arm, but that’s leaps and bounds from the near lifeless limb he nursed at the time.
“I just felt like this one thing was trying to rob me of this one thing that I really, really love, and I would not allow it,” he told Bartlett.
You can watch the full interview below.
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