South African Hip Hop Awards Freshmen of the Year, Nasty C just dropped the video for his latest single Hell Naw. The young rapper is credited for both co-directing and co-editing the video which follows Nasty on a day spent at a high school where he negotiates Selfi- Op’s and stages a live performance for the mesmerised students. Shot entirely in black and white, the video, which has an unpretentious behind-the-scenes quality embraces the documentary style in which it is filmed. At just 19 years old it wasn’t that long ago that Nasty C was in high school himself and barring his white NY Yankees New Era cap and premium Puma x Bape tee, he doesn’t look out of place in the setting. The school scenes are juxtaposed with two shots, one is a fireworks display foregrounded by a close-up of Nasty’s face and the other is a dimly lit scene in which Nasty lurks like a shadow waiting to pounce. The singles artwork, which depicts a digitally illustrated Nasty C with a crown on his head gives the feeling that the young rapper senses an opportunity that the emergence of the new wave of South African Hip Hop led by Nasty C and some of his contemporaries like Emtee and B3nchMarQ has loosened the grip and that the throne which has for a while now been monopolised by AKA and Cassper Nyovest may potentially be up for the taking.
Author: Ghost Writer
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The unsettling of JHB’s necropolitical reflections in Zandile Tisani’s Highlands
A police van veers around a corner, a loaf of bread is placed inside a box, leaves crackle and turn in the ambiguity of words; “In my third life, I learnt about mortality”. Zandile Tisani’s Highlands is a kind of forensic infrastructure, unfixing and unhinging the masculinity and certainty of Johannesburg’s necropolitical reflections through the opening and closing of pores, architectures of light that pull in- and out-of-focus, and the slow movements of water carving rock.
Sun-dizzied camera shots sweep and descend to give Highlands an alien quality of defamiliarisation while the ubiquity of water stands strange and sputnik in its Yeoville towers. Is the ‘clean air’ up there supposed to descend in the same way water does? Are there ways that we can structure our own sermons, self-designate the sacred? And what could that mean in relation to the way a reef is formed, the way boreholes now honeycomb beneath the surface of the city?
Tisani beautifully unsettles what constitutes ‘the documentary’ in a layered interrogation that blurs just where the edges might be. There’s a kind of quiet delirium in obscured hyperrealism, sedition in the spatial rendering of the mysterious narrator who stands somehow beyond the trinity of spirituality, commerce and survival. Dialogues form between soil and skin as the ground moves to meet those who traverse it, those who would both regard and disregard it in the instant of lifetimes.
The experimental format that Highlands engages reclaims the physical space in which it is shot from the violent patina of Hollywood glitz, from the blunt force of linear narrative and the designation of ‘history’; opening up breathing-room for questions that speak incredibly intimately to the complexities of existence within, and to the side-of, JHB as a ‘post-colonial, post-apartheid, modern, African, metropolis’.
Tisani’s Highlands is a co-production between GoodCop Productions and the Encounters Documentary Lab and even if I wasn’t writing about it, I couldn’t only watch it once. Check out the South African kick-back against stasis below. #MbokoLead
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Bubblegum Club vol 3 by RudeBoyz
RudeBoyz slid this mysterious Gqom mix into our DM’s. According to Andile T, a member of the group, the frenetic Gqom mix features some of the RudeBoyz latest tracks together with other, mostly anonymous tracks produced by unknown artists. That’s as much of a tracklist as we could get, which in a way typifies the mysterious nature of the genre, how it developed and the way it is disseminated.
Listen to 38 minutes of Gqom pandemonium below
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Stilo Magolide teams up with Nasty C on new track, Day Off
Stilo Magolide just dropped “Day Off” a new track which features Nasty C, one of South Africa’s most buzzed about young rappers and winner of South African Hip Hop Awards “Freshmen of The Year.
This is Stilo’s first track since releasing “Camron Diaz”, an 18 track mixtape on which he offered up a range of vocal styles and sounds.
“Day Off”, which was produced by Cassper Nyovest (Family Tree) signed producer Gemini Major recaptures the vocal energy Stilo realised on previous singles such as “Mr Party” and “More” but also, through its distinct trap sound hints at the artists alignment towards a wider audience.
Listen to the track below:
Download track here:
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Vulcan Juwish is a New Label Making Playful Streetwear
Vulcan Juwish is a Johannesburg based fashion label started by two brothers, Thapelo and Kopano Maubane. The label launched its 3rd collection today via a series of candid portraits and lifestyle shots.
Although it may look like it at first glance Vulcan Juwish is not the usual streetwear-label-startup so common amongst young streetwear-enthusiasts based in and around Johannesburg. The labels odd combination of reference points which include N.W.A and Star Trek, infuse an unusual but refreshing playfulness and eccentricity into their clothes.
