Soweto-born, but raised in South Africa’s oldest township, Alexandra, the young rapper known as Richi Rich has been active as a rapper since 2010 when he was part of YunGunz crew alongside Suup Zulu and Hip Nautic Sean. “We all were different, so we all chose to go our individual ways and do different stuff, but we were still going to support each other,” explains Richi Rich.
As a solo artist Richi Rich has released three mixtapes and an EP, most recently dropping the ‘NORTHGOMORA MIXTAPE’. With Alexandra, or Alex as it’s called, on the border of ‘the North’ aka Sandton, the title alludes to the two worlds which Richi occupies. “I’ve been to the North, I’ve been to Alex. I’m where the suburbs and the hood meet.”
Having found hip-hop at an early age, Richi Rich describes himself as an influencer in his circle of friends, introducing them to sounds such as G-Unit when it first came out. In terms of influences on his sound he holds The Notorious B.I.G. and Okmalumkoolkat in high regard. “When I saw Okmalumkoolkat and the ‘Sebenza’ song that changed the whole perspective of music for me. (To) actually create South African hip-hop. People in America don’t want to hear what they do. They want to hear something new, something from South Africa, something from Africa. So I feel like we should push that.”
For Richi Rich creating something new isn’t just about the music he makes but everything that surrounds it too, from the fashion to the slang. It’s a lifestyle. “We’ve created something new. It’s not like we took something from someone and just carried on doing it. Everything is new. Because we’re young people. We’re trying to grow into becoming superstars, we’ve evolved like crazy.”
While Richi Rich is focused on originality, he acknowledges the influence Alex has had on him and his aesthetic. “The influence comes from Alex. What we say, how we live, what we do and how we dress, most of the influence comes from where we come from. Being in the hood you learn a whole lot of stuff. Life lessons. People giving you advice.”
Ultimately, Richi Rich is trying to show people a side of Alex they might not be familiar with. “I feel like that’s what makes me special. I don’t believe in everybody sounding the same. Like Youngsta, you can tell that he’s from Cape Town. That makes him special. It makes him more interesting; you want to listen to him more, you want to learn more about Cape Town, where he comes from. So I feel like it does make me special. Me being from Alex and bringing Alex to the world.”
Richi Rich hopes that people enjoy his music, but also learn something from it too. “When you listen to my music I want you to learn something. Not just come out of it like that’s good. When you’re finished with my mixtape I want it to be that you’ve learnt something from Richi. I want you to take knowledge from me, what I’ve learnt in the hood.”
In this episode you see footage from our visit to the August House Open Studio Exhibition where we spoke to artists Neo Mahlangu and Themba Khumalo about the exhibition and their work. Phiko Mditshwa gives a taste of a “cultured look” in our street fashion feature. Okmalumkoolkat chats to us about his party, Partytime Shandees, hosted at The Tennis Club and his desire to create space for new, futuristic genres. We also visited the coffee spot Firebird Coffee in Maboneng for a short lesson on the art of coffee making. Mmaphuti Morule also chats to us about Air Max Day in Joburg and the celebration of this iconic sneaker.
Maya has always been a writer. She has always been interested in different kinds of writing. However, because she is young and is a woman of colour, she felt that she was boxed into the persona of a spoken word poet. For a long time she felt the pressure to just be Maya the Poet. But at the same time, she was writing raps.
Caught up in this box she felt she had been pushed into, Maya never imagined that she could become a rapper but she did want something to come of the rap she was able to write. So she had the idea that she would become a ghostwriter. With that decision she contacted one of her favourites in the industry, Okmalumkoolkat. After sending through some of her verses, they decided to work together. Maya was excited to work with him on his upcoming album, Mlazi Milano. “So I showed up at studio and he was like ‘Are you ready to hop on the song?’ and I was like ‘No’. And he said ‘Wait aren’t you a rapper?’ And I said ‘No’. So he goes ‘Are you a singer?’ and I said ‘No’. So he says ‘Why are you here?’ and I said ‘To write’ you know. And he says ‘For who?!’”. Amused by her own boldness in offering to write for Okmalumkoolkat, she clearly realized that the ghostwriting thing was not going to happen. So she took to the mic and became the voice for her own verses. She confessed to me that rapping was something she had always wanted to do, and so being featured on three of Okmalumkoolkat’s tracks added fuel to a fire that had been burning inside her for a while. She will be featured on the album by her rapper stage name Sho Madjozi!. Even more special for her, is the fact that she raps in her home language, Tsonga. “I think it [Tsonga] sounds really dope on rap! And it has never been explored in the way that I am doing now,” Maya explained when describing the rhythmic qualities that Tsonga holds. Coming from the small rural of Shirley in Limpopo, she explains how people are confused by her audacity to rap in Tsonga. However, she is determined to take her language and culture with her, and “swag it out”. She is also encouraged by the idea that people from her home will be excited to hear their own words in mainstream music.
In sticking with taking home with her, at the album preview for Mlazi Milano, Sho Madjozi performed in her xibelani, the traditional skirt worn for the dance also referred to as xibelani. For her the skirt stands as a symbol of her identity but is also a sign that her culture is not frozen in time. Through telling me the evolution of the xibelani skirt, she articulates how this is an indication of the evolution of her culture. This ties into her philosophy of integrating “Africanness” into our everyday lives. “I don’t like this notion that we come to Joburg and we become these other people…When you miss some aspect of yourself or you miss your food, you have to go out to the village or township and find it… Traditional attire must not be relegated to public holidays,” Maya expressed. She highlighted that she wants to grow her culture and wants to interrogate what it means to be an African today.
She has also recently become the Africa rep for New York-film company Flourish and Multiply which involves organizing people for the company to work with, as well as being an assistant director in some of their projects on the continent. Maya has also become the youngest person to be awarded the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study Writing Fellowship. Re-thinking what a fellowship should be used for, she pitched to write a film which will be based in Limpopo around her village. Adding to her mixed bag of projects, she will soon be launching a line of bags under the label Machagani (@machaganibags). What ties all of her work together is reminding people of colour that our languages and cultures “are dope”.
Be sure to have a listen to the tracks she is featured on in Okmalumkoolkat’s upcoming album Mlazi Milano. Sho Madjozi herself is trying to create a sound that is a combination of Tsonga and trap. She also let us in on the fact that she will be working on an EP title “My life is a movie” to be released sometime next year. Check out @shomadjozi on Instagram and @mayawegerif on Twitter to keep up to date with her work.
If Mkay Frash were a comic book character, he would levitate in celestial space, straddling comets, in constant orbit between worlds. His hands cupped, as though in telepathy with the surrounding sky-scape. From his outstretched fingers, threads extend like webs, connecting disparate planets, weaving transcendental tapestries. This would be his superpower: his ability to draw worlds together, curating spectacular cosmic collages. No wonder his suit is camo. Mkay is a cultural explorer on the hunt for kicks. In discovering aesthetic treasures and glistening brands, he also links them to a vast network of people and places.
Mkay is the don of South African sneaker culture. He’s founder and host of the online magazine Hunting For Kicks. Sneakers are his weapon, his tool and his metaphor. The shoes transport us, literally and figuratively. But they also leave imprints, documenting and celebrating a youth in motion. But more than sneakers, Mkay is an OG in the game: a long-time curator, commentator, and producer of street culture.
‘I’m a gangsta. I dowanna put myself in a box and say, “this is the type of person I am”, because if I wanna switch up, I don’t want you to look at me like, “Yo, you just switched up on me!” I’m a gangsta. I go for what I want. I can decide any time what I want to do.”A veteran shape-shifter, with camo-adaptability.
Mkay’s influence and longevity on the street scene have come from his ability to occupy in-between spaces: between artists and agents, between the corporate and the cutting edge, between peripheral hoods and central hubs, between people and product.
It started young. Mkay grew up in a place of assemblages, where multiple worlds met: a taxi rank in Marabastad, Pretoria. Before forced removals, Marabastad had been a site of racial and cultural synthesis — Pretoria’s District Six or Sophiatown.
‘My dad is a taxi owner. I grew up on a rank basically.’ That explains Mkay’s catch phrase: eTimer lePusha amaTaxi yena uPusha amaTakkie. Taxis connected ‘the hood’ to town. This meant that from an early age, Mkay was traversing two worlds, connecting the hood to city brands, and the city to hood threads. Because the taxi rank was a nexus — the starting point for all journeys — it was also an aesthetic explosion. ‘People, wherever they’re trying to get to, they go to the rank. Whether they’re travelling to the office, the jazz club, the tavern, each one brings their own style. I grew up seeing a lot of style as a young kid’.
Today, Mkay’s camo attire reads like a patchwork of jumbled pieces brought together. Camo was designed to resonate with the wearer’s surroundings. Appropriate since Mkay’s character was forged at the intersection of multiple stylistic cut-offs.
Just like the rank, his home was a meteoric style catalogue. ‘My mom was a teacher, a music conductor and a fashion designer. She used to dress us up in her own clothes. So Christmas day, we used to change four times, four times! I grew up like that. My pop’s wardrobe is crazy! My mom’s wardrobe is crazy! It’s like even a battle. The type of space clothing took in the house was just ridiculous.’
The attention to threads was stitched through Mkay’s early life, from his parents to his uncles, to the streets themselves. He tells the story of visiting one of his uncles in jail. After a long wait, his uncle emerged from the cells keen to show off his customised prison apparel: standard leather shoes transformed to suede. ‘I come from that’, Mkay says, ‘It’s not even flossing. It’s a lifestyle. That’s what we do.’
Amid Dead Prez and basketball courts, the taxi rank and family wardrobes, Mkay’s origin story unfolded. He discovered the transformative power of the right kicks and the right threads. ‘For me clothing was always that. When I rock somethin’, girls react to me in a certain way. People treat me differently. After I tasted that, for me it was like a no brainer. I was like, I gotta look fresh if I wanna get this type of treatment or this type of vibe’.
In his first year of college, Mkay, a 19-year old maverick, co-founded a streetwear store, stocking local brands. It was dubbed 100% Flavour. That was when the Magents crew recognised his magic, teleporting him to Jo’burg. Nineties fashion trailblazers, Magents were putting their streetwear on some of the country’s biggest kwaito, house, jazz and hip-hop stars. While coordinating the brand’s PR, Mkay worked with the likes of Mandoza, Trompies, Lebo Mathosa, and Rudeboy Paul. In 2006, he teamed up with Scoop Makhatini and Nkosana Modise to launch Ama Kip Kip — a brand that blew up on the scene.
Mkay was picked up by Nike in 2008. Like Spiderman’s radio-active spider bite or The Flash’s lightning bolt, connecting with Nike injected Mkay’s already exceptional craft with super-capacities. Nike saw Mkay’s talent for re-aligning the cultural cityscape: connecting crowd to commodity and clothing to culture. ‘They wanted to open a space where influential people could come through and grab product’. This marked the beginning of Gallery on 4th in Melville, which Mkay describes as ‘an interaction billboard, where kids could come in and check out Tier Zero stuff from Nike — the latest, limited and most special product’.
Lit by Mkay’s power to bring worlds together, Gallery on 4th became a key meeting place for cultural producers. He and his crew hosted the regular Jumble Rumble, showcasing local urban brands, including Strussbop, Head Honcho, Butan and Thesis, to a soundtrack of Jo’burg DJs and live performances.
The Gallery also spurred a number of creative collectives. At the end of 2009, Mkay was asked to compile a team to ‘work the space’ — marking the beginning of Boyz’nBucks. ‘We did a lot of crazy shit with big artists at that time.’
With clothes as the catalyst, Boyz’nBucks detonated into audio-aesthetic debris. ‘The fashion thing was always the thread. That’s how we started’.
For Mkay, it’s been sneakers. They are the stuff of the streets, the courts, the hip-hop stages, and the backyard battles. More than that, takkies have been enigmatic double-symbols: of creativity and consumption, solidarity and status, nostalgia and aspiration. Mkay explains that ‘when the Nike shit popped’ was when he got serious about the sneaker game. Sure, he’d owned some premium kicks before, but with less sense of direction, without having plugged sneakers into his personal compass. ‘I was collecting then, but now it’s a thing now, because you go deeper into it. You understand the culture. You see cats who are 40 and doing it. Like damn, there’s longevity in this shit!’
Sneakers are art, ambition and identity, but they are also money. Growing up on hip-hop and b-ball, Mkay knew that his mom would be hurting when she copped him the latest J’s. He’s tried to use his platform to celebrate sneakers, while also pushing back on consumerism.
‘I always say, “don’t believe the hype”. I’m always into the shit that I’m into. Aint no blogger that will tell me what’s ill. No, I know what’s ill. I know what I like. If I don’t like them, I don’t like them. You can hype them as much as you want. And I always try to push that. Buy the shit that you like and buy below your belt, you know. Cos sometimes you’ve got a Gucci aspiration, but you don’t have a Gucci wallet. You don’t have Gucci money. You can still be stylish without rocking Gucci. How you gonna compete with an engineer when you in matric? You’re putting your mom under pressure.’
Mkay’s sneaker show,Hunting for Kicks, started four years ago, while he and a friend were literally hunting for kicks in Cape Town. There was a massive Concords release: ‘We managed to get like 20 pairs [for reselling]. It’s crazy, back then you could get away with a limited shoe, 20 pairs, and they would let you buy the whole stock. I wanted to record the joint. So I’ve got my Macbook on my lap [and] he’s driving. So we do this mini-clip talking about these Concords: when did they come out, why are they so important to the culture, all of that. [Later] I took a look at this clip and was like “this clip is dope”. I put it on Facebook and a lot of people reacted. And I was like “oh shit I can do a lot of this”’.
Since then, Hunting for Kicks has offered intimate insight into local sneaker culture and featured some of the biggest names in the game: Marc Mac, Jake Lipman, Haydan Manual, Scoop. The list also includes some of the flyest women on the scene: Urban Mosadi, Thithi Nteta, Empress Mrs Mome, Sumaya Peterson.
‘I always wanted to capture the whole sneaker culture in SA. I felt like it’s gonna be essential in the future looking back, you know. I felt there was a need for that. The stories sometimes get diluted when written by people who are not part of the culture. So I felt like I was the right person to actually tell that story’. And in telling the story, Mkay, as he so often does, has weaved disparate narratives together. The stories of each cultural practitioner are interlinked through sneakers. ‘It’s funny that learning about the shoe, I also get to learn about my friends.’ Testament to Mkay’s urge for creative collaboration, Hunting For Kicks currently have a mixtape out with Hype magazine. ‘I got like 12 rappers, rapping about sneakers,’ Mkay chimes.
For every superhero, there’s an urban stage and Johannesburg has been Mkay’s Kryptonopolis. Braamfontein pavements have served as the dominant backdrop for Hunting for Kicks. It was as though these streets resonated from Mkay’s chest. He was the man who wove worlds together and the city echoed his vision. ‘You and me, people like us, we come from small towns. My crew are from Durban, Eastern Cape, wherever. We’re coming to Jo’burg to come dig this gold. We’re coming for work. So our style becomes fused to the city that we live in, and its game over! You can’t copy that. It can’t be trendy. Me and my crew we’re so different because we come from different towns. We absorb the whole shit in different ways’.
The man lives borderless — straddling borders, and connecting across them, on our behalf. Because he knows that people are porous, Mkay has always been about the team — about bringing people together. He has stood for the idea that if young black creatives are to rise, they’ll do it together. Camo, then, becomes an outward symbol for rolling squad-deep and having one another’s backs.
‘We all Shakas in the game. Every man wants to have his own kingdom. But when it’s your project, I’m your boy. We’re going 100 percent for you. I look at it more like an Odd Future mission or a Wu Tang [mission]. Everybody’s got their own thing and we still come together’.
Undertaking to back local creativity, Mkay has helped get local urban labels into big stores like Shesha, and plugged creative collaborations between South African designers and US sneaker brands. He intends to start an agency, linking brands to street culture influencers — the act of connecting that has defined much of his prior work.
‘I’ll be sitting in a boardroom fighting for checks for the arts. Then I’ll be sitting with cats on the streets saying, “If you really wanna get this money, this is how it’s done”. It’s the best of both worlds. It keeps me on the edge with my own businesses. I know I can’t commercialise it that much, and I can’t neglect the business side of the whole thing. I gotta stay authentic, but I gotta make money while doing it’.
In between his packed-out bookings, Mkay works with Slim [Jerome Du Plooy] on a charity project: Sunday School Foundation in collaboration with Slim Cares. For the past three years, they have taken 150 kids from Orlando West on regular outings: to the zoo, for ice skating, for Christmas parties. And again, he’s threading worlds together. ‘Expose them to different stuff so that they can see the world in a different way. Three years later, their confidence is crazy. We do bursaries too. But our main mission is to instil confidence’.
Like the best of sneaker customizers, Mkay knows how to un-piece street culture, and then re-stitch its elements, curating undiscovered combinations. As he does this, he pulls people towards each other, links them to the cultural coalface, and generates spectacular collisions of people, product and place.
List the components of a flawless party night and it will probably read something like this: floor-shaking sound, a stellar line-up on the decks, the perfect venue, big sponsors. On to aesthetics and atmospherics and we might add: the crowd; the colours; the threads; the kicks; the lexicon of intoxications we inhale, imbibe and ingest; the moves we make with and towards others. What is very unlikely to make the list is all the talk that circulates around parties.
We often forget that a significant part of our nightclub cultures come from how we speak about them. We utter the hype into existence as talk takes on the role of festive foreplay. It’s our dancefloor dialect; our pre-game parlance; our jive jargon; our night-time nomenclature. All these speech acts are a significant site for young people’s creative production. Through talk/type/emoji we inject the words of our music into real times and places. We engage in local-global exchanges. We manufacture a mood — sculpting the ways that parties are lived, remembered and imagined. To testify to the terminology of the turn up, and document the dialect of our night times and spaces, we’ve put together this small catalogue of party phraseology.
Turn Up/ Turnt
First appears in Urban Dictionary in May 2013.
Tonight we’re gonna turn up; It’s time to turn up!(verb)
Meaning: It’s time to get loose, go wild, have fun, get hyped, party.
May also connote getting drunk/high.
Last night was turnt(adjective) To describe the state of a person/party as having been crazy/wild/next level.
That party was a turn up(noun) The ‘turn up’ in its noun form is yet to be acknowledged by Urban Dictionary, but is fully a thing (as evidenced in its twitter usage).
To turn up/ be ‘turnt’ operates implicitly as a prefix. It’s a call and a solicitation, gesturing towards multiple possibilities for what might need to ‘turn up’: Turn up the volume, turn up the heat, turn on, to be turned on. It implies the activation of a different register — that one enters a higher frequency. To ‘turn up’ suggests that we switch on, implying that we take on a particular mode of performance that is enhanced, flamboyant, confident.
But what is wonderfully complex about the term ‘turn up’ is that it simultaneously evokes performance and genuineness. Consider this: In its flattened, traditional usage, to ‘turn up’ simply means to arrive, to show face, usually in the most casual terms. Embedded, then, in the re-imagining of the word ‘turn up’ is a provocation: ‘Why turn up if you aren’t going to turn all the way up?’ ‘If you came, but didn’t TURN UP, were you ever really here?’ By inviting someone to ‘turn up’, we ask them to be fully present, to give their all, to show themselves as they truly are.
In a beautiful and powerful paragraph, the Crunk Feminist Collective captures the multiple connotations of ‘turn up’ as follows:
“Turn up is both a moment and a call, both a verb and a noun. It is both anticipatory and complete. It is thricely incantation, invitation, and inculcation. To Live. To Move. To Have –as in to possess– one’s being. The turn up is process, posture, and performance — as in when 2Chainz says “I walk in, then I turn up” or Soulja Boy says, “Hop up in the morning, turn my swag on.” Yet it holds within it the potential for authenticity beyond the merely performative. It points to an alternative register of expression, that turns up to be the most authentic register, because it is who we be, when we are being for ourselves and for us, and not for nobody else, especially them”.
With this in mind, Lil John and DJ Snake’s club banger ‘Turn Down For What?’ is charged with existential meaning. Everyday life is so often infused with an imperative to turn down, self-regulate and self-censor — particularly if we are young, or women or black (or a potent combination). As Crunk Feminists suggest, ‘Turn Down For What?’ asks ‘Why?’ ‘For whom?’ ‘To what effect?’ More so, it pummels this question through our chests on the dancefloors of our every-night lives, imploring us to explode our full expressive selves.
The relationship between ‘turning up’ and being 100 percent authentic may explain why the ‘100’ emoticon regularly accompanies our type-hype online.
[Speak]er Box
Lupe Fiasco — Turnt up (2009)
Soulja Boy– All The Way Turnt Up (2010)
Beyonce/ Dream/ 2Chainz — ‘Turnt’ (2013)
Lecrae — ‘I’m Turnt’ (2013)
Ciara — Super Turnt Up (2013)
DJ Snake & Lil John — ‘Turn Down for What?’ (2014)
Cassper Nyovest — Turn Up Gang (2015)
2: Lit
First appears in Urban Dictionary in May 2015.
This party is lit (adjective). Meaning: The party is live, amazing, hyped.
The lituation (noun) Equivalent of ‘the party’/ ‘the turn up’
Regularly accompanied or supplemented by the flame emoji.
‘Lit’ is a derivative of much of the fire terminology that surrounds parties. ‘That party was fire’; ‘The DJ brought flames last night’; ‘We gonna burn up the dancefloor’. To be ‘lit’ connotes being alight or ignited. It’s no wonder that fire imagery is so often projected into nightclub cultures, given its symbolic potency as a place for ritual gathering, trance, music and dance. We associate fire with passion, sexuality, action, and the untamed. Heat and flame ignite much of our party phraseology, with terms like ‘Siyasha’, ‘Siyashisa’, or ‘DJ brought the heat’ frequently captioning our online club catalogues.
[Speak]er Box
ASAP Rocky — Get Lit (2011)
Young Futura — We get Lit (2015)
Ludacris — Get Lit (2015)
BenchMarq ft Tweezy (2015)
K2 ‘Lit’ (2015). Includes the lyrics: ‘My Situation is a Lituation’
3: H.A.M.
First appears in Urban Dictionary in April 2008
Tonight we’re going h.a.m. (adverb, pronounced ham) Accronym for hard as a motherfucker.
Meaning: To go balistic, wild, or be super hyped.
[Speak]er Box
Gucci Mane- Go Ham on Em (2008)
Kanye and JZ – H.A.M (2011)
4: The Jump
Last night was a jump/ That place is The Jump(noun)
This party ‘bout to jump (verb)
Describing a party as ‘jumpin’ or ‘a jump’ dates back to the nineties, perhaps speaking to a burgeoning nineties nostalgia in contemporary youth culture. Contributing to the term’s current popularity among Jozi youth is the Yfm show #TheJump. ‘iJumpile Boy!’
[Speak]er Box
Kriss Kross — Jump (1992)
Destiny’s Child — Jumpin’ Jumpin’ (1999)
Busta Rhymes — Pass the Courvousier Part 2 (2001)
Anatii and Cassper Nyovest — Jump (2016)
5: Going in
First appears in Urban Dictionary in September 2008.
Tonight, we’re going in/ That party went in/ I went in on the dancefloor last night (verb).
Meaning: to enter an activity with maximum enthusiasm, hype or energy.
Related in the lexicon to phrases like #S[i]yabangena, loosely translated as ‘We’re going in’/ ‘It’s going down’/’I’m ready’.
6. Make a Movie
Appears in Urban Dictionary December 2011.
Tonight’s gonna be a movie (noun).
Tonight we ’bout to make a movie (verb)
Meaning: It’s going to be/we’re going to make it a big night. This usually involves drawing attention to oneself (whether positive or negative), particularly in a nightclub context.
Genealogy most likely related to phrases like ‘tonight is gonna be epic’. If tonight can be ‘epic’, then it can surely be on the scale of a cinema epic. ‘Sishaya ama movie!’
[Speak]er Box
Neyo — Makin’ a Movie (2010)
Riky Rick ft. Okmalumkoolkat — Amantombazane (2013), includes the lyric ‘Sishaya ama movie’
7: #Habashwe
Directly translates to ‘let them die’/ ‘let them be defeated’. Chimes with DJ SPEEDSTA’s repeated refrain: ‘You’re killin’ em son!’
Yfm listeners (2014) translate #Habashwe as ‘time to rock’, ‘let the good times roll’, ‘lets do this’, ‘let’s get it’.
Whereas much of our turn-up terminology is a derivative of American hip-hop, ‘habashwe’ is most often associated with the South African house and kwaito scenes. Radio shows undoubtedly deserve a shout-out for the role they have played in shaping our music/dance/party lexicon. S/O to Yfm, Metrofm and TransAfricaRadio in particular.
SA Hip Hop is experiencing an unprecedented moment of success, the genre has reached a new level of popularity in the country especially amongst young South Africans. Junior Mabunda aka Uncle Party Time is doing his bit to drive the sound through his SA-Hip-Hop-banger-filled dj sets at parties like ONYX, Every Other Thursday and Bohemian Grove.
We spoke to Uncle Party time about SA Hip Hop, the ONYX parties and the exclusive mix he cooked up for us.
Can you tell us a little bit about the mix you created for us?
The mix has a lot of hits that I feel people will appreciate, so It starts off with the King of SA Hip Hop (AKA) and ends off with the current prince, Emtee.
What type of music do you normally play?
I usually play a lot of trap music because I try to always play for the crowd and trap is one of the things people want to hear.
Why do you think SA hip hop has blown up in the last 2 years?
It’s doing so well because of all the producers that have sleepless night doing their thing in the studio, but then again all these rappers have been trying to chase the number one spot so that kind of made competition pretty tough as well.
You are a member of the crew that organised ONYX, can you tell us how ONYX was born and how you guys started throwing parties?
ONYX was originally founded by 3 people which is myself, RĀMS and Gondo (Alternative Visuals). One of our friends was selling weed at the time and we started thinking of ways to make our own money because we were tired of being dependent to our parents, we got a team of dope guys and we all worked hard to get everything right.
You have played for slightly older audiences at parties like USB Soundsysyem but also really young ones too at parties like ONYX. Are there any noticeable or stark differences between the two audiences? Whether its the music they like, or the way that they dress or the way they behave at parties?
Playing for a younger crowd like ONYX kids is way easier because I can play some stuff they’ve never heard and they would still rage, but with the older crowd it’s not that simple because I have to play the stuff they want to hear, stuff they listen to on radio or see on music channels to keep them with me.
You’ve also started producing now, do you have any plans to release tracks this year?
I’m working on a young EP that I want to drop when I feel like I’m ready to handle the pressure. lol
I know dj ing isnt your only expression, what else do you do?
The paint on the door was quite chipped, but the black letters remained clear: “Nostalgia is one helluva drug” it said like an answer to a question.
And now, here in South Africa – specifically Johannesburg – we get through the day with our trusty dose of the good stuff.
Defined as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” In the spirit of the times, nostalgia’s favourite hashtag is #ThrowbackThursday. In our local context, the yen spins an orbit around the time loosely defined as post-94.
Most notably and obviously, the post-94 period represents South Africa’s technicolour transition from apartheid to democracy. The birth of democracy was potent and many nascent paths were forged spurred by the energy of the anomalous rainbow nation. For one, black people were free to express themselves without the fear of oppression. The new nation not only provided an opportunity for expression but a platform too. The national broadcaster, the SABC was restructured with the intended consequence being content that was reflective of, and responsive to, all of the people of the new South Africa. For the first time, the nation’s storytelling instrument reflected the full spectrum of the nation.
At the time, nostalgia was simply illogical, and the future although splashed in rainbow hues was at least historically, unchartered territory. The present was the only option and the sentiment during that period was reflective.
In turn, young South African creatives took advantage of the opportunity for expression and their pent-up creative energy birthed unmatched work that would later provide the fuel for current day nostalgia. The squiggly bright outline of “Hanging with Mr Cooper” said a lot about the 90s: there was a bright hue to everything.
The door found on Albertina Sisulu Road, close-to but not-quite Braamfontein was found next to a long abandoned general dealer decorated with heavy locks that moaned when the wind forced its way through the City of Gold.
For examples of the current manifestations of millennial nostalgia, you don’t have to look too far, only a bit more carefully.
Watch “Don’t Panic” by DJ Speedsta and Moozlie and witness the spirited reincarnation of Lebo Mathosa and Brenda Fassie embodied by Moozlie and DJ Doo Wap juxtapose with FaceTime conversations, Spice Girls’ chokers and Rihanna-inspired blue lippy.
The work of The Sartists – a Joburg-based creative collective – sings of the past in a manner that is evocative, even if misunderstood. Telling the Noted Man website of their infamous arrival at the 2014 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (MBFW) dressed in 1990s Bafana Bafana and Kaiser Chiefs soccer jerseys, bucket hats and baggy carpenter pants. The duo was met with suspicion by security guards and guests, despite their carefully considered intention to celebrate the golden victories of the two teams, along with the matchless style of their supporters. Sports in apartheid South Africa were – much like everything else – largely the reserve of white people, and so, the significance of supporting the successes of the majority-black football teams goes beyond sport. The Sartists note that at the same event, they were offered an undisclosed sum for the Chiefs jersey by Kaizer Motaung Jnr himself, thrifting is imbued with new meaning when seen as a way to reimagine and reclaim the past.
Okmalumkoolkat is another artist who blurs the divide between “what will be” and “what has been” simultaneously adopting the monikers “future mfana” and the “Zulu Michael Jackson”. Drawing cultural currency from 90s kwaito and hip hop, Okmalumkoolkat isn’t lying when he spits: “Back to the future and I’m chilling in the front seat” in his smash track, “Holy Oxygen”.
Collectively, the aesthetic and work of the above mentioned is an act of time travel: to take back what was promised. Part-nostalgic, part-futuristic. Part-passive, part-active. Consumers of the global village rooted in South Africa, the purveyors of millennial nostalgia are powerful reminders that the past echoes until it is heard.
Walking past the door, my friend noted that she had seen that very same quote on a sticker “somewhere in Berlin, I think” while she was waiting for the bus.
However, the sentiment of nostalgia is not isolated to South Africa – globally, it is most noticeable in the at-the-point-of-cliché hipster movement. Think flannels, artisan products, spectacles and a wartime haircut and on the surface you have the checklist for the “perfect hipster”, but upon further inspection – beyond the pretension – there is a real desire to return to what was, or more accurately what movies starring James Dean and the like, say “what was”.
With regard to South Africa, the nostalgia is for a lived, real experience often witnessed with the optimistic glow of childhood innocence. Globally, however, the hipster movement represents nostalgia for an idea, and perhaps that’s why it is so seductive: ideas can be perfect, memory by nature cannot.
Upon closer inspection, next to the door in small neat type, someone had written: “nostalgia kills happiness”.
FutureMfana is headed Down Under! The International Pantsula is on a roll, after a December tour of Europe, uMalume has just announced a quintuplet tour of Australia. The tour kicks of on January 15th and closes on January 24th at the Sydney Music Festival, where he will perform alongside another super talented South African; Black Coffee. OKMKK is joined on road by his frequent collaboraters, Cid Rim and the Clonius, who accompanied him on his Euro Tour as well. Listen to OKMKK’s most recent mixtape, 100kmacassette below.
The earliest existing use of the hashtag UMSWENKO can be found on a May. 31, 2012 photo posted by @1phiko (Phiko Mditshwa) a member of and digital co-ordinator for the rap crew Boyzn Bucks. The image posted was a screenshot of Siyabonga Ngwekazi aka “Scoop Makhathini” performing in Khaya “Bhubesii” Sibiya’s music video for the track “Members Only” (Scoop and Bhubesii also happen to be members of Boyzn Bucks). Nine hundred and two days later, the hashtag has been used over 8000 times, in what seems to be the embrace of a post-subcultural approach to the creation of youth cultural identity in South Africa’s emerging black middle-class.
Swank is an English word, which means to “display one’s wealth, knowledge or achievements in a way that is intended to impress others” (The Oxford Dictionary, 2014). It is through the appropriation of this word into the Zulu vernacular that “swenka” and #UMSWENKO have their roots.
In the Zulu language “uswenka” is someone who is well dressed, that is the premise on, which “swenking” (the subculture) was later formed. Mr Ngubane, chairman of Iphimbo Scathamiya and Swenka Music Organisation believes that “swenka’s” were around in Johannesburg, as early as the 1920’s. He says that “swenking” had a code, “there was a way of behaving and a way of dressing”.
The latest incarnation of the English word swank, is the hashtag UMSWENKO, which shows, through its remix of the word swenka, consideration of the words historical and cultural significance. At the same time though, by remixing the word swenka it signals an attempt to assign additional meaning to it. Adding “um” as a prefix to the word swenka, changes it grammatically. It changes from verb to noun and in doing so creates a word that denotes a much broader youth cultural-identity. That identity, in its outlook is unified only by its post-modern attitude, which legitimises affiliation with many “different” identities. Everything from footwear, to clothes, rings, bags, watches, hair, the body, “combos”, dance, music, alcohol, cars, electronics, events and even work, have been hash tagged UMSWENKO. And there are no rules governing how they should be appropriated or consumed. Nor is the consumption of commodities “practiced as a strategy of resistance” as was common in subcultural movements. UMSWENKO can be understood better through post-subcultural theory, which envisages “consumption as creative process of youth style distinction” (Bennett 1999). Thats not to say though that there isn’t a predominant style underpinning the hashtag. Currently streetwear, in particular the sneaker and the bucket hat, are the most significant symbols of the trend.
Solo artist and Boyzn Bucks crew member Smiso Zwane aka Okmalumkoolkat is the embodiment of the trend. His image, impersonations of his image, as illustrations and renders populate the feed, together with images of Rikhado Makhado aka Riky Rick, another member of the Boyzn Bucks crew. If Zwane was instrumental in coining and continuing to reimagine what UMSWENKO means then Makhodo, with his mass-appeal is certainly the Reason the trend has gone viral. The release of Dj Speedsta’s track Hangout, which features a verse where Riky Rick riffs on the hook “Umswenko! rip it! Umswenko!” of upcoming Boyzn Bucks single “Umswenkofontein” coincides with the period the hashtag really began taking off.
History will credit Okmalumkoolkat for UMSWENKO as he first embedded it into popular culture in mid-2010 (before Instagram was even a thing) when he recited the lines “umswenko is a must, sidume njengesinkwa” on the LV track “Boomslang”, which was released through London based label Hyperdub. The “power of consumer images, objects and texts”, which Roberts (2007) feels “evoke heightened levels of reflexivity among youth” cannot be discounted though, as they provide valuable insight into the complex “cultural terrain” within, which the trend emerged. (Bennett, 2011).
The concept of terrain now includes the virtual realm as well, which allows identity to be constructed through posting as opposed to purchasing. UMSWENKO has also been hash tagged on other social networking and blogging platforms signalling perhaps, the beginning of a new chapter in South African youth movements. It is however Boyzn Bucks’ embrace of “individual lifestyle and consumption choices” (Shildrick, T. A. and MacDonald, R. 2006) within the framework of a collective that will define post-subcultural movements in South Africa. Okmalumkoolkats juxtapositional expressions “uptownskhothane” or “internationalpantsula” (both are also hashtags) perfectly sum up the emerging sentiment. The youth does not need to identify as local or as international, they can be both at the same time. They can be whoever they want to be no boundaries…VOETSEK!
FutureMfana is headed Down Under! The International Pantsula is on a roll, after a December tour of Europe, uMalume has just announced a quintuplet tour of Australia. The tour kicks of on January 15th and closes on January 24th at the Sydney Music Festival, where he will perform alongside another super talented South African; Black Coffee. OKMKK is joined on road by his frequent collaboraters, Cid Rim and the Clonius, who accompanied him on his Euro Tour as well. Listen to OKMKK’s most recent mixtape, 100kmacassette below.