Bubblegum Club

Tag: rap

  • Lady Leshurr is Coming for the Throne

    You know how Kanye has said that he knew when he wrote the line “light-skinned friend look like Michael Jackson” on “Slow Jamz” that he was going to be a big star? When I heard “I’ve got a dark skin friend that looks like Rachel Dolezal, And I’ve got a light skin friend that looks like Rachel Dolezal,” on Queen’s Speech 4, I knew the same would be true of Lady Leshurr.

    The 28-year-old British rapper has risen/is rising (depending on if you’ve heard of her, I guess) through her punchy series of 6 freestyles titled The Queen’s Speech, each of which is accompanied by a single shot music video. The speeches are full of put-downs, pop-culture references, hygiene tips, British slang and visual wordplay that deftly straddles the line of fresh and cheesy. If you’ve been out on the jol and you’ve heard hooks like “That’s nasty, change your panties” or the succinct “Brush your teeth” in a thick Birmingham accent, that was Lady Leshurr. There’s a playful meanness to Lady Leshurr’s raps that would qualify her for the dais of any roast or as a guest on the now defunct Nevermind The Buzzcocks.

    The rapper has been putting out mixtapes and EPs as Lady Leshurr officially since 2009 but apparently dropped her first tape when she was just 14. After 14 years of working on her craft, Lady Leshurr is finally working on her first album with a truly impressive team of producers. We’re talking about the likes of Deputy (Bitch Better Have My Money), Bangladesh (A Milli, Video Phone) and Timbaland (everything in the 2000s), so if you hadn’t heard of the queen before today, it’s only a matter of time before you hear her everywhere. When exactly? I’m not sure. Her social media says she has a new single called “Juice” coming out “soon”, as well an EP called “Mode”, also coming out “soon”. So, it shouldn’t be too long after that she drops her debut full length. Until then though, you have 9 mixtapes and 4 EPs to get you up-to-date with the queen of the British rap scene. Trust me, this is one of those times you’re going to want to do your homework.

     

  • Gung-ho Stoicism: The Aesthetics of music, art, fashion, tennis and war with Shamon Cassette

    Shamon Cassette , formerly known as Cerebral Vortex has been one of my favourite rappers ever since I discovered the internet and realized that the only interesting rappers were the ones who dint mind having HTML awe struck pen pals from third world continents.  He’s a beacon of knowledge for all types of cool shit because he’s done it all. From driving Tanks during the Iraq War as a US marine to making songs with the likes of Spoek Mathambo, Youngsta and Thirstin Howl, he’s done it all.

     

    Whats the whole idea behind Black Agassi?

    Black Agassi is homage to one of the gods of style and the whole idea came about as my interest in playing tennis became a pretty serious thing alongside my passion for wearing wigs and toting designer tennis racket covers through the streets of Manhattan. I’ve always been a huge fan of all the Nike court challenge pieces and the lava splatters. I wanted to create a platform to tell his story that I’ve always been so intrigued by growing up. To me Agassi was totally punk in the 90’s so that’s where the cover art reference is drawn from.

     

    What influenced the sound of this project? I haven’t heard a “straight” Hip-Hop record from you in a while, what brought about the change from the faster club tunes you do so well?

    The faster club tunes these days I’m about are hip-house and acid house records that I make with Bon Voyage. The traditional sounds of Hip-Hop were always my true core. Then I fell in love with the Kwaito sound which then sparked my desire to adjust my focus toward hip-house but Black Agassi was something I was doing in between for therapy and fitness .When we birthed Vertual Vertigo we were collecting and hunting for vintage, analog gear and playing around with old vocal techniques to achieve the sounds and styles of our favourite shit from the boom bap era.

     

    That said who is Japandrew? (Producer of Black Agassi)

    Japandrew is my brother from another mother. We met as my former crew, Vertual Vertigo relocated to America and made our home base Chicago. He had just gotten out of prison and our DJ at the time stayed back in Europe. He was a perfect fit for us and it started off as him hanging out with us a lot and then always having a fresh beat tape for the car didn’t hurt. It didn’t take long at all before he became a permanent member of the team. After Vertual Vertigo went on hiatus, we continued to work together up to now

     

    So when did your obsession with tennis come about?

    Honestly, no lie…So when I was studying fashion at F.I.T. I needed an elective to get my degree and all the classes were like yoga, spinning, chess and then I seen kung fu on the list.  My kung fu instructor was one of those 80’s furry Jerry Garcia looking gung-ho dudes and wouldn’t pass you unless you got all the forms and styles and routines properly. He was a hater and failed me because I thought certain moves worked better in different forms. At least he gave me an “I” for incomplete on the course. The following semester I still needed the credits so I took the intro to tennis instead and I loved that shit and advanced through tennis. Then I started getting invites by the alumni to play doubles at the Manhattan tennis club and from there it just really took off for me.

     

    Not too many people know that you were a U.S Marine and even spent some time in Iraq, a subject you touch on in “point served” what led you into the Army and has it influenced your music in anyway?

    Suicidal thoughts led me to joining the military. I was going through shit just like any 19 year old would do and after some wild suicide fails earlier on in life and I thought it would be waaay cooler to die for something than to just die for nothing… and guns and tanks and travelling kind of interested me a lot at the time and I needed to do something. It’s definitely influenced my music in many ways because my experiences there have become bits to the pieces that collectively make Shamon Cassette.

     

    You’re also a stylist by profession. What’s your earliest memory of “fashion” and what keeps you in the fashion game?

       My earliest memories of fashion were from my mother. She was a very beautiful stylish lady. She used to be a part of a car club that all drove souped up Datsuns and it was like a style and attitude vibe so I was seeing early on how the two played hand in hand (style/attitude).

    What keeps me in the game is research. I spend a great amount of my time doing research on just about any and everything. I always tend to find inspiration for fashion in the oddest forms. Most of the time it’s not even something fashion related that I become inspired and try to translate into fashion.

     

    You’ve been doing music for ages and you have a bag of really good releases underneath your belt, I personally feel you’re underrated? Do you feel underrated? Or is this a shitty question?

    Thanks for saying that and no, it’s not a shitty question at all. I actually get asked that question quite a bit. I don’t ever feel underrated.  If anything I’d say “undiscovered”. Just seeing how some of the greater artists in history that held the longest reigns in longevity were also dubbed underrated before they popped off. I feel like the ratings come from the fans that actually understand you and relate to you and appreciate you for being the voice of the like minded people that don’t have a voice or a platform. So those numbers mean nothing to me, it’s the quality of the fan base and their ratings are the ones that matter to me.

     

    So how did the Thirstin Howl The 3rd collaboration come about? Apart from the both of you having beards and being from Brooklyn? Were you also shop lifting Ralph Lauren Clothes for shits and giggles?

    My history with the Lo-Life’s and Brooklyn shit go way back. One of my brothers is actually a Lo-Life Buddy Leezle. Vertual Vertigo collectively were massive Thirstin Howl fans so as we were midway through making Black Agassi we came up with the hair brain idea of “what If we had Thirstin on a track?”. So we got his number from a mutual friend and buzzed him and sent it to Thirstin and 3 days later we opened up an email that said “yeahyeahyeah”. Dreams come true. You never know what could have happened if you never asked.

     

    But what’s your favourite collaboration you’ve done so far?

    My favourite collaboration so far has had to have been the remake of Fela Kuti’s “zombiez” for the last Red Hot+ Fela compilation with my favourite visionary in the world Spoek Mathambo. It was crazy because Seun Kuti actually invited us on to remake the song.

     

    You’re basically an honorary South African as far as everyone here is concerned. What drew you to this country?

    That’s an absolute honour. I actually do feel like an honorary South African. Hold up…. allow me to give the biggest shouts to all my South African homies and Jozi, Soweto, Cape Town Durban and everywhere in between. I’ve felt a connection to South Africa ever since the first time I watched Coming to America. I was so intrigued by Eddie Murphy’s character being a prince from Africa made me fantasize about his life. Then one day, you and Spoek started buzzing early on the internet chat rooms and MySpace and shit. You guys were straight serving me up South Africa flavour since way back then via the internet. After the Sub-Pop thing kicked off for Spoek and we got sent out to shoot the “let them talk” video in Durban and that was actually my first trip to South Africa and that’s when my obsession with South Africa started.

     

    How important are personal aesthetics when it comes to creating art/music?

    Personal aesthetics are actually the most important part of art and music. If the personal aesthetic isn’t powerful the piece lacks character.

    Download Black Agassi

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  • Maya the Poet becomes Sho Madjozi!: Tsonga rap and the preservation of home

    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.

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    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.

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  • 9 Ether Movement – The Extra-terrestrial Music

    9 Ether Movement are a young creative collective who are using music, fresh clothes, art  and a lot of humour to get their name out to the world. Coming out of Nyanga, Gugulethu and Observatory, the crew has a ever shifting roster of members who adopt a dizzying array of pseudonyms- MC PocketKniife, Skhotane From Mars, Some Nasty Shit .  They made their first foray into cultural consciousness with 2014’s Wawuphi, a kwaito inspired posse cut which highlighted their lyrical dexterity.

    Since then the Movement’s Soundcloud account has been filled with group and solo tracks. On their Facebook page they list rap crews like Black Hippy, Odd Future and Wu Tang Clan as being their key influences. (Although they also make the absurd claim that Justin Bieber is their biggest stylistic ancestor… He’s really not).  The latter are the best point of comparison. Along with the love of bizarre acronyms,  9:EM share Wu Tang’s love of dense wordplay and esoteric references.  The BlackxIntellegence EP is filled with allusions to conspiracy theories, UFO’s and spiritual concepts. Complex lyrics float over smoky beats, reminiscent of the psychedelic hip hop currently pouring out of California. In fact, they even describe Cape Town as ‘the place where real psychedelic and extra-terrestrial music is at’. Their space fantasies are kept grounded in earthy humour, such as a hashtag used on their Facebook page- #WillRap4MoneyIAmVeryVeryVeryGood.

    Having spread their message through Cape Town, 9:EM are now looking to export. They recently announced  their ‘FIRST FUCKING PARTY IN JHB’ Held at Khona Daa Café on the 29th of April RealOnezzzAndFriendzzz is set to ‘feature live debuts of songs from the ‘Bree St EP’ by GREEKGOD and NINETY4. Aside from the debut of the Bree St EP, Yung Makhap$ will be accompanying them onstage to perform some 9 Ether and Ostrich Camp cuts, and we’ll also have guest performances from our good friendzzz Jay Beatz and Jusst Peace to round out the performances of the night. silkylavender also makes his DJing debut on the night. So all the familia in Joburg, please do come through !!!!’.

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  • Watch: TSA new video, ‘Tried to Tell Em’’

    The Johannesburg rapper is on the rise with the release of ‘Tried to tell em’, the debut from his Nobody Else mixtape.  The rapper and his brother, Bambaatha Jones, form the Nobody Else creative agency and collective. The style and sound in the video reflect TSA’s urban influences peppered with the perenial concerns of millenials; sneakers and self starting. The video features cameos from Bambaatha Jones and Alexias Roussos along with scenery from the skyline of Jozi; it’s a night of of pink lights and city life,  enjoy it below.

    The song is available for download here.

  • Witness the Funk – Trapping the Durban Sound

    In 2014, Durban group Witness the Funk made their first impact on South African consciousness with their hit ‘Nomusa’.  The song highlighted smooth multilingual flows over an insidiously catchy beat. It was accompanied by a stylish music video which showed the glamorous side of Durban with parties in tropical mansions and beaches, and long drives down the promenade.  WTF have steadily followed up with more group tracks, like the woozy ‘Dreams’ and collaborations such as their striking features on Gigi Lamayne’s ‘Moja’.

    The group started in 2010, originally experimenting with an alternative hip-hop sound. But they quickly began to play around with both their musical style and image, solidifying into the current line-up of Efelow, Aux Cable and Moshine Magnif. Throughout they aimed to combine international influences with the sound and vernacular of their home city.  The result has been their self-described  ‘ Gqom-Trap’ sound.  The gqom part refers both to the dark, hypnotic electronic style coming from Durban, and an overall aesthetic that is wild and exuberant. The trap points  to the influence of US rap, with the group being inspired by the flow of artists like Migos, but reinterpreted in Zulu and focused on South African life.  But their syncretic approach has not been without some (minor) controversy.  In 2015, a later deleted tweet from Atlanta rap group Rae Sremmurd dissed them as plagiarists  ‘we was watching on MTV Base. We see FUCK BOYS, WTF- Nomusa Guys Wanna be Us WTF Thou??’.  The fact that this tweet was later deleted suggests that these allegations were more to do with superficial similarities in clothing and style than actual artistic appropriation.  In fact, if Rae Sremmurd had watched more MTV Base they would have probably come across far more serious offenders. Unlike WTF, who combine international influences with Zulu lyrics and local sounds, far too many hip hop artists in SA lazily plunder their accents and references from the US. Rather than mimicking anyone, gqom trap adapts to create a new Durban style.  To fully appreciate these innovations requires a detour into the meaning of both ‘gqom’ and ‘trap’.

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    Musically gqom takes kwaito and house into a dark, menacing direction characterised by ominous drums and threatening synthesiser lines.  The style was pioneered by bedroom producers in the townships and shantytowns of Durban, and tested out at underground club nights. A brilliant 2014 article by Kwanele Sobiso suggested that the rawness and minimalism of gqom is a reflection of the stressful urban reality that surrounds it producers- ‘Whereas the best of Durban kwaito production is sleek, with lyrics suggesting upwardly mobility, gqom is loopy, lo-fi and off-beat, sounding exactly like the pervasive nihilism it sometimes documents’.  The cinematic heaviness is displayed on compilations like the excellent The Sound of Durban Vol. 1, and while the style is still fairly underground in South Africa its innovative rawness is commanding attention overseas.  Gqom nights have popped up in the UK and Europe, and it has received coverage from tastemaker US websites like Pitchfork. The appeal of gqom is conveyed in an often sited quote by UK producer Kode9- ‘like being suspended over the gravitational field of a black hole, and lovin’ it’. Gqom is powerful because while it is totally rooted in contemporary Durban, its dystopian tone has universal relevance. The positive reception in the UK is especially telling, as gqom often sounds like the South African equivalent of the continuum of dark, urban based British electronic music, a line which stretches from Joy Division to Burial. In fact, a Paul Morley quote about how Joy Division musically interpreted bleak 1970s Manchester could equally be applied to gqom’s mapping of the urban landscapes of KZN- ‘It was almost like a science-fiction interpretation of Manchester.  You could recognize the landscape and the mindscape and the soundscape as being Manchester.  It was extraordinary that they managed to make Manchester international, if you like—make Manchester cosmic’.

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    Similarly, the trap sound emerges from a specific sense of place.  Before it was a genre, trap was a slang term from the Southern US which referred both to the specific location of the ‘trap house’ where drugs were sold from and to an overall condition of being trapped in crime, violence and grinding urban poverty. It became a distinctive musical style in the early 2000’s, when artists like T.I, Young Jeezy and Gucci Mane combined cinematic tales of drug dealing with a bass driven sound. As T.I put it in 2003 ‘I’d probably still be trapping if I wasn’t rapping right now’. Trap rap became commercially successful while maintaining a dark sound and bleak lyrical perspective, but gradually the term began to mutate.  EDM artists played a form of trip which kept the sonic architecture but lost the lyrical themes, and it even turned up in songs by pop artists like Lady GaGa and Katy Perry. In rap itself, trap has become more hedonistic and expansive, seen in the ebullient hits of Fetty Wap, the outrageous psychedelia of Young Thugs and Future’s tormented narco-ballads.

    WTF are drawing on these sources to create an effective hybrid style.  Their music takes a less brutal direction than straight gqom, and adds more focus on individual personality and visual images to what has been a scene primarily represented by faceless producers. Simultaneously, they repurpose American influences for their own purposes.  Like Jamaican dancehall and UK grime, rap is crossed with a regional style. The result, like on the their triumphant ‘ Shonaphansi ’ collaboration with DJ Wobbly is music with both mass appeal and a razor sharp experimental edge.

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