Bubblegum Club

Tag: sa hip hop

  • DJ Capital (Siyabonga Sibeko) and the Dancefloor Dialectic

    DJ’s write our nocturnal soundtracks. Spinning the energy in the room, they ease their audience in; build them up; hold them in suspense. They have us clawing for the next big drop, then reeling from the release. This week, I met with Siyabonga Sibeko (DJ Capital) to talk about the art of the DJ. In the nightclub, there is a dialectic: audience and DJ in communion and conversation. The DJ attunes themselves to the energy of the audience, reading their desire or distaste through their bodily responses, their calls, the extent of draw to the dancefloor. “You can’t really plan a set because you never know what kind of crowd you’re gonna get”, Capital says. “You’ll have 5 big songs that you will play. But for everything else, it’s a ‘feeling’ thing. When I play a song you haven’t heard before, you are going to stand and look at me. You have to find a way to ease them into it”. The task of reading the crowd demands high-level intuition and improvisation. “If the time now is 1.27am”, Capital says, “[Often], I don’t know what I’m playing at 1.30am”. And the audience, too, has ways of asking, thanking, sharing and validating their DJ.

    For Capital, music festivals are the epitome of the DJ experience. “You’re this one human being, controlling five to ten thousand people. They’re all looking at you. It’s a crazy feeling.” The tacit conversation between DJ and audience harkens back to an ancient ‘call and response’ tradition: a leader calls out, signaling the song to be sung, and the crowd echoes their response. A DJ spins a track and watches the reverberations through the crows. As with our ancestral forebears, Capital describes this sonic communication as eliciting a type of trans, an out-of-body experience, in which he is as intoxicated by the audience as they are by him. Recalling a recent festival in which he threw his chain into the crowd, Capital says, “Afterwards, I remember asking out loud: ‘what did I just do?’”

    Some clubs, Capital says, have lost this energy. “Parties in the North are not really about fun anymore. It’s about how can I stunt on you – more bottles, more ‘chicks’. People get so caught up in that competition that they forget we actually out here to have fun.”  Capital prefers the small towns: the audiences who come with the sole purpose of hearing the music, entangling themselves in musical ties with the DJ and others on the dancefloor.

    The dialectic between DJ and crowd has been the driving force of Capital’s art. He first tried his hand at DJ’ing — not in a basement studio, or on a friend’s PC, or in his bedroom — but in the club. As a student at Wits, Capital began throwing parties at what was then Keys club: already an architect of ‘the good night out’. One night, when a headline DJ failed to pitch, Capital found himself behind the booth.  “I literally ran to my car, where I always had the latest music. Got all my CDs and I just started playing. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just putting a CD in and pressing play. No sense of mixing whatsoever. It was terrible. But luckily I was playing all the right songs. After that I was like, ‘Yo I can actually do this if I actually learn what I’m meant to do’”.  From there, Capital was self-taught and dedicated, dropping out of his final year at Wits. “I was so scared to tell my parents I actually wrote them a letter”. 

    Today, Capital is a three time SA Hip Hop Award nominee and has opened for major international acts: Usher, Wiz Khalifa, Lil John, DJ Drama, Deadmau5 and more. In July 2015, he embarked on a European tour, headlining shows in London and Moscow. He is host of the Capital Rap Up on Touch Central, and presenter of ETV’s Club 808. It’s part of his acknowledgement that a DJ is not simply a music vessel, but a personality, such that music somehow tastes different depending on who’s delivering it. Capital has produced several tracks with some of the country’s best Hip-Hop acts, including Hell of a Life (ft. Reason and AB Crazy), What You Like (ft. Kwesta x Kyle Deutsch) and All to You (ft. Dreamteam). “Hip hop has influenced so much of my life – the way people talk, the way people dress, even hip-hop sports like basketball”, he says.

    Few people know just how much DJs, and club culture, have had to do not only with the success of South African Hip Hop, but also its sound. “About 5 years ago, all the [Hip-Hop] DJs and all the artists met at the Radisson in Sandton. We were literally having this huge argument. Rappers were like, ‘Why don’t you DJ’s play our stuff?’ And we were like, ‘Why don’t you give us stuff we can play at the clubs?’ Back and forth, DJ’s and artists. At the end of the night we were like, ‘There’s obviously a problem here. Let’s work together. And that’s when DJs started putting out songs with artists. And that’s literally how South African Hip Hop changed”. It’s not simply that many clubs now sound like hip-hop, hip-hop has increasingly been made to sound like the club.

    Despite his own production success, it’s the energy of a live audience that is still primary for Capital. He tells me he once done six gigs in a single night, starting in the late afternoon. “In December, I did three provinces in one day”.  There’s a reason Capital defies time and space to play for a crowd.

    As author Bill Brewster said, it’s “because DJ’ing is not about choosing a few tunes. It’s about generating shared moods; it’s about understanding the feelings of a group of people and directing them to a better place. In the hands of a master, records create rituals of spiritual communion that can be the most powerful events in people’s lives”.

  • ByLwansta creates rhythmic waves and lyrical poise

    The Karolinska Institute in Sweden has recently published a study that indicates musical talent may have a lot to do with genetics. Researchers compared pairs of identical twins, and found that no matter how much one twin had practiced up until that point in their life, the other twin, who had practiced much less, would still have an equal level of musical talent. ByLwansta, on the other hand, did not inherit music genetically; he has had to work at it. The Kokstad-born MC, who is the younger brother of singer/songwriter Kimosabe, has been writing rhymes since he was a kid. “My brother had a little studio and a lot of young artists would come through and have sessions and I would just be in the corner listening and writing to their songs. Eventually I got the courage and asked my bother to write a song for me and my brother said no. So I just had to start writing for myself.”

    ByLwansta’s efforts last year culminated in the release of the well-received EP titled You’re Absolutely Right. The narrative project is based on the struggle and thoughts of an artist on the cusp of stardom. ByLwansta illuminates the struggles of the come-up in this cinematic offering. He does not glorify it’s difficulties but instead pulls it into focus for the listener. “I am not unsigned,” says ByLwansta, “I am an independent artist and people need to understand that and what comes with it. The project was in the works for around six months and I was planning it. Mostly I wanted it to be clear and articulate where I am as an artist but also just where I am emotionally as a human being.”.

    ByLwansta explained that You’re Absolutely Right also comes from being an artist working in the often contradictory world of Durban hip hop. In the city the scene is segregated. Street cats still battle at the bus terminals and host packed shows in the townships, whilst exclusive MCs perform at venues and night markets in the city. There is no in between. “When I came to Durban I was very much aware of the Durban hip-hop scene. But I knew I did not want to expose myself to it immediately because some people might be territorial,” he says. “I feel like in the Durban hip hop scene, there are a lot of egos that always seem to clash. It’s cool when it’s just music but sometimes it’s just weird.”.

    It could be argued that ByLwansta is guilty of over-rapping in certain tracks. However, these rough edges are smoothed over by his cadence. As he would tell you, it’s all about learning. In a world where hip-hop is being built entirely on flows, ByLwansta’s diction is a breath of fresh air. Surprising us with rhymes in unexpected places, his treatment of lyrics is what sets him apart from his peers. “My music is emo and it makes the writing process really different, it’s not like I can sit and channel an emotion. I’d love to make happy songs but for me music is not the first thing I wanna do when I’m happy,” he says.

    You’re Absolutely Right occupies two worlds. Lyrically it is clearly the product of an MC who is part of a generation that grew up on the internet, but sonically it is not disconnected from late ’90s boom bap and early 2000s emo rap.

    ByLwansta is decisively hip-hop in that he embraces the DIY aesthetics of the genre’s roots. He designs his own artwork, directs his videos and is involved in every step of his music-making process including how the work rolls out. This is partly out of necessity because as an independent artist he doesn’t have many options. It’s also because he is a perfectionist trying to articulate his vision on his own terms. “I like to do a lot of things myself,” he says. “It’s not a case of me having pride and wanting to do it all but it’s more like, nobody can do my vision the way I want it to be done. So let me just do it cause I also want to avoid working on other people’s time

     

     

     

  • Bhubesii- Kobyashi EP

    This release is a psychedelic fun ride through the urban centre of South Africa, from the streets of Soweto to the enclave of Maboneng. Bhubesii raps from the perspective of his Kobayashi alter ego, a stylish trickster on a mission for a good time. The music aims to reinterpret classic kwaito for 2016, with Bhubesii saying that ‘it has a very township wave feel about it. Kobayashi is a new wave tariyana.’ The boisterous title track looks back to the infectious work of Arthur, Mandoza and M’du. But Bhubesii is clearly working in his own lane. For a start, he is a lot more lyrically focused than his minimalist progenitors.  He adopts an impressive amount of languages and idioms, dropping witty punchlines and outrageous boasts.

    The eager embrace of local influences and style set him apart from an often derivative SA hip hop scene. It’s no secret that even talented artists may often expend energy trying to keep up with what’s happening in the US. In the most egregious cases, people will adopt entire fake accents, which isn’t fooling anyone. More subtly, there is pressure to emulate production styles and sonic tricks. Constantly chasing the next big thing is a fool’s errand though, as it always leaves musicians on the back foot.

    So Bhubesii uses the recent South African past to find his own voice.  Tracks like ‘Chankura’ and ‘Zulu Jedi’ mutate and stretch in constant motion. It conveys the sense of a weekend with endless possibilities, spanning the hot spots and dank dives of Gauteng.  Bhubesii also put extra attention into curating his image, with a laudable eye for detail. The cover for the single version of ‘Kobayashi’, has him as a futuristic seer, bringing life to a blighted wasteland. For this EP he has  gone for a witty piece of cover art. In place of the tough guy mask which rappers have adopted in the past, his face is covered by an explosion of flowers. It’s a nicely unexpected touch, which expresses the exuberance of his music.

  • Tumi Masoko and the Offshoots of Flourishing Local Hip-Hop

    Since the late 2000’s, South African hip-hop has seen a meteoric rise. The country’s events calendar is increasingly populated with large-scale hip-hop events; relationships with big brands have strengthened, allowing artists to earn additional income through endorsement deals; 2012 saw the launch of the South African Hip Hop Awards; and mainstream radio has finally bought into a culture that, for decades, remained on the side-lines. After some 25 years, local hip-hop has truly arrived. For the first time, promoters and artists feel as though they are able to survive and thrive off hip-hop. Johannesburg’s nightlife, in particular, has made that possible.

    The pre-eminence of local hip-hop has infiltrated street fashion; re-oriented nightclub set lists; and contributed to the rise of new artists and party spaces. Itumeleng Masoko, a young event promoter and hip-hop DJ from Soweto, is one example of this.

    I first came across Tumi in an event advertisement for Relevant Thirstdays. Hosted in Soweto, on the last Thursday of every month, the event promised to be a haven for hip-hop heads: an assemblage of hip-hop’s foundational elements — DJ’s, rap battles, b-boys/girls, and an open mic. Staged at the Ko-Phiri Mapetla venue, Thirstdays harkened back to hip-hop’s bloc party origins.

    In a place where neighbourhood soundtracks had long been dominated by house music, a new phenomenon was emerging, cultivating hip-hop culture and artistry. Audiences were invited to come and “witness hip-hop culture rise”.  The promoters behind the event were a collective called 365 Turn-up Avenue and Tumi, it seemed, was their frontman. Carefully-selected memes formed a significant part of Thirstdays’ advertising: a father and daughter assuming the signature dab, emblazoned with the caption, “Three Thursdays left till the Relevant one”. Another post from a follower showed Cassper Nyovest, AKA and Emtee, each posing with their newly purchased cars. Below, the caption: “SA hip-hop in 2016”. The aspirational rhetoric repeated in regular references to Rick Ross’ ‘We Gon’ Make It’. It was an event concept spawned from the promise of local hip-hop’s new rise.

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    Tumi and I eventually met one Sunday afternoon on a street corner in Protea Glen. A DJ booth had been erected on the sidewalk. Opposite: a pavement lined with cooler boxes and garden chairs. Stealing shade alongside a brick wall, Tumi told me that, like many others in Soweto, he “grew up listening to house music.” In fact, Tumi had begun his entertainment career as a house DJ, sending mixes to local radio stations. When I asked him about his decision to become a promoter, he told me of one night when he had heard DJ Euphonik advocating on air that anyone who wanted to succeed as a DJ also needed to understand events.

    Tumi set to work, hosting his first event when he was in Grade 11. “I didn’t have a clue about events”, he told me, “I learnt on the day.”When I asked how friends and family responded to his new work in the nightlife industry, he responded:  “Yoh, my mom used to give me a hard time. She didn’t want me to go out at night, ‘cos [she thought] I’d get stuck into drugs [or] I’ll get killed. But now she can see that I like this. In fact, I don’t like it, I love it, and I’m determined to make it work. People think we’re all about turning up, getting drunk, taking girls home, but it’s more than that.”

    For this young Sowetan promoter, it was experimentation with hip-hop that erupted his career as a DJ and promoter. “South African hip-hop started to become amazing”, he remembers. “I tried to mix hip-hop in my bedroom. At first it was kak. I couldn’t feel hip-hop. But I didn’t give up. It started to make sense. When I played it live for the first time, people loved it. It made people give you attention. You see, when it comes to house, everyone plays house. Everyone you meet is a DJ [and] what does he play? What does she play? House.”

    House has long-since been South Africa’s musical love. Kwaito, a fusion of house rhythms and rap vocals, flooded airwaves in the 1990’s, and soon became equally infused in the nation’s sonic identity. For decades, hip-hop struggled to compete for audiences, particularly in the country’s townships and rural areas.  But the growing inculcation of local languages, locally-inspired content, and kwaito-infused beats has given South Africa’s hip-hop artists new traction, where many had once been accused of American mimicry.

    Given hip-hop’s origins among poor and working class communities in America’s inner cities, it is interesting that, in South Africa, there were those who associated the genre with middle-class elitism. Recently, a friend of mine, who parties predominantly in taverns, lamented that Johannesburg’s township parties had become increasingly infiltrated by the ‘Model C dab’. Tumi, however, celebrates the increasing mass appeal of the genre.

    “Right now, it’s becoming common [in Soweto]”, Tumi told me. “It’s the trending thing.” Recall also that Soweto has, over the years, given rise to some of the country’s best rap artists: Pro, Pitch Black Afro, Wikid, Zulu Mobb and movements like Slaghuis. More recently, we’ve seen the rise of K.O. “People such as K.O.”, Tumi says, “they’re achieving and inspiring us as youngsters”.

     “Before, [it was] commercial house and deep house”, Tumi told me. “Right now you don’t even hear commercial house [at clubs anymore]. They play deep house [and] after that it’s hip-hop. You don’t have a party without hip-hop”. He recalled a time when hip-hop had served as slow preparation for a climactic house set. Today, this ordering had been reversed, with hip-hop at the apex of a night out. In neighbourhoods where house music had once set the sonic tone, Tumi was now referred to as “The Black Coffee of Hip-Hop”.

    After his first residency at Malume Lounge, Tumi has since taken up residency at Ko-Phiri Mapetla. 365 Turnup Avenue will be hosting their flagship event, Spring Picnic, on the 29th of October. You can also check out Tumi’s latest mix below.

    [mixcloud https://www.mixcloud.com/TumiMasoko/tumimasoko-hip-hop-kontrol-007sp16tug-promo-mix/ width=100% height=120 hide_cover=1]

  • Una Rams – True Confessions

    Being sad about failed love and emotional disasters is almost de rigueur for any self-respecting contemporary star.  It shows your human side by connecting with universal experience.  In rap and RnB, (primarily male) pain has been a dominant style since Kayne released the morbid 808’s and Heartbreak in 2008. Almost every major artist who has come up since then has been influenced by some aspects of that work. The Weeknd has the whole focus on predatory relations and the hollow pleasures of fame. Frank Ocean has capitalized on the space for naked self-expression. Drake, of course, owes his entire career to his heartbroken persona, although at this point it’s clearly more a marketing tool than coming from any real personal conflict! Conversely, many female artists like Rihanna and Beyonce have adopted a more confrontational attitude to matters of the heart, and produced some of their most forthright and empowered work.

    Pretoria based Una Rams is drawing on this international pop hegemony in an interesting, and highly personal, way.  His intimately detailed work borders on certain types of confessional folk music- less trap beats, more sighs and whispers. In fact, his Pink Moon EP even shares a title with the album by doomed UK folk singer Nick Drake.

    The song  Girls Like You is a good representation of his style.  It deals with the common musical scenario of being messed around by your object of affection. But Rams doesn’t fall into the common lyrical snares of either self-pity or sexist insults. In fact, he suggests that they should just stay friends. The song’s production is subtly complex. A downtempo piano loop is uplifted by a burst of dancehall style toasting. The celebratory Nobody takes a more courtly approach in which he promotes his personal qualities to a love interest.  With his unvarnished style, he charts a heartfelt, but optimistic course through the travails of modern love.

  • Where the women at? Koolin in the City, the La Femme Remix, and questions of misogyny in hip-hop

    My rhymes aint got no gender

    I’m killing both like I’m Caitlin

    I’m amazin’

    I don’t need no validation from crits

    Don’t need to make your MC list to let me know I can script

    Don’t need a rapper to swallow

    To let me know I can spit

    — Rouge

    The recent cataclysmic rise of South African hip-hop is an indelible cultural phenomenon, premeating not only our airwaves and nightlives, but also how we speak, dress, dance, earn, spend — and (in many ways) think.

    Earlier this year DJ Switch called in Shane Eagle, Kwesta, Reason and Proverb to record  the much-talked-about single, Now Or Never. The track functioned as a call to reclaim lyricism in the industry — poetics over posing — all centred on the provocation: ‘what happened to rap?’ The official remix featured a 12-man lyrical legion, including PRO, Siya Shezi, Zakwe, Youngsta, and Ginger Trill, sparking web wars over whose bars hit hardest.

    But the remix also rang with this deafening question: why was not a single female rapper featured on the track? Later, we learned that Rouge had received the call-up and declined. In an interview with Balcony TV, she explained that being the only female rapper on the track was neither a complement nor an opportunity. ‘I don’t want to be the only female artist’.  Rouge wanted audiences to distinguish her verses, not because they were attached to a woman, but because of their incisive lyricism, their cadence, their flow.

    Following the original all-male call-out, Switch asked DJ Ms Cosmo to gather a crew of the country’s best female emcees for the LaFemme Remix. Among Cosmo’s fleet of femme foxes: Rouge, Fifi Cooper, Gigi Lamayne, Patti Monroe, MissCelaneous, Miss Supa, Clara T, Phresh Clique, Nelz and BK. At last week’s Koolin in the City, the squad were out in force, celebrating the release, and the culmination of Women’s Month.

    ‘There are no women in hip-hop they say,’ said the online advertisements, ‘Now ya’ll know’. It resonated with Ntsiki Mazwai’s recent letter to ‘Brothers in SA Hip-Hop’, in which she wrote: ‘you have conveniently told SA that we [female artists] don’t exist’.

    Koolout’s femme celebration had inserted itself amidst a wider contemptuous dialogue about the positioning of women emcees in the industry. Banesa, Koolout’s Creative Director, was well aware of the encasing contestations: “[I was asked] “why is it that you [only] have a female line-up when it’s August?” What about all the other nights? So that’s another debate”. 

    Indeed, encircling all of us on that Troyeville rooftop were brave, beautiful, and brutal utterances about women in hip-hop: the grind and the glory of trying to make it in an industry that, like many others, is permeated by patriarchy, both subtle and overt. ‘Because of the subjugation that happens in all fields’, said Banesa, ‘women are just not very prominent in anything that requires them to use anything other than their womb. And that includes hip-hop. 

    She adds: ‘because it’s a female line-up, [we assume] this place should be full of women all of a sudden. That’s not how it’s gonna be. That’s not how it’s gonna go down. Chances are it’s gonna be full of guys that wanna see your tits.’ 

    In speaking with femme artists and audiences at Koolout, I was struck not only be the scope and complexity of challenges for women in the industry, but also the fraught tactical decisions women make about how to rise and resist.

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    Rouge’s internal conflict over the terms of her involvement in Now Or Never is just one example. And she is not the only one to contest the label: ‘female artist’. ‘We’re rappers. We’re artists’, Phresh Clique told me. ‘Don’t put a label on it. You don’t put a label on another artist. If it’s a guy rapper, you don’t say “male rapper”. If I say I’m a female rapper, it’s like I’m doubting myself. Cos I’m like, “feel bad for me guys. I’m a woman”. Ms Cosmo later echoed: ‘I do strongly believe [that you should] look at me as an artist and look at me for my skills’. The real and relentless frustration for these women is that they so rarely get to discuss their actual artistry. Instead, the conversation pivots around ‘what it’s like to be a female in the game’.

    And yet, as Jean Grae once said, ‘It’s not possible to discuss women who rap as “just” rappers until or unless people who consume and participate divest from basic patriarchy’.

    Each of the women I spoke to was entangled in charged questions about how and when to wear gendered labels.

    ‘Female hip-hop, I think, does need to be separated’, said Banesa, although she was very aware that many others held a different view. ‘I was having an argument with one of my friends who was like, “there shouldn’t be a separation”. [But] I think the labels are important because it’s the reality of the world we live in. It [women in hip-hop] is a different animal right now’. On her account, women needed their own space, for now, to grow and to build. The quest to be ‘just an artist’ might involve first asserting oneself as an equal. Clarity, for example, dropped these bars for the Koolout audience — a call for a gender-free evaluation of her craft and her impact:

    ‘I’m trying to stay positive in a world that’s so negative

    Masculine/feminine the gender’s irrelevant

    As long as I’ve got time, I’ve got minds to change’

    Despite attempts to dismantle categories like ‘female artist’, many also offered sharp articulations of the ways in which the industry is gendered.

    ‘I will always be female whether I like it or not’, Ms Cosmo told me later that evening. ‘I’m not gonna shy away from the fact that women in the industry haven’t been given the opportunities that the guys have. And we have to fight tooth and nail to actually get those opportunities’. 

    ‘This is a man’s world’, Phresh Clique explained. ‘You know when women start getting into any male dominated industry, there’s this thing [of being silenced]. They’re sleeping on us. And the thing is we’re here. They’re just turning a blind eye.’

    ‘As females, we’re doing something really awesome’ says Ms Cosmo. ‘That’s why I did a song like the La Femme remix to really push the female agenda, to push female artists. Actually to the point where the female remix has been dubbed better than the guy’s remix. A lot of people have said that.

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    Koolout’s rooftop was steaming with some of the fiercest females in the art world. But existing in that space was not always easy. At a prior Koolout event, I recall a small insurrection in which a group of women disrupted a crewe of male emcee’s chanting the hook: ‘bitch wait outside, let me finish what I’m doing’. Indeed, in discussions of hip-hop and misogyny, it is often lyrical content that attracts the most attention and debate. OG, Miss Supa’s freestyle at the August event took direct aim at references to women as ‘bitches’:

    Bark is the meanest

    Ask me where the meat is

    Grab it and eat it just like a dog would do

    It’s probable

    Never seen one as hungry as I is

    No wonder why you would hurry to call me ‘that bitch’

    Woof!

    Don’t want you pissing in my territory

    Hip-hop is mine

    His story to her story

    ‘There are many people at these hip-hop things who hate me,’ chimed Lady Skollie, a hip-hop head, pioneering visual artist, and fierless gender activist. Through her art and online presence, she has publically critiqued sexual violence and misogyny in the local entertainment industry. In a recent interview for Pap Culture, for example, Lady Skollie attacked common assumptions that famous men ‘make’ the women they sleep with ‘valuable’. ‘Oh yes’, she said, ‘because I was never an individual before you injected all that greatness into me through my vagina’. Even Banesa told me that it has sometimes been assumed that, due to her position at Koolout, she must be sleeping with one of her colleagues.

    Incontrovertibly, female emcees receive fewer bookings and fewer opportunities than their male counterparts. ‘Sadly we make the least amount of money when we have a female line-up’, Banesa explained, ‘because they don’t have a big pull’. ‘They see us doing and putting in the work’, said Phresh Clique, ‘but do they trust us enough to own it on stage?’

    In a genre where self-assurance is currency, some female emcees have also embodied in their work a powerful collision of ostentation and unashamed vulnerability. It resonated when DJ Muptee dropped these impromptu bars:

    I know I want to utter

    But when I do I stutter

    C-c-can we connect on a conscious level, brother?

    Among those female emcees that have grabbed the mic, battled on stages, or claimed their space in the booth, there remain concerns of a double standard.  ‘Now that women are gaining entry, of course they need time to hone their craft’, Banesa says. ‘But every time there’s a mess up, [the response is] “you see, that’s why we don’t let you guys in’. Phresh Clique agree: ‘if a guy comes in the game and he’s new, they’re gonna hype him up like “yeah yeah yeah, another boss in the game”. But when a female rapper comes through they look at everything. When the critic comes, it’s heavy with us. They check you from the steez game, to the bars, to the way you’re spitting, to the flow. You literally have to work extra hard in order for them to see. We literally have to rub it in their faces like “yo, we’re here”’. 

    To add to this, women in hip-hop are not only women. The vast majority are also women of colour. ‘You can’t just say “female hip-hop”’, affirms Banesa. ‘Then you’re talking about black female hip-hop. Then you’re talking about coloured female hip-hop. There’s the girls who grew up on the other side of Sandton, or the Soweto cats’. The casting of hip-hop as particularly violent, misongynist, or brash (over and above any other genre) is arguably located in centuries-long attempts to suppress the voices and artistry of black and brown bodies. Academic, Tricia Rose, has argued that female rappers, most of whom are black, might find it difficult to condemn the misogyny of male emcees because of the need to collectively oppose racism, and to avoid contributing to the notion that black masculinity is “pathological”.  ‘You’re exposed to a plethora of issues that need to be dealt with. And it gets a bit overwhelming’, Banesa told me. 

    Each of the women emcees I spoke to was finding her own way to confront knots of power and privelege, grow the industry, and support women’s work — while aso carving out space to be ‘just an artist’. These complex struggles reverberated through their versus, which echoed defiance, sensuality, audaciousness, rage, humour and poetry. ‘What happened to rap?’ In this case: women happened — are happening. And it’s about time we tell that story.

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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 !!!!’.

    9emovement

  • Best SA Hip Hop tracks released in March

    Best SA Hip Hop tracks released in March

    Paradoxically, keeping track of musical genres is both easier and harder than it’s ever been. The furthest, most extremes shores of recorded sound are available at the scroll of a mouse, but the proliferation of new music being released all the time can be disorientating. One way of keeping afloat is to identify key releases on a monthly basis, which Bubblegum Club is premiering with this new column

    Duncan Skuvax feat. WTF and Ngani – Sengilhleli

    This ultra-menacing collab from Durban has a gothic sound, complete with a loop of what sounds like a Satanic choir. The intricate production and diverse vocals make this an absolute banger, which suggests a South African version of early Three Six Mafia or Flatbush Zombies.

    Riky Rick – Sidlukotini

    A bass heavy tribute to his own success, Riky Rick sends this song over the top with a half-shouted chorus.  There is also a particularly awesome part where he kindly offers to loan money to the listener.

    iFani feat Chad – Stay

    Port Elizabeth artist iFani first gained fame as a trickster sort, so this mournful, epic track is a interesting change of direction.  It’s convincingly sombre all the way through, as it uses autotune to etch out the dark corners of a dying romance.

     Rāms- EST (produced by Espacio)

    Staring out as an ambient croak, the song explodes into a huge chorus. hazy and disorientating in the best ways.

    YoungstaCPT feat. Stilo Magolide- Sleep is for the rich

    Eerie and bass-heavy.  As the title suggests, the song conveys a sense of social dysfunction and brutal choices, emphasised by the disturbing cover art work.  Along with the Duncan Skuvax track, it suggests that SA hip hop in 2016 is going to be characterised by a grim, dystopian feel.

    TSA – Me & My Crew

    After all the heaviness above, TSA returns to the simpler things in life. Namely, rapping, smoking and drinking.

     

  • Bubblegum Club mix vol 4 by Uncle Party Time

    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?

    I also work as a photographer.

    Whats next for uncle party time ?

    Uncle Party Time wants to play in Europe one day.