Brian Soko is not a happy man! Not only is he having to deal with the trauma of a daylight break-in at a cottage he’s renting while on a three-week work-related trip to Jozi, but the rappers he’s supposed to be having a studio session with the next day aren’t picking up their phones. I’ve been tasked with following him around for the next two days, photographing him as he works with artists like Cassper Nyovest and Teargas. For now, we’re on the N1 highway headed towards Centurion where Chad da Don, another rapper, is due to complete his verse on a Soko beat. As we race to beat the traffic, the producer sheds more light on the break-in incident. He’d barely been gone from the cottage for thirty minutes. Returning with the groceries he’d gone to buy, he discovered that his iPhone, Macbook, two external hard drives, sneakers, and his girlfriend’s jewellery had gone missing. The cleaning ladies knew nothing; neither did the cottage owner nor the gardener. Going to the police didn’t yield results.

*

Born in Chiredzi, a small town to the South-East of Bulawayo, Soko was initiated into hip-hop by his elder brother Prince with whom he now runs the Anashe Media Group, a management, marketing and production company focused on the African music sector. His other brother Arnold and a third partner are also involved. The story of his initial forays into music production follows a similar trajectory to that of many producers: he’d started off as a rapper, but instead of him feeling like he wasn’t good enough, he realised that there was good money-generating potential from making beats. He then switched to that trade exclusively while in high school. “I used to sell my beats online,” he said in an interview, referring to early start-ups like Mp3.com which enabled independent artists (or ‘bedroom musicians’) to generate income from their music. His banker father re-located his family to America after a brief stint in South Africa. Soko’s athleticism – he played football at one point – took a backseat when he decided to study sound engineering. He met his current production team, The Order, during his freshman year at college in Tampa, Florida. Among them – there are three other members – The Order have produced for A-list artists such as Rich Gang, Future, and Drake. There’s also Beyonce’s “Drunk in love” which was [wrongly] attributed to recording artist Detail. I ask Soko about this. “It’s all industry politics,” he tells me. Later, he’ll reveal: “I made that beat about four years ago.” In Centurion, we’re greeted by two apes which belong to Chad da Don. Chad’s mother, a hip-hop lover of sorts, comes out and invites us into their home. Maggz, the Soweto-born rhyme-spitter who can rap circles around many a rapper, is present, as is Chad’s producer Ashleigh. After brief introductions, Chad invites us into his studio. Soko’s still concerned about the break-in, but his mood instantaneously changes when Ashleigh fires up the studio workstation. He’s most at peace making music, it seems. The producers go through songs which have been placed on albums due out later this year. Pusha T’s name gets flown about; Rihanna’s too. Next is Chad’s unfinished song with Maggz who’s in the same room and has already recorded his part. The playback elicits something of a collective mini-orgasm when everyone hears it. “I pray we take it, to the next level/ change the game and let the cheques battle/ when you state your name they’re like ‘yessus’/ into ziya jika mfankithi/” Maggz’s cadence is unmatched! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlX7o1F0VCI The last time Soko was in South Africa, he did production work for Cash Time Life – first KO’s “Mission statement”, then DJ Vigilanti’s “Sgelekeqe” which features stately rap contributions from Ma-E, Pro, and Maggz. Both songs went on to dominate radio charts and establish KO, especially, as somewhat of a lyrical monster outside of the Teargas collective (of which he’s part, alongside brothers Ma-E and Ntukza). Over the next two days, Soko’ll host a roster of producers and rap artists either at the tipping point of their careers, or currently riding the crest of an ever-brittle and elusive ‘top’. Cassper Nyovest will make a stop to record “Phumakim”, as will Ganja Beatz, the production collective responsible for producing bangers for Reason, Okmalumkoolkat, and Riky Rick, among others. I pull Ma-E aside during one of the sessions to ask him how the working relationship with Soko developed. He tells me that the producer used to contact them (Cash Time Life/Teargas) via e-mail with links to his soundcloud. KO decided to open one of the links and went on to alert Ma-E. “In two seconds, I was like ‘yo, this guy’s the deal! When he comes down, we’ve got to hook up!’”

*

On our last meeting, Brian comes across a post from October 2012 while scrolling through his Facebook timeline: “I make Weird beats on purpose!... 1 of theez days imma set a trend.” With one of last year’s biggest songs under his belt, and song placement on some big name artists’ upcoming projects, Brian may well be on his way to accomplishing his goal. *Originally published in Mahala. **This article is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here.  

"The thing about Joburg," observes rapper and producer Sam Turpin "it's kind of on the scale of rich and poor." Sam's music explores themes of growing up in a changing South Africa. He's constantly questioning, learning and adjusting according to the dictates of his environment - oftentimes one not receptive and trusting of white people and their intentions. Sam will, in stream-of-consciousness fashion, jump from discussing his love for Outkast to questioning why its so hard for some people to learn a second language in South Africa. He's an artist whose thoughts are in flux; his music, his raps, his style - it reflects an unsettled version of South African hip-hop seeking to carve its own space and claim its right to exist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IlOgNzDSu8&feature=youtu.be In this video profile, set around Braamfontein and featuring scenes shot in the Wits Art Museum, Sam introduces himself and gives the motivation behind the title of his debut EP, "Eternal Sentiment". The segment also features footage of him performing with collaborator Illa N at an invite-only event where the two previewed music from their collaborative EP "Cold Chinese Food". *Sam Turpin's Eternal Sentiment is available on bandcamp.

I was home alone one Friday night around 2001 watching, as was tradition, one of the music shows which came on at SABC 1 during that period. It could’ve been Studio Mix during its dying years, or Basiq with Azania, or Castle Loud with Unathi and Stoan. The first video played after a Telkom ad. It featured a tall-ish man in an afro with what looked like a (mobile) telephone; I assumed it was a continuation of the advert. Roughly ten seconds in, I realised that this was an actual music video and began to pay attention. I immediately pressed record and managed to capture Mizchif’s “Fashionable” video premiere in its entirety. It was my introduction to an emcee who went on to release one of my first South African hip-hop CD purchases in the form of his 9-track EP Life From All Angles. He’d be on YFM during the Sprite Rap Activity jam providing a crucial dose of hip-hop news, or on Channel O presenting some video programme or another. He even had a breakout hit with kwaito artist Mavusana called “Summertime” which was big on national radio. Then, silence! Forward to 2008. I ran into Mizchif in Cape Town; introduced myself and let him know how much of a fan of his work I was. A year later while hosting a hip-hop show on the campus radio station, listeners would regularly request Mizchif songs to be played. My copy of Life From All Angles had since been misappropriated, but we managed to find a copy of "Fashionable" on the campus’ local area network and would play it. And thus began my brief re-introduction to Mizchif’s music. It’s easy to fall into wistful nostalgia and wax philosophical about how ‘great’ and ‘legendary’ he was. Indeed he was a dope emcee. But much like Robo, King Daniel, and to some extent Mr. Fat, Devious, etc., Mizchif has joined a growing line of fallen soldiers who were/are all but forgotten by the movement they helped build. Instead of reinforcing the ‘poor, starving artist’ trope so commonplace in the music industry, perhaps it’d be best if South African hip-hop came up with ways not only to chronicle its present, but to ensure that the contributions of its purveyors don’t fade into obscurity. If anything, we should do it for posterity, because it’s paramount to ensure that the culture isn’t muddled in the fleeting romance of celebrity. We can start by acknowledging that there are people whose stories need to be told and re-told, because they too matter. The first (and last) time I saw Mizchif perform was at the South African Hip Hop Awards in 2013. I cannot say I was moved. Not only was he in bad shape, he could barely remember the lyrics, choosing instead to rap over certain parts – as a fan rapping along would. It wasn’t a good sight. The music lives on! [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/166452974" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="300" iframe="true" /] *Opening image: Mizchif performing at the South African Hip Hop Awards, 2014 *This article is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here.

As member of the hip-hop quartet Ba4za, Hakeem Lesolang presided over one of the most fertile yet under-appreciated eras in South African hip-hop. Capcity Rapcity as it was referred to by the bundles of heads scattered across Mzansi, fed our collective appetites the fuzzy memories of yester-year hip-hop through a steady stream of boom-bap rap music. Flex Boogie is the artist that emerged when Hakeem decided to explore what lay beyond the jazz-leaning loops and banging drums characterized by production from the likes of Nyambz. His career took a fashion-conscious direction, a decision which had the unintended consequence of giving him the distinction of the largest fedora hat-collecting rapper in the country. It's the tenth year since Ba4za's introduction to the South African hip-hop scene. The four Muslims – two brothers named Malik and Muhajir, and Hakeem and Abdul Qadir – still maintain a strong brotherhood but haven't recorded music collectively in years. Flex Boogie is growing his network as an independent artist. He had performances lined up for the full duration of the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, and shall soon be on a tour which will have him play dates in London, New York, and the UAE. This is what he had to say post his performance on the second last day of the Fingo Festival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W3-p86htMQ&feature=youtu.be *This article is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here.

"You've got a car? It's less than two hours from here" says a Rasta woman I've known for a total of ten minutes. In that time, she's managed to convince me to travel with her to a town nearby (or was it me trying to convince her?) on a hunt for medicinal herbs. The ganja in these here parts is strong. Mango, I'm told, is this season's flavour. It can be found in Port Alfred, the town in question. I didn't have a car in any case and had to forego the offer, unfortunately. I'd landed here, in Fingo township, after being fetched from Grahamstown's city centre by Xolile Madinda (or X), one of the main organizers of the Fingo Festival – an annual, independently-run series of events founded in 2011. After a brief back-and-forth over text messages, X and myself agreed to meet in front of the Pick 'n Pay off of Africa Street. It's mind-morning during Winter; the air is crisp and fresh, and nippy in that special Easter Cape kind of way which leaves you with the perpetual feeling that you’re a clothing layer too short to be warm. X emerges from behind me and is every bit the nineties hip-hop renaissance man with his hooded jacket and Timbaland boots, plus a gray-coloured beanie wrestled onto his head to drive the whole idea home. He's also well-versed in the history of Grahamstown–a story of displacement, deceit, and, ultimately, ownership–of land, of an entire nation’s memory. We spend the next twenty minutes shop-hopping, hunting for mats on which the b-boys will flex during the breakdancing battle later. We then leave the hungover, fest-frenzied streets of Grahamstown to cross the invisible line into Fingo, the township five minutes' drive away. Fingo Festival was established as an intervention during the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. The aim was to make art accessible to the Fingo township and its surrounds through a seven-day programme which has grown to include activities such as children's workshops, open-ended dialogues, and musical performances. "There's a lot of cry that the [Grahamstown Arts Festival] is for the elite, that the art is expensive, and all these questions. So, as artists we figured out [that] there's a deeper question that is not being addressed right here," says X. This deeper question, he figures, is that we as black people aren't taught to prioritise art from an early age. To redress this, X and his partners decided to demonstrate that art has value beyond being an extra-mural activity. “It's a job for other people," he says. It was imperative for them as artists to set a standard so that people of Fingo and neighbouring townships understand that "during the festival, it's not just them getting a job to clean the street. It's for them to go and enjoy the arts – go and watch a drama performance, go and watch a music performance." We stop at the traffic lights where Dr Jacob Zuma Drive and Albert Street intersect, indicating to the right. A mural painted in red against a white backdrop lies to my left hand side; across from it is the open area paved in orange brick where the b-boy battles and live performances are held every the afternoon for the festival’s duration. When we arrive at the community centre, a Rhodes University drama student is animatedly reading to a group of children gathered in one of the rooms. The workshops are hosted in the library at one end of the building. In session is someone from UCT’s Computer Science Department, who has developed an App to help bedroom producers determine the quality of their recording. It's production 101 as heads listen intently and share their expertise on topics ranging from recording techniques, to treating a room for vocal recording. The morning chill has started to wane, but there's still a biting undercurrent which even the b-boys who’ve just arrived outside are keen to fight off. They stretch, they jump, and they clown around and take pictures for Instagram. I, on the other hand, develop this strong urge for medicinal herbs, which leads to me being introduced to the Rasta referenced above. Fingo Festival is not without its own set of problems. According to X, they're running on practically no funding this year. The little they received went towards hiring the sound, feeding the children, buying paint for the wall, and buying mats for the b-boys (we eventually got two when we found them). It would seem that while people in positions of power have been vocal in their support of Fingo Fest, lending muscle to ensure that it continues to exist doesn't come as easy as the praises they're so quick to dish out. “We don’t want to be treated as special, but we want people to [take note] that after 20 years of democracy, these young men and women started something in their own community to reflect that there is change in the society we are living in,” says X "It doesn’t have to be money. It can be making things happen," he tells me. "The difficulties are there, but they could be solved if we also put ourselves out there, like now." It ultimately ends up sounding like a wishy-washy dream: a bunch of hippie-leaning bohemian intellectuals with deep socio-political grounding, a love for the freedom that comes with embracing art and letting it flourish, and a preference for more alternative forms of learning. It seems foolish, doesn't it? A grassroots festival. Hosted in the outskirts of a frontier town. Over a seven-day period! But without grassroots initiatives such as Fingo and its ilk, people in the community have no other means of accessing at least some of what's on offer at the more polished, high-end, two-week festival just twenty minutes' walk away. And sure enough on the Monday following fest, the street poles had newspaper headlines praising the "record attendance numbers" at the Grahamstown Arts Festival. The numbers, and not the art, were the main concern. We can argue until daybreak about the representation of black, mostly working-class people in spaces like the Arts Festival; about the festival's steady movement away from townships such as Joza; about the Village Green's policies (which have been deemed exclusionary to the immediate community countless times, yet nothing seems to be done about it). Instead of talk, it'd help if initiatives like Fingo were championed more by the mainstream. I may have missed a few great showcases at the festival itself: Tumi Mogorosi, Kyle Shepherd, Msaki, and countless other musicians who dedicated themselves to a gruelling schedule of shows; the numerous actors who fought hangovers to give repeated performances which oftentimes cast them in emotionally-demanding roles; the film directors who availed themselves for QnAs after screenings; the seemingly-enriching discussions at Think Fest (X himself gave a talk). But as the sun hovered on the horizon on Saturday, the last day of the festival, and people sang along to a reggae band’s rally that “Better must come...”, I knew that no other gathering could, at that very moment in time, top the feeling of euphoria which overcame me.

On the morning of 28th October 2013 – a Monday – South Africa woke up to news that rapper Khuli Chana's vehicle had been shot at by the police after they mistook it for that of a kidnapper on the run. The incident occurred at a filling station in Midrand on Khuli's way to a show in Pretoria.

The current bullet count on the blue BMW 1 series vehicle that Khuli Chana was driving is seven (7). All seven (7) were shot from the passenger side.  Khuli Chana was the only person in the vehicle at the time of the shooting. A private forensic ballistic report is currently being conducted and will be made public once received

read the press release. In the same week that he got chosen among GQ's best-dressed men, and the same weekend where he gave yet another impressive live performance in Soweto mere hours before the shooting, Khuli Chana's life nearly ended. It was another blotch in a long trail of police-related fuck-ups, a trail whose perpetrators tried to cover up their own misgivings by laying charges of attempted murder against Khuli. The investigations have been finalised, and the Director of Public Prosecutions' office shall reach a decision soon. It's in the midst of all of this that we had a chat with him, at his recent video shoot for a song featuring Da Les and Magesh. Instead of discussing the particulars of his case, we tripped out over nineties hip-hop; broke down the science behind his flow; and discussed the recent resurgence of Morafe, the group he's been a part of since the mid-nineties. AIAC: Let's talk a bit about your nineties influences. What shaped Khuli Chana? Khuli: The nineties kwaito, the nineties feel, the nineties boom bap, the hooks, the colours – I’m about that! The nineties' music was so authentic and so timeless. I'm down to experiment and try out some new things, but I'm still stuck in the nineties. The Motswako movement wasn't always as lauded as it is now. What did it take to get here? The end in mind. If you don't have a vision, you're screwed, and that's what we had.  Today, I just wanna say that we're living HHP's dream. Everything that's happened, he predicted; it sounded like all kinds of gibberish back then. Big up to him. There seems to be a Morafe resurgence going on, not that you guys necessarily left.  What's the plan with that? Like Towdee always says, 'Morafe never left the game/ we just changed how we played the game.' It got to a point where we were like 'we're not gonna be predictable.' You've got three geniuses, three talented cats. Let's start to dismantle and experiment. They experimented with me; I guess that was fuckin' awesome! You had no label support when you came out, and resorted to releasing the music independently. When we started up, I wasn't really down for the idea. It made sense, [but] I wasn't down for it because I was scared. I just didn't think I had it in me; Towdee was pushing for it. The guys that gave us that head start, big up to Skwatta Kamp, big up to Slikour and Ventilation. When we dropped 'Futhumatsa' on that [Sprite] Hip-Hoop mixtape [was] when I got that validation; that's when I got that 'whoa, you could do this!' That was pretty much Towdee's experiment. We worked on the joint, we sampled one of his verses. We did it, put it on that mixtape, and then boom, we were touring! We hit all nine provinces. That was an interesting time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLf-psoxrTE&feature=youtu.be How did you manage to get Magesh on the song? Khuli Chana: The song is inspired by a Magesh classic joint from his second album. That's been my favourite joint, so I kind of merged "Hape le hape" with "Time and time again," which is a Magesh hook. I used to always freestyle on that beat. You're one of the few mainstream hip-hop artists who never sacrifice when it comes to lyrical content. What's the importance of lyrics, and how do you stay ahead of your own game? Words man, words have power; they can either destroy or build. I don't write everyday; I wish I could, I wish I did. I put so much thought into that process. I never really know when it's gonna hit me, but when it does...it's a spiritual thing. Big up to the lyricists: Reason, Tumi, Jabba, Tuks, Towdeemac! Ba re lefoko ga le bowe, go bowa monwana – words stick. If you're gonna talk out of your bum now, think about how it's gonna impact the next generation. Who influenced your flow, and how did it develop? In the beginning, it was the pioneers of Motswako, [the likes of] Baphixhile. There was this rhyme pattern that was popular; everybody who was down with Motswako had that same (*mouths a rhyme scheme*) I was like 'okay cool, I'm down to switch' because Prof (Sobukwe of rap group Baphixhile) was always saying 'you're dope, but I want you to try it ka Setswana'. But I didn't like this pattern, this rhyme scheme. I'd like to hear a guy that has that Mos Def delivery, but spitting in Setswana. That's when I started experimenting. I remember it was a day, [Prof was] like 'listen, I'm off to Joburg, and when I come back, if you put me a hot sixteen, Imma put you on. I spat him a hot verse, and that's when it started. I'll be honest, ka Setswana it's always more challenging. I'd go months without writing because all I'm doing is I'm finding new slang; new slang, words. Just trying to find an opening line sometimes takes me a month, and it depends on where we're at. You've had a very successful run over the past eighteen months or so, plus an unfortunate incident with the police. What's your state of mind right now, and going into the future? It's a new chapter, we were talking about that le Towdee ke re you know what, sometimes you get to this place and you just have to acknowledge that everything you wanted to  achieve, my whole list of goals I've literally scratched everything off. I’m just starting all over; it's a whole new journey now. Running a business is not an easy thing, and that's where I'm at right now. A lot of musicians blow up and become businessmen, and then the talent suffers. I wanna be just like a JAYZ who still raps like an eighteen year old, and the business sense and hustle is just as crazy. That's where I’m at. What goes into preparing your live sets? I wish we had more time. I've become so busy trying to balance fatherhood, work. I treat every show like a rehearsal; I'm always learning something new. Big up to my band – J-Star, Raiko, Maestro. *Get Khuli's music on iTunes **This interview first appeared on Mahala

Cape Town’s self-proclaimed two dope boyz Uno and Jimmy Flexx are Ill Skillz. At the end of 2013 they released Notes from the Native Yard (NFTNY), a collection of songs steeped in the tradition of great storytellers with its lucid detail and raw emotion, and driven by stellar production from beat-gods Hipe and J-One, among others. Melancholic in parts (without being dull), it’s a pocket handbook to give outsiders a hint of life as a black man in Kaapstaad, a city often criticized for its brash treatment of the poor and underprivileged. NFTNY is also upbeat; it’s a celebration of being young and alive, of being part and parcel of pivotal shifts in culture, of embracing one’s influences and learning from one’s mistakes. Ultimately, it’s an album about growth – both personal and artistic. Ill Skillz have, since their full length debut Off The Radar in 2008, paid immaculate attention to their appearance. To them, the visual is as important as the music. To this end, they’ve managed to build a repertoire of videos worthy of envy, and they’ve managed to achieve it all by maximizing whatever resources are at their disposal. To pay homage to their keen eye, we compiled five of our favourites and asked them to share stories behind how they were made. It’s all very compelling stuff filled with quotables such as “This video inspired Kanye West's interest in ballerinas.” Have a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5I1w2jqxkA&feature=youtu.be "Rocoflo" is our first video. It was a pretty big deal to finally have our first video at the time. We knew this [was] gonna be our introduction to a lot of heads. More importantly, we wanted [them] to bug out. We linked up with Garth and the team from GreenHouse Productions who were at AFDA film school at the time. They knew their stuff man and we made it happen – just having a good time in the CBD, guerrilla-style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96AM9xvvujs&feature=youtu.be "Unbreakable" was probably the most challenging as it was part of The 24 Hour Project, Skillz That Pay Da Billz. We had to choose a song on the day and we went with Unbreakable. Greenhouse only had a few hours to come up with a concept and execute it all in the 24 hours. We were recording, mixing, mastering, having a photo-shoot, interviews a performance at the Cape Town Festival, and our launch the same night. This video inspired Kanye West's interest in ballerinas. It's about being extra-ordinary in the face of tremendous hardship [and] odds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7WoqEfAnpY&feature=youtu.be "We Are Over Here" made us most proud. It became a talking point; the bar was raised again. We enjoy working with creatives in other disciplines because we get to explore what else is possible after the song is done. This time, Echoledge came through with new tricks. You see these tricks in other videos - even commercials now - but it all started with We Are Over Here. [This is to] let the ladies know we're over here, where they want to be, where they need to be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wYRHVydYqM&feature=youtu.be Once again Echoledge came through, we wanted to have a bunch of ill skillionaires and at least one Bonita Applebum in the video, the rest is a gazillion cool kids in the ghetto. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5di4gFOjUE&feature=youtu.be Brown Sugar, I Used To Love H.E.R...we worked with ONS on bringing this to life the journey of the South African Hip hop head before rap blew up into what it is today in SA. Reminding people that Hip hop is really a street culture, no matter how many culture vultures come at it, for as long as there is young people in the townships and urban areas, inner cities. It'll keep getting bigger and more consumer driven, but it's core will remain raw. Real life. *Ill Skillz's album Notes From The Native Yard is available on bandcamp and iTunes. They're currently in post-production for their third video off of their latest album.  ***This article is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here.

In 2010, documentary filmmaker Sara Chitambo packed up five years’ worth of life in Cape Town and relocated to the eGoli, ePitori to be precise. Among her long list of priorities was to immerse herself the Pretoria hip-hop scene which, at its peak, had various artists from the city featuring regularly in the South African hip-hop publication Hype Magazine. She’d been an active participant in Cape Town hip-hop – whether as an avid attender of shows, or through her television career as an entertainment producer/reporter on ETV where she compiled, among other pieces, an insert on Pioneer Unit’s first ever compilation project Planetary Assault.

Arriving in Pretoria, however, Chitambo found a rap scene in limbo. The hype sold through glossy magazine covers manifested its true colors, and they were on the left side of bright. The State Theatre shows that she’d attended on a once-off mission up north while still located in Cape Town had all but died down. There were hardly any musicians making noise on radio and television. Feeling somewhat robbed of a unique experience, Chitambo decided to make The Capacity Of Capcity, a documentary dedicated to tracking the rise, fall, and possible indicators of a hip-hop renaissance in the land of Jacaranda trees. After a year and some of filming, she lost a hard drive’s worth of footage on a trip to Rwanda. Undefeated, she kick-started another shooting schedule--a solitary, taxing, but fulfilling task.  When I met her in 2012, she’d all but given up on the project. It didn’t make sense; after countless interviews with tastemakers (DJ Kenzhero, Nyambz), magazine editors (Mizi Mtshali, Simone Harris), and the actual emcees, vocalists, and producers who helped build the scene (Maliq, Fifi, Thir[13]teen), why stop? She also had rough drafts and nuggets about how she wanted the story to develop. On a whim, I offered to lend a hand in the editing process, an exercise which not only involved countless hours of learning, but instilled in me a deep appreciation for hyper-local scenes and the importance of documenting what happens within them. The Capacity of Capcity is one such document – a case study in the intricacies underpinning untold stories; a session for artists to vent, reminisce, or suggest a way forward; and ultimately a labour of love created for no other purpose but to interrogate what a long-standing fan found weird and odd about her newfound home. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brkg1VGqaok&feature=youtu.be *Chitambo agreed to share a chapter from the 40-minute documentary with us.  This article is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here.

I can’t recall when I first fell in love with hip-hop, but I do know that the first song I transcribed was Coolio’s ‘Gangster’s paradise.’ Transcribing lyrics in ‘songbooks’ was a big deal in the mid-nineties; it was shortly before I discovered that oohla.com existed, around the same time I was heavy into the culture of cassette-sharing. Myself and a primary school friend would exchange kwaito tapes — M’du, Mashamplani, Trompies, B.O.P — every second week. On one of those tapes — Mashamplani’s Never Never — I heard the instrumental version to ‘Is Vokol Is Niks.’ A year later, I was in my first year of high school and left to my tools on a Saturday afternoon. I put the instrumental on loud in the main room, took an empty cassette tape, inserted it into a boombox, pressed record, then proceeded to kick my first ‘rap.’ Which brings me to the topic — This Studio Of A Life! I was born ten minutes’ drive from Maseru’s CBD. I started hanging around rappers since I was 12 years old — in studio, at rap cyphers, and at shows. I’ve been to a lot of studios in that time, but it’s only in the past year that I’ve attempted to capture the electric energy and creative impulse present when artists congregate inside a studio.

*

[gallery columns="1" type="slideshow" ids="81500,81501,81502,81615,81508,81503,81504,81617,81507,81618"]

Often the biographical genre puts the burden of accountability on the subject written about than it reveals about the writer. Bongani Madondo craftly debunks that in his sophomore project, I'm Not Your Weekend Special, a collection of essays penned about the siren Brenda Fassie. The book invites lesser-known individuals such as Mmabatho Selemela, to heralded impressarios like Njabulo Ndebele and Vukile Pokwana, to sit around a proverbial fireside and unpack their experiences on Fassie. I'm Not Your Weekend Special employs the celebratory endeavours of profile writing as well as critique to come up with a new form of biography. What started as a solitary journey by Madondo eventually grew into an ensemble where invited writers were challenged to strum and blow their best by laying bare their inner most feelings on MaBrr. They had to bleed and reveal their insecurities as much as those of the subject. A form of language precipitates from this exercise, where by default the contributors themselves engage each other in dialogue via their respective testaments. Under the curatorship of Madondo, there exists a push and pull, road heaviness (as read in the chapter Searching For MaBrr In The Colony) as well as a pacifying that sends off the spirit of Brenda Fassie. The editorial allure of the book lies with its ability to connect different players. It by no means attempts to be a work of simplicity, neither does it adhere to the painstaking efforts of trying to out sell all the others at your nearest book store. It is honest work toiled over by group of friends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKpK3zNer_c

Their stage act resembles an inside joke; they play tricks on the audience with a wry sense of humour which underlies the whole scenario. The guitarist will sommer play a lick off of a well-known song of theirs (‘76’ and ‘People of the light‘ come to mind) before bouncing right back into material from their most recent offering Pick a Dream. The tight-knit nature of this four-man troupe pokes fun in the face of criticism, and casts aside all doubt of how their capability to deliver good music. Their music travels; subtle musical intonations meandering through shades of spiritual brilliance with every note, every snare, and every rhyme. They have taken their music across continents – North America and Europe have, at one point or the other, been exposed to the ebb and flow of their compositions. The quartet of Dave Bergman (bass), Paulo Chibanga (drums), Tumi Molekane (raps/vocals), and Tiago Paulo (guitar) is known to increasingly-wider audiences as Tumi and the Volume. Bar from their current single ‘Asinamali‘ riding skid-row on South African commercial radio airwaves, these gentlemen have, by and large, been ignored locally. Though hip-hop aficionados rate them as one of the best hip-hop outfits this country has ever produced,  one is more likely to see them on magazine covers, television interviews, and festival appearances in countries such as France, Senegal, and the Reunion Islands than they are to witness them in top form locally. Their appearance at this year’s Cape Town International Jazz Festival (to which this article’s introduction makes reference) is but one of the few. However, matters seem to be taking a turn for the better; they were recently billed – along with Baaba Maal, Habib Koite, and the Mahotella Queens – to perform at the Afrika Day celebrations broadcast live on SABC2 in Newtown towards the end of May. Presumably, the event afforded Tumi and the Volume an audience they may have otherwise not reached. Pick a dream – their third album in a catalogue preceded by their self-titled studio debut and a live recording entitled Live at the Bassline (which featured the talents of Kyla-Rose Smith – now with Freshlyground) – is a sonically-mature, lyrically-impressive collection of scathing socio-political commentary (‘Asinamali‘, ‘Reality check‘); par-excellence lyrical dexterity (‘Number three‘, ‘Enter the dojo‘, ‘Volume trials‘); and melancholic yet uncompromisingly honest self-reflection (‘Light in your head‘, ‘Moving picture frames‘, ‘Through my sunroof‘). This, however, is not an article about the whole but the part; this is about a man who a week prior to our conversation was ‘at Analogue Nites playing to an almost-exclusively black audience’. Our meeting, however, happened in the wilderness that is the Nekkies resort in Worcester on a Sunday afternoon. The day before, Tumi had performed in front an almost-exclusively white, predominantly Afrikaans-speaking RAMfest audience; The Volume were nowhere in sight. Instead, Peach van Pletzen (drums, Yesterday’s Pupil/Bittereinder), Richard Brokensha (guitar/vocals, Isochronous), Franco Schoeman (bass, Isochronous) and Alex Parker (keyboard, Isochronous) provided fitting musical accompaniment. Aside from his band, Tumi also has a solo operation on the side. He started out in the Johannesburg underground circa 2000 with offerings such as A dream led to this and Tao of Tumi before linking up with what was then a relatively-unknown 340ml – minus Pedro da Silva Pinto (vocals/harmonica) and Rui Soeiro (bass). In 2007, he decided to strip the live band elements and return back to the basics of hip-hop –  the emcee and the deejay – by releasing his first widely-available solo offering Music from my good eye. A strong album in its own right with moments of sheer brilliance in many places, it did suffer from trying to fit too many things into one. As Tumi observes during our chat: “I almost had to prove to myself with Music from my good eye that, you know what, I can do this. I have the commitment to do this alone; to make the music, release the music, tour it, you know, on my own! And I failed at that, but I think with failure comes lessons and growth.” I ask him to relay the story of The Volume. “I’ll try sum it up,” he begins. “As far as the band is concerned – Tumi and the Volume – at that point we were very much a spoken word outfit backed by a band. And I think over the years, just playing festivals and playing tonnes of different shows, we became a band period, you know.” One of these was a slot at the Sakifo music festival at the Reunion Islands in 2004. Jerome Galabert from Sakifo records in France was so impressed that he decided to offer them a recording deal right there and then. This then enabled the band to tour across South African boarders and reach a wider audience, one more appreciative of the type of sound they were trying to push. Regarding their sophomore offering The volume, Tumi states that it wasn’t well received in South Africa, adding that it was more had better reception in Europe. “That’s why our careers have pretty much been [over there],” he says. Music from my good eye saw Tumi incorporating more Zulu vernacular into songs, a trend he had begun on the band’s self-titled sophomore. Reluctantly, I ask how important the multi-lingual expression is to his music, and how it has fed into the Tumi ‘brand‘. “I don’t like the word brand; I am not a brand, I am a man,” comes the firm response. Engaging further on the language issue, he says: “I have so much respect for language. I would never just…just dabble. I believe in being prolific; the stuff I’ve heard by Bittereinder [and] Jitsvinger, is absolutely incredible! They absolutely explore the language, and it’s poetry. But you know, when things feel natural, I kinda do them. I reserve the right to rap in any language.” He not only uses his calm demeanour to endear one’s favour in conversation, but to display a brutal sense of honesty whenever the situation calls for it. On two occasions, he forthrightly acknowledges his failures with regards to his music. The Volume wasn’t their victory lap. “It was our first studio album. We really took our time with it; it was really thought out, and we were also struggling with how to transform our live sound into a studio sound,” he pauses, as though to reflect further before continuing “and in that respect we failed!” But that very album gained them a bigger following. As Tumi observes: “People started regarding us as not just a performance band. There was real depth in the band, you know.” Tumi says that the current offering is an attempt to fix all their past mistakes. “Radio didn’t want to play any of the songs, and we didn’t have any strong single – I think. We wanted to make stuff that’s more accessible, and I think we’ve matched our live sound – the quality of it.” There is no denying Tumi’s writing abilities or aptitude when it comes to flow. One feels no sense of fabricated emotions when listening to him, only the raw sense of an individual who connects with the music on planes other than the one on which we exist. I ask him to break down the lyrics to the song ‘Number three‘, and after letting out a huge smile, he said the following: “The song is just a Tumi and the Volume anthem. If you think of how the A-Team starts, that’s what it is,” he says matter-of-factly while adjusting his sitting position. “We rarely do songs like that; we’re always kinda very conceptual with songs. So that was really…to have a song like that on a CD really just solidifies and kind of documents the really good relationship that we have as a band.” “In terms of the verses, I couldn’t stay away from not saying anything at all,” Tumi states, another broad smile emerging from his lips. “The first verse, I used the whole imagery of fashion and design to kinda just talk about my career and what I’ve done”:

Rap’s society’s  fabric/ Around here brothers are inanimate objects/ Mannequins subjected to the fashion of prospects/

“So there are a lot of references to like ‘Singer‘ (sewing machine), 'Nubuck' (a type of leather). And in the second verse I talk about travelling”:

When I say it’s a small world, it’s not expression boy, I mean it/ The airport’s like my second home, believe it/ I take off like you take a walk, frequent/

“And the third verse is where I go ape-shit really. Like I said, we rarely do that, so it’s really kinda nice to just be able to do.” Besides his affable persona, Tumi came across as quite an honest human being, very connected to his environment, and having a positive outlook on life and the prospects therein. We conversed further about Danyel Waro, Zaki Ibrahim, and twitter. Tumi spoke in a radio interview of how Danyel Waro, the Reunion-island based maloya musician, is his favourite artist ever. “When I first heard Danyel Waro, [it was through] this amazing song that he’d done about his (now-ex) wife called ‘Tine blues’. I thought it was from New Orleans, it had a really bluesy feel about it. He was singing in Creole, but it’s the Creole they speak in the Reunion Islands, not in the US. I got the opportunity to meet him, and I pestered him on some ‘I try to do what you do, but I rap’. He told me some amazing things about singing, about art being functional in people’s lives, you know.” Tumi re-iterates his initial statement on the radio interview “he’s my favourite, favourite, favourite musician ever! He’s my absolute favourite singer, the stuff he makes is incredible, and I don’t think I’ll ever make another album without him, as long as he’s interested!” Zaki Ibrahim made a statement regarding his relationship with Tumi in an interview: “[he’s] actually kind of become like a big brother to me. He checks me when I’m kinda dragging my ass, and I check him back too.” Tumi shares those sentiments; after meeting on tour (circa 2005/6), they have maintained a good working relationship together. Their camaraderie has extended into songs such as ‘Blink twice’ (from Music from my good eye) and ‘Volume trials’ (from Pick a dream). Of Zaki, Tumi says: “It’s so easy to work with [her]. It’s her and Zubz whom I trust with any song; I can literally say ‘here’s a song, here’s the idea, whatever you got’. There’s nobody else I trust like that.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZYQlMcPSkRs The conversation evolves into radio, and how his solo exploits have, in a way, opened up channels for the type of music him and his band do to get appreciated further. Going back to the topic of ‘Asinamali’, the band’s current single, Tumi says: “Me and Zubz always sit back and laugh about it like ‘we’re out there on radio talking about SA’. It’s bitter-sweet; it’s sweet because there’s a track like that out, but it’s bitter because that’s one of the only tracks out there talking about South Africa. I think Simphiwe [Dana] does it, but aside from that you hardly hear about your own country in your music.” There are arguments from all sectors of society for and against twitter. The naysayers speak of how it has erased the mystique of the celebrity; nothing is a surprise anymore, all gets put out in the open. For Tumi, twitter seems to be an alternative outlet, a medium as far removed from his personality on record as it is perhaps an extension of the views which ultimately form what we get to hear on those very records. He might tweet, rather surprisingly: ‘I was against releasing [Pick a dream] in South Africa’, or offer an interesting retrospective such as ‘I love how Verwoed sounded so intellectual with his Apartheid arguments. I would have loved to see him debate with Biko’. Whatever the situation, he has made good use of the medium thus far. Of twitter, he says: “It gives space for more thought, you know? And also just the interaction; on a business level it’s great, on an artistic level…it’s a cool social toy.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMdM03miCgo Tumi’s endless work ethic has also seen him releasing the POWA mixtape recently. Inspired by the story of Akona Ndungane, it is a powerful statement against women abuse. It is ‘not about beats and verses, it’s about a sad reality that affects too many people’. Every person reaches a cross-road where they must choose which path to take; Tumi chose music, and as he declares: “I think there’s a lot of scholarship in what we do. It might be informal, but [it’s still scholarship]. I always say that it’s better to struggle at what you love; any job that you do is gonna be good and bad, and if you don’t love it, it’s gonna be really hard to keep on doing it.” Tumi Molekane's third solo album Rob the Church will be getting released in the second part of 2014. We've written about him here and here. * This post was first published in 2011 when Tumi and The Volume were still active. The opening image is a Tumi and the Volume press picture. The second image courtesy of Motif Records.  It is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here.

"Raise your hand up if you're a hip-hop head" said Lesego Rampolokeng, rallying a house full of poets at a gathering in Melville on a wet Sunday afternoon in 2013. I put mine up, as did a few audience members seated towards the back. The rest sat in the sparsely-occupied restaurant and gazed at the ones who were. We couldn't be moved. We stood firm, resolute in our hip-hop-headness as one of our elders broke bread with us. "I'm also an emcee" continued the street-smart spitter usually attributed the title of poet, but whose work stretches beyond that medium into novels (Blackheart), and theatre plays which then found a second life in film (Fanon's Children). When I last saw him, Papa Ramps as he's affectionately known to the a-weh massive of the underground and yonder, was working on a film-cum-documentary of sorts which traced his journey in poetry through South African greats such as Mafika Gwala. Back in Mellville, Papa Ramps has just begun reciting his Ode to Hymphatic Thabs. A head paying homage to another, how's that?! "Mission emphatic," he begun in his half-rapped, quick-paced style. Barely a month had passed after the event when Robo the Technician passed away. Robo was instrumental in building the South African hip-hop scene; he was the link between the old school of Papa Ramps and the (new) school over which Hymphatic Thabs reigned supreme in the early 2000s. When Robo succumbed to illness, a legion of broken hearts were left behind. Papa Ramps recited a poem at his memorial service held at the Grayscale Gallery in Johannesburg. I arrived late and hence didn't catch it, so I got in touch with the elder and asked if he'd let us reproduce the work.

NOTES FOR ROBO-TECH : WORD-GAWD Robotic Armageddon Lyricist profundity’s geneticist Cold school Lyrical scrolls unfold in layers players can’t manifest…. Mental uranium to intellectual atom-bomb from underground innards (break surface toxin awards talk – sin rewards murder by hunger & homicidal starvation) show me whores i'll show you swine. lil misogynist...go swing off a pole by your vas deferens! Twisted that off the ROBOok of rhymes aligned Sacred against the hatred materially created No inspiration lines but intestines stretched out Scratch my spinal-cord is a vinyl record One stanza eat away is a cancer Empty stomach heavy ruckus dreadie focus

Stake my neck on a train-of-thought-wreck lyric & (flip it ruff, that pop stuff. gore on the prance-floor. got a nightmare for a metaphor. muddy rhymes on bloody riddims… oh lawd a messy…raw gawd of the ‘die…versified’) While poison pulp pulse in joburg veins Style it thus : that ‘poverty kills’ is no genius & pervert the Jamaica thang: ‘mimic & live…create & the artist dead’ & that’s the shebang-bang Like when the uniformed R1 / R4 rang

Sharpeville Soweto Sebokeng (we pauseless rap thru the pores no metaphor that’s great white jaws & vampire laws’ shark progress blood-suck commerce draining life-juice off freedom verse slime-time. universal / unique gawd-verse-cell fanon-spawn/satan horn – gored vessel ) capital meal? mediocrity rules, for fuck: word technician no condiment but rapocalyptic vision embodiment Of robo-tech wars against pro-gnostic whores sprouting mainstream purulent sore-flows what keep the fed in fat : s.a. version? : they w/rap it in gore….skin of my brother, comrade, friend. (mourning the microphone-god passing thru… bow down, MAN’s the truth the stamp is deep-ink imprint stays on. legacy-shine rest easy lyrical angel word-warrior soldier-poet. easy, robo-tech rapping it from heaven's roof : 'fuck serpent award ceremonies of filth i gets more luv where the count is lyrical-riches...

beyond material wretches- from here to wherever this thing called life stretches... no coffin, casket, tomb talk…antiquity you’re rhyming the womb from here to eternity (& that’s a true line of poetry---

rap running past 2-1 crap lies lined in paradise) & THAT ART this REALITY the CORE you died for…opposite the grovel-floor (verses aligned versus corporate prostituted ….executive perspective sick-lie finance freakonomics in the mix, constitutes the retrogressive posterity’s the genesis the END where it begin no one line cretin-lyric….pioneer-spirit) (we will yet see mahlathini growl turned minimised cola-cola tinny as minnie mouse howl at devil’s end) lyric-spit AK-spray oceanic pen-play fuck who’s the televised best (keeps the fee still no free-lip can they pay the sea?) robo-tech poem-storm bomb-burst – blast effects last beyond hiroshima genetics itching for cullinan diamond shine & joburg fame buried beneath mine-dumps shaking soul-thief gold-reefed rumps sand-clogged rectum itching for a Rustenburg platinum butt-plug fantasise ‘up the aliment with a treacherous bone-/precious stone encrusted log’ toilet) bank-roll (selves) all exotic for tourist bog titillation self-dehumanisation…. rust content rhyme on a dust-context rhythm crapper-rappers got a bland crew rag joint dumbed down to rap-n-fetchin’ clown pissy-blather-wack (they made the move from ‘art of war’ to fart of gore when intellect-assault put mental to asphalt) but) easy father tech, you got it slain on point…-pointing pain towards self-dignification!) respek

(This is one of the final performances Robo gave. Shot at The Bassline, October 2013)

*This article is part of Africasacountry’s series on South African Hip-Hop in 2014. You can follow the rest of the series here.