album-of-the--year-blog · 7 years ago
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Our Favourite Albums
‘End of Year’ and ‘Best Of’ lists can be corny. Here, some of your favourite South African writers wax lyrical about their FAVOURITE South African albums of 2017.
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album-of-the--year-blog · 7 years ago
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AKA and Anatii - ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’
By Sihle Mthembu
In a minute I will tell you why AKA and Anatii’s Be Careful What You Wish For (BCWYWF) is the best spiritual transformation album in the history of South African hip-hop.
But first let me note, the fact that this album even exists, itself is part of the completion of this cycle of personal transformation. For those with a short memory here is a recap. A few years ago AKA shaded Anatii, rightfully, for his shoddy work on Bananaz. He also called him out on the third verse of Composure. Since then fences have been mended and BCWYWF is the byproduct of that healing process. Fun Fact, AKA no longer performs his verse dissing Anatii on Composure instead he recites only it's opening line. “I'm the reason niggas had The Saga on repeat,” he says and then performs The Saga.
It's the kind of display that one can only read as a sign of respect and a signal to how much Anatii's friendship means to AKA. And here is the glue that holds this project together: BCWYWF is an album that swims against the tide of our preconceived notions of black male friendships and how men in hip-hop ritually bond. The focus is not on money, flashy cars and women or even common enemies, although that is there too, it is ornamental and at best decorative. An entry point to the much more solid foundation on which the album is built.
Anatii is the real surprise on BCWYWF. From his production which has a pop sheen and draws inspiration from Afro-Caribbean sounds and trap thuds, to his catchy and nonchalant lyricism. He has more than a few standout moments on the project not the least of which is his verse on Holy Mountain. Seats are colour of Mshoza is the best description of a colour since Jigga said his favourite hue was Jay-Z blue.
AKA also delivers some of his personal raps to date. Most directly he deals with the blurred lines between the personal and the public. Perhaps because the project is not only tied to the Supermega persona he has created for himself, it offers an outlet to speak with some candour and distance.
At it’s zenith, BCWYWF captures how cathartic black joy can be. Fame and it's afflictions are a recurring theme on the project. On initial listen the up-tempo beats can lull you into thinking this is a party album but there is a long con at play here. Repeatedly AKA and Anatii express their frustrations, fears and family politics with such a passive rage that it might elude you if you’re not paying close attention.
These hyphenated thoughts come off a sustained stream of consciousness. The kinetic song structures and the way the verses sometimes blend into each other like one long verse shows the comfort that the two musicians have with each other and highlights the benefits of ground up production and working together in studio as opposed to emailed verses back and forth.
This is an intricately balanced album with just the right amount of vulnerability for our world where we are used to putting filters on things. When I left baby mama she (his mother) took the shit hard/ might as well turn the drama into a hit song AKA says on the opening track Bryanston Drive. It’s lines like this that make you aware of one of the most underappreciated instruments in AKA’s arsenal. The ability to manipulate his vocals so as to make words that are so far apart phonetically, rhyme.
But beyond the effortless rhyming, the songs are worked like mules and they work for each other to function as part of a cohesive whole. The sequencing and length of the record is nearly perfect. Although I would have ended with Jesus Plug and not included The Saga.
According to the Oxford English dictionary, the word gospel means: “The teaching or revelation of Christ.” But AKA and Anatii's gospel, which was influenced by Kanye's Ultra Light Beam, reaches beyond the confines of organised religion. Theirs is a gospel of prosperity and self-care. As Anatii says in How You Like Me Now: Can’t negotiate the price down/Mama told me get a nice job/Four Seasons on the nightgown/ Make you kinda raise your eyebrow.
BCWYWF is an album seasoned with the things we South Africans consider holy including kwaito samples. On Bryanston Drive, about three minutes in, the instrumental flips from a muffled sci-fi kwaito with a sinister undercurrent and Anatii in his auto-tuned throng says: It's about time we listen to Boom Shaka.
It sounds both like a chant and a call to arms. Listening to it for the first time at my desk at work, I let out a delighted wince. And here is the thing about BCWYWF, it's not just music for passive listening, it is a somatic experience.
What AKA and Anatii have given us is an album’s worth of Instagram captions. They have also given us a project whose power is anchored by the way in which it sincerely documents the state of spiritual transformation it's architects are undergoing.
Sihle Mthembu aims to write books, to make films and to die without shame. Follow him @SihleMthembuZA and support his work HERE.
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album-of-the--year-blog · 7 years ago
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Amandla Freedom Ensemble - ‘Born To Be Black’
By Chumisa Ndakisa
To the Amandla Freedom Ensemble,
I thank you.
In the passed few weeks I have been experiencing an amplified amount of emotional and spiritual uncertainty. When it is really foggy and I don’t know my left from right, I help myself by taking some gin or ground tobacco to contain the expansion – this might give you an idea of the nature of my uncertainty.
An old crutch, Yoga, has also come to the fore as a saviour from heady moments. At first I practiced in the mornings or evenings to Brother Ah’s Move On Ever Forward. This music is a good support of my attempts to remember my body as my own. Ever since I discovered the potent collaboration of yoga and jazz, I have endeavoured to only listen to music of a similar virtue, until I can reach an equilibrium with my company. One morning I start to play Born to Be Black with a new demand, and I latch onto it an expectation to keep me walking within the bounds of a lit passage.
I am telling you that the frenetic progression of Movement, tethered by Zoe Modiga’s euphonic lamentation, lowers me with assurance as the palms of my hands meet the ground and my feet push through the air. You need to understand the prayerful breath-work you guide me through with Isikhumbuzo. As the horns breathe, so do I.
My muscles remind me that if I skip tomorrow’s session, the next day’s session will be more difficult. The sessions become a rite, plotting the identity of each track on my joints. The ache can feel good but perfecting a pose feels better. The sensation of my bones and cartilage and muscles rooting for me. For some days I keep up with myself; the ease in bending and stretching tells me my body knows that it wants what my spirit needs. My own lightness says, “chosi, chosi”, echoing the words on Isikhumbuzo.
The penultimate song, When Spirits Rejoiced concludes; I feel embraced by the room with the door closed and the windows wide open. I know, it does not serve me to resist.
With love and gratitude,
Chumisa N
Chumisa Ndakisa is a writer and curator in-love with jazz and the idea of it. Follow her @ChumisaPaquitan and support her work HERE.
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album-of-the--year-blog · 7 years ago
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Ginger Trill - ‘GVNG TAPES’
By Sabelo Mkhabela
Ginger Trill has been one of the most consistent rappers, and he just keeps bettering his craft. He is your favourite rapper’s favourite rapper. Rapped Stogie T during the BET Cyphers a few weeks ago: Yeah, they fill stadiums/ But lyrically they can’t fill Ginger Trill’s Palladiums. This year, the emcee delivered Gvng Tapes, a 5-track EP that doesn’t have “something for everyone”, but songs that anyone who has an ear for good rap will appreciate from the first to the last song. On Nobody (Interlude), the skilled rapper weaves impressive wordplay over an off-tune bass line. What sets Trill apart from a lot of rappers with flair, is how he builds his next line from the previous, instead of stitching random punchlines  and calling it a verse. On the song, Ginger plays around with the concept of Boity’s LEGIT deal, and throws in words like “styling” and “counterfeit”, which play on the fashion theme, while still making sense. The album is fraught with many of those flashes of the his genius. And his guests complement him with equal fire. SummerTime Cane raps: Where the hell you been?/ To be frank, I’m all about my Benjamins on Forrest Guap, a song which also features up-and-coming Cape Town rapper SimmySimmyNya. Nya gives the song a catchy chorus that qualifies it as the perfect choice for a single. Most of the features on Gvng Tapes, are there to fill in gaps that Trill feels he can’t. For instance, Ayanda Jiya is invited to add some soul by way of the hook on the closing song Stay Woke. This song is evidence of Trill’s good ear and judgment. The sample’s hums and the billowy keys on the beat just yearned for a vocal hook, and Trilly decided to not sing it himself, because he’s one of those rappers who aren’t trying to be everything at once. Even a song like Psychotic - which I hate myself for loving, for its degrading nature. You will admire it for the craftsmanship behind it – the effortless marriage of rhymes and vocals, with breaks and pauses where necessary, and how both Trill and featured guest Tommy Ills stick to the concept, and you can tell they are having fun with their craft. What Gvng Tapes is, is an example of a good rap project that has both commercial appeal and impressive rapping and general hip-hop sensibilities. It manages to entertain without trying to be pop or too artsy. Trilly chose production that gives him away as a student of the game, as most of the beats are inspired by both boom bap and the 808-laden modern hip-hop production styles, but it refuses to be one of either. Every rapper featured on Gvng Tapes manages to impress without trying too hard – they rap on-beat, and the quotables aren’t forced. Nothing more pleasing than a rapper who doesn’t sound like they are even trying. Being a great rapper is enough. Rappers don’t owe the world artsy music, they don’t owe scholars transgressive raps. And Gvng Tapes is a great rap project that isn’t trying to change the game, save the world or try to be “different”. It’s a great conflation of raps and beats, and the story of a rapper dealing with being extremely talented and still having to be emerging more than he feels comfortable to. With the right push, Gvng Tapes could have blown many hip-hop fans away. Looking forward to the album in 2018.
Sabelo Mkhabela is a hip-hop head and writer from Swaziland, currently surviving in Johannesburg. Follow him @sabzamk and support his work HERE.
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album-of-the--year-blog · 7 years ago
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Johnny Cradle - ‘Johnny Cradle’
By Tseliso Monaheng
The day began with either a text or a call.
Saki of Johnny Cradle wanted to know whether I’d be available later for a recording session -- to hang, and to possibly snap images of the process.
I obliged.
It was during the first weekend of December 2016, on the Saturday Salut was being laid down. Chris (Lombard, former guitarist) was leaving for Cape Town soon; a permanent arrangement. All of his parts had to be recorded before the new week as a result.
I arrived at the studio, which is located somewhere past Jozi’s more interesting CBD and heads towards its languid Northern suburbs, ready to bang my head to the music.
And bang I did, somewhat.
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The story goes that Saki needed a name to perform with during an event in the Eastern Cape (he’s from Mdantsane originally). His real name Sakumzi Qumana wasn’t enticing, so Johnny Cradle became the moniker he chose; the one that stuck.
It’s come to mean the everyday man: The hustler; the blue collar worker; the suit-and- tie corporate, white-collar homie. All of these manifestations of men, black and beautiful, have lives outside of what they are known for.
For Saki, it’s about being present for his daughter, above all else; but it’s also to do with being a loving partner; a true school, self-taught illustrator; and the vocalist and composer of what is now a trio completed by Soshanguve-born drummer and web designer Tebogo Mosane, and Lazola Ndamase -- father, deejay, producer.
Salut, the song recorded during that December weekend in 2016, is a personal document of the intersections in their lives, and a fist-tight, chest-out moment paying homage to the folks before them -- Saki’s struggle hero father, who besides being an active member in Poqo, later imprisoned on Robben Island, was involved in criss-crossing the country, transporting goods essential to the daily survival of South African households; DJ Laz’s grandparents, who raised him a church boy while his mother lived and worked elsewhere as a teacher; and Tebogo’s mother, who had to leave her family behind to seek out better opportunities for her offspring.
“We talk about people who are under-paid. People who are carrying the nation: Cleaners, gold miners, people who transport us every day,” says Tebogo. “There’s a line where we say keep your 20 bucks handy. Ask anyone who works a 9-to- 5 job how many times they’ve asked their colleagues for 20 Rands to go home, or to come back to work [the next day],” he goes on, reflecting on the precarious existence of people all over the continent and across the black Diaspora.
                                                                 *
The band’s evolved over many years, in different cities, to become the three-man outfit it is today. Their self-titled debut album has also just been released and in 10 songs, realises many of the themes Sakumzi’s been visiting through the years on EPs, remix project and unreleased songs.
But where previous projects sought more outward-leaning approaches to the music, fusing multiple instrumentation to create layer upon layer of sonic motifs, suggesting different directions to advance the message, the music on Johnny Cradle is straightforward and stripped to the bare essence -- the drum, and the bass.
It’s a motif, inspired by roots reggae music, which Saki’s been exploring since end-2013. He wasn’t convinced that he still wanted to pursue the dream, so a friend talked him into locking that entire December down to produce and record. A couple of songs emerged from that session, most notably uLate.
The autobiographical joint is the last on the 10-track project. It ties everything on the album together, and serves as the perfect accompaniment to album opener Mahambelala, which starts off with a vocal sample, courtesy of DJ Laz, proclaiming that they are ready to progress to some steps which are a bit more difficult, before Saki's fingers hit the keys and Stebu's drums set the groove off.
Mahambelala is about how the youngin from the Eastern Cape on uLate wound up in the city of bright lights, confused and somewhat bruised, lonely and searching for self in temporary relief. It’s the antithesis of the Men Like Us instance, which sees the all-encompassing character Johnny Cradle finally settle down and own up for prior fuckups.
Elsewhere on the album are Asidlali and the aforementioned Salut, which complement one another because of the work-oriented we-do- what-we- gotta, ballsy and unassuming attitude.
Saki’s straightforward style of writing lends a directness to the songs’ messages that might otherwise go unnoticed, had the approach been different. His pop culture references are dripping in Ebonics and kasi slang.
Find him giving a tongue-in- cheek shoutout to Heavy D; or fire off a sonic dap to Thembi Seete’s cryptic verse on It’s About Time; or a head-nod to his and our kwaito heroes M’du and TKZee as he sing-raps lines like phakamis’ izandla zakho, lapho sik’ bone from the latter group’s Magesh which appears on their Halloween album.
But there’s the other side which demonstrates that though Johnny Cradle is a principled disciple of life, he’s also not afraid to boogie-woogie in the club; to get crunk and enjoy life.
Songs like Sadakwa and Bangphethe best illustrate this complexity. The former song also gives a head-nod to Oda Meesta.
There’s kwaito here, mixed with roots, and hip hop, and the polyphonic vocal tones of boys who go up the mountain and return, a few weeks or months later, as men.
This project is every bit the 90s hip hop baby’s dream, completed by a self-awareness that illustrates what happens when boys grow up and decide to introspect.
Tseliso Monaheng is the corewreckah. Follow him @nemesisinc and support his work HERE.
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album-of-the--year-blog · 7 years ago
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Reason - ‘Love Girls’
By Mercia Tucker
Love, Girls
Love is a shapeshifter.
I’m angry at men because I trust very easily and in trusting very easily I also enjoy being protected. I’ve been shown the extreme side of no protection and I’ve been in a place where I’ve trusted and I’ve literally given someone my life and they’ve shown me that ‘I can take it.’
Love is a prayer. Love is a shelter. Love is a voice. Love is a key. Love is a storm. Love is a revolution. Love is a flight. Love is a sharpened iron. Love is an intoxication. As it moves between the different mediums through which sensory impressions are conveyed, so it takes on different forms. The feeling of love as an abstract concept flits through our cognisance almost as a thing of folklore; enchanting and captivating, awakening our higher selves. The reality of love, particularly failed love, is harsher in its discharge; sometimes dangerous, sometimes mispronounced, always kaleidoscopic.
Reason’s Love Girls is the storytelling arc of the journey of love and all its intricacies. As a collection of his life experiences with women it runs the gamut of typical rapper braggadocio to poignant introspection. It’s a reckoning of himself, a reasoning - if you will - underlied by his experiences with love over the years.
Love is an awakening.
I’m fighting all the demons that’s inside me for pureness, so I ask you not to blame yourself if I ever falter ... And I’m just telling you that fucking up isn’t obvious, it happens to the best of us from rappers to pastors, from actors to sports stars to regular folks ‘cause the matters of the heart don’t have a camera focus
His journey in love includes having gone through a divorce two years ago. Reason’s interpretation on wax of matters of the heart had only ever been in relation to one woman, his first love. That changes significantly on this record, and the difference is palpable. Choosing to commit to marriage so early in life meant that he bypassed an almost sacrosanct institution of your 20s; the exhilaration and turbulence of experiencing different romantic relationships in a quest for self-awareness.
He moves from titles like The Blessed Girl – more profane than pious – where money runs the show to The Happy Girl, whose affections come laced with a narcotic edge. The Perfect Girl is the one he fights for a committed relationship with, The Bad Girl tempts him, and The Angry Girl is the one that he’s pushed to new levels of fury. He ends off with The Blues (The Good Girl) where he’s faced with the choices of hurting someone to explore himself and his compulsions. There’s something about listening to the journey of this man awakened to newer versions of himself, enlightened in ways previously unknown that’s oddly familiar but comforting at the same time.
The wonder in the work is that while it’s written from his own perspective, as he scrolls down the list of the different kind of women he’s encountered, nostalgia quietly sits on your shoulder resting its head on yours as you collectively revisit the different women you’ve been at different stages of your life and relationships. You take the journey with him; bringing up the painful bits, lifting the corners of your mouth in a wry smile at the mischievous ones, evaluating where you are and how far you’ve come.
With his experiences now diversified and his reference with relationships not just a single point, what comes forth on Love Girls is the man re-invented.
Love is a redeemer.
Always having a choice and a voice, creating and sustaining my own desired lifestyle, most importantly mapping and shaping my future
As love takes on its different forms, Antoine de Saint Exupery’s words “No single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never suspected. To live is to be slowly born” find credence. The takeaway from Reason’s pièce de résistance is that love is a regenerative thing. It’s about making mistakes and learning from them, letting all your life’s experiences mould you into your best self. And while the rigorous kind of scrutiny into that personhood is more often than not reflected in relationships with others – more specifically romantic relationships – the truest significance of that effort is in falling in love with yourself again. Our impulses cling to complacency but the beauty of love is in redemption and regeneration.
Mercia Tucker is: a Universe of a woman, whole worlds inside me. Follow her @MissMercy_ and support her work HERE.
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album-of-the--year-blog · 7 years ago
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Rouge - ‘The New Era Sessions’
By Helen Herimbi
Purple. Green. Blue. A kaleidoscope of bodies illuminated by the stage lights. The bass throbbing beneath my feet springs up to my throat and I just know I won’t make it to the end of this singer’s set. My Apple Watch pricks my wrist. Take a minute to Breathe, the small screen blinks at me.
I nudge my brother and show him the message. Flippantly, I say something about how advanced technology is, or something like that, and laugh to keep the throbbing from escaping my throat and jumping out onto the dance floor. He doesn’t laugh.
The next day, I tell a friend about what always happens to me in public places. She is glad I finally have a watch that reminds me of the obvious and says something about how advanced technology is, or something like that. We laugh. She tells me I should seek therapy, maybe. So I did.
Robot Shrink: In a male-dominated industry fuelled by gender misconception, it is your belief that empowerment efforts are primordial to the evolution of the female narrative. Please explain.
Rouge, or Deko Barbara Wedi to her family, released The New Era Sessions to fanfare that zoned in more on her Women In Hip Hop campaign than the idea that she is one of the best new lyricists in South African hip hop.
Over 55 minutes, the album sees the Pretoria-based rapper living in a future where a cold robotic voice dripping with a French accent plays therapist. Not in an on-the-couch, tissues-on-hand kind of way. But in a way that clear questions are asked and only the facts are presented.
The album follows a linear narrative where topics of discussion include old school, trap, love and empowerment.
There are influences of the dreaded “the old school” term (here meaning 90s New York-era beats, double-time rhyming and lyrics about soul versus status) on Underrated. On that song she raps:
KillingTheMyth that you could never make it with the real rap/and the boombap/date(s) way back/before Jay/before Ye/before trap is Rouge raps before she sings: you gotta know who you are…
Rouge then proceeds to tell us who she isn’t before she delves into who she is. On Celebrity, which was inspired by a former associate who told her AKA thought she was wack when the truth was he’d never even spoken to him, Rouge places herself in the lonely sneakers of a famewhore.
She paints a picture that is beyond bitter underdog. It is storytelling at its finest where the celeb’s humble beginnings soon turn into the trappings of fame.
As if heeding her own warning, Rouge lets us into the world of a kid (Baby to the game/Born in ’92/But I’m an old soul) who saw a gap in the market for someone to really rep her peers.
Let It Go is like a literal reaction to the previous song, Celebrity, and she forges ahead as a fiery redhead who made rap her reality at just 22. She’s determined to change the hip hop face of the youth and move it from naïveté to a nascent niche.
Robot Shrink: Many are of the view that lyricism and musicality are incompatible with trap music. You disagree. Please elaborate.
Everyone and their big brother complains about trap being a young (wo)man’s sport. About it lacking substance (what does that even mean?). But Rouge readily proves otherwise.
She’s bored of the repetitive nature of her counterpart’s regular rap as she clocks her 10 000 hours (Déjà Vu). She addresses exclusion and black-on-black-on-black-on-black-on-black discrimination on No Pressure (Saying I aint black/’Cuz I don’t speak vernac/So I found a phrase up in your vernac/To tell you off like voe-voe-voetsek!)
The beats are decidedly trap. Even down to the dizzying drum patterns. And she moulds and bends and twists her vocals to reflect the times. The songs are fun twerkfests and she has bars. For instance, even the ultra catchy Dololo has some insight about why she refuses to go to twar.
Rouge also tells the story of Naledi, a young woman who uses the privilege of socially-praised looks to escape the snare of poverty. It’s a common story in rap but Rouge gives it a dual-view that makes it hard to vilify the subject. Plus who doesn’t want to be a part of the thunder thigh gang?  
The last quarter of The New Era Sessions is the only part that is a true reminder of her age. While it doesn’t take away from a near-perfect album, it’s hard to ignore that this young’un hasn’t had enough experiences with romantic love to give her a clear perspective on it. So songs like The Break-Up and No Strings come off as juvenile.
Robot shrink: Entry Validated.
Although it was therapy that I sort of sought before I bumped into someone else’s, The New Era Sessions is just what the doctor ordered. This album doesn’t have corny lines like the one that precedes this one though.
Rouge is a much-needed voice in rap music not just in order to tip the gender scales but also to showcase a dexterity that is part tireless hard work and part natural talent.
To attempt to invalidate both by consistently throwing her “female only” remixes and posse cuts as opposed to seeing that she really is shoulder-to-shoulder with your faves is ridiculous.  
My favourite album of the year will probably go down as a largely unheard one in a climate where gatekeepers would rather place a reality show star in the best lyricist category as opposed to a firespitter who just happens to be a woman.
Let’s all take a minute to breathe.  
Helen Herimbi is very discerning. Follow her @uHelenH and support her work HERE.
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album-of-the--year-blog · 7 years ago
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Shane Eagle - ‘Yellow’
By Fred Kayembe
WRITING MY WRONG
Here are some things I was right about in 2017:
Golden State Warriors win the NBA Championship This was obviously a very safe bet. But still. From the moment I learned that Kevin Durant was joining the former champions, I knew that the only way any team was beating GSW in the finals was if a chemically engineered combination of Superman and Robert Mugabe (resilience is a great quality to have for a player/team in an NBA finals series) was allowed to suit up for the opposing team. And even then, Steph Curry and his bandits would probably still find a way to muster up fifty 3-pointers from half-court to win the game in the last few minutes.
Debonairs will continue to do the most Here’s the thing: pizza is an institution – yes, an institution – that has existed long before any living human on this planet was conceived; that was 1889 so it has clearly stood the test of time. The combination of its core ingredients – bread base, cheese, tomato - is so classically simple that its many incarnations have achieved resonance far beyond Naples, where it was invented, to every corner of the world. You don’t need to get us excited about pizza, Debonairs; it sells itself. Stop with the pandering gimmicks. Just. Serve. Us. Pizza.
Bobby Brown will find a way to top every single outrageous shenanigan you’ve heard to date I’ve learned that no matter how insane you think Bobby Brown is, with each new year, it’s always safe to leave room for another layer of mind-blowing shock; and man, did 2017 deliver in this department. Did you read his 2017 account on how his first encounter with drugs was preparing cocaine-coated fried chicken for his family, as a ten year-old? Yeah, that happened.
Rice Crispies’ fourth mascot’s disappearance remains a conspiracy Another year, another age-old mystery unsolved. In the past century, certain events and occurrences have garnered global attention, by virtue of their inconclusive narratives, and many of them continue to enthrall and tickle the curiosity of mankind, eliciting ranges of conspiracy theories. Such events would include the enigma of the vanishing Flight 370 aircraft, Prince’s sudden death, and the miraculous return of LeBron James’ hairline. But we seldom discuss the disappearance of Pow – the fourth member of the wildly popular cereal Rice Crispies mascot team. The iconic Kellogs sophomore product was introduced to the public in the 1930s with the fraternal trio Snap, Crackle and Pop as ambassadors. By the 1950s a fourth member had joined, but quickly and mysteriously disappeared after only featuring in one TV advert (1959) despite being named a “brother” in that very ad. There was a time when I thought this would be the decade that would expose whatever depraved acts were committed against Pow and all those who’ve advocated for his justice. But at the top of the 2017, something overcame me and I just knew this would be another year that would go by without a slither of new information about this issue and I was 100% right. Personally, I switched to Fruit Loops over three years ago to stand in solidarity with those who still speak out against this injustice. Take that, cerealuminati!
Bafana Bafana will not qualify for the 2018 World Cup
An unpopular and unpatriotic position, it did not bring me pleasure to witness this come to fruition. But let’s keep it a buck: the last time we competed in a World Cup, we only “qualified” because FIFA rules stipulate that the host country is granted automatic participation. Not sure what needs to be done but something needs to happen. If Dragon Balls, magic or genies exist, now would be a great time to make use of them
Here are some things I was wrong about in 2017:
The best album of 2017 could come from literally anyone but Shane Eagle The best album of 2017 came from Shane Eagle.
Fred Kayembe is a grape among grapefruit. Follow him @Fred_Mercury1 and support his work HERE. 
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