nomaliqhwa

[nomaliqhwa]

HERE'S WHY #HERSTORY IS ALSO OUR STORY

Nomaliqhwa Hadebe | Illustrations: Zinhle Sithebe

In our roles as rappers, radio hosts, executives, editors, DJs, VJs and patrons – it's women who are the custodians of the culture and who have helped hip hop in South Africa be more than just an imported passing fad.

Hip hop offers a space for reflection, ambition and comfort. It's competitive, raw, badass and nasty. And it can also be melancholic and emblematic, speaking to and for you. Simply put, hip hop belongs to women. And with Castle Lite bringing the first-ever all female line-up to Africa with the #HIPHOPHERSTORY concert, it's an opportune time to reflect on women's impact, starting with the trailblazers who will be on that stage.

Because for a genre that is shaped by many women's hands, the optics that currently represent hip hop still don't show the full picture. The way women are made to feel valueless within the scene, seen only as accessories to men's success is fraudulent. Women are the custodians of hip hop culture in South Africa right now, and it's about time we said it out loud.

"People generally think that with females sex sells and that's the only way you can get the message across. But that's not the case, that's what we are trying to eradicate in any industry that deals with entertainment and women. We are not here to sell ourselves, we are here to communicate with you. And in terms of transformation, that's happening more now." Ayanda MVP

There's a popular tag about Cape Town hip hop being excluded from the greater narrative, and you wouldn't be completely off if you bought into it.  Similarly the women doing the work haven't fully received the props that they deserve, which has resulted in a massive oversight of the important conversations and themes that female MCs continue to bring to the forefront. Today, we are privy to rappers like Andy Mkosi and Dope Saint Jude using their narratives to make music that speaks to how race, gender, sexuality and class impact their lives. Legitimising their intersected identities within the bigger scope of the hip hop narrative and allowing that representation to cross over far and wide. Like with the project that was Andy Mksosi's intimate Bedroom Tour, it added an incredibly personal and immersive feel to the way we experience the genre. Demonstrating the different dimensions of what hip hop in South Africa is and can be – even to communities it's been previously known to subjugate.

As in the case of rap supergroup and South African Hip Hop Hall of Famers Godessa. In our narrow perspective we forget to pay homage to these true OGs: three women out of Cape Town who charged forward in their role as pioneers of a mainstream movement at a time when the genre needed a buy in from women and the nation as a whole. Kwaito was at its prime as the urban culture, and reverberated with the South African experience in a way that hip hop did not. Yet Godessa's impact cemented hip hop's place in South African popular culture and ensured that it was more than an imported passing fad. They did that.

Godessa's presence was especially important at a time when the types of conversations we had about marginalised groups weren't as mainstream and as nuanced as they are now. Even while faced with the expectation that's still prevalent to this day – that women must compete with one another for limited seats at the table – they came through as three women of colour from Cape Town. In love with how rap gave them the ability to shape and control, Shame, EJ and Burni disproved the myth that women are each other's opponents by design. They also gave us bop on bops while providing one of South African hip hop's biggest lessons: if this thing is going to survive the early days it's going to have to be through the power of collectives. A call that was heeded nationwide by groups like Skwatta Kamp, Jozi, Teargas and more.

A significant scene in the Roxanne Shante biopic comes at the end when a little boy named Nassir desperately seeks out Roxanne to help him with his rhymes – alluding to a whole Nas needing to know that Roxanne thought he had the ability to one day be a good rapper.

It's worth considering that the reluctance to include women in the conversation may be hinged on an aversion to "women's issues". Perhaps it's the disinclination to rhymes that centre experiences that are not tailored for male consumption that fuels the myth that the quality of rap suffers when women pick up the mic.

But have you noticed how many women's nods a track needs for it to truly take off? In South Africa, one of the greatest examples of the power of women's co-sign is Lee Kasumba. It is her love of hip hop that has led to a career as one of the most prolific personalities in entertainment on the continent, and who has launched rap careers locally and throughout Africa. As a DJ and producer at YFM she created a space for South African hip hop to go mainstream, and then working as the Head of Channel O she now ensures that some of our faves stand a chance at being play-listed. Alongside this her work at Big Brother allows hip hop to leverage a wider audience. Then it is her being part of judging panels for BET Awards, Hype Magazine Awards and the South African Music Awards that has made it so that there are legitimate dreams to chase within the sorority.

Lee Kasumba's flexibility as a creative and conviction that not only does her opinion matter, but that it is important, has helped propel the growth of hip hop across the continent. It's her identity as a Ugandan woman living in South Africa shapes what she envisions and it remains important that she see her visions through because of how far her reach extends to. It's important she makes the career leaps giving her access to more resources and connections, like with the UN projects she is a part of as well as her charity that links African youth together through hip hop, Harambe. In doing so she has created more opportunities for many, broadening the scope and widening the cannon.

Passing the baton on to artists like Moozlie, who as a MTV VJ gave the nod that affected how viewers perceived things, it was her interviews and reporting that made the rest of the country aware of happenings in spaces like Braamfontein and the rap stars and fashions that emerged from those scenes. Her face helped brands integrate themselves into the local scene on a much bigger scale, while her presence as an MC at events brought people to clubs so that DJs could play the songs that in turn made them an integral part of the culture. Not surprising then that as a rapper Moozlie has released material in relatively quick succession that's challenged her male adversaries. Another game-changing move has been starting her own label to ensure that the deals suit her best interest as the artist she wants to be. This is beyond the question of inclusivity, it's a challenge for the crown.

Sure, there's no denying how women are part of hip hop's aesthetics: the booty-shaking, the bottle girls, girls getting sprayed with Champagne, faces on the flyers, bodies doing on campus promotions... That's hip hop too, but so is consistency.

And since the 'Amantombazane' remix, released a good four years ago, Nadia Nakai has consistently delivered. Her rap persona has consistently been the unrelenting foul mouthed rapper, unafraid of courting the crass and challenging whomever for the number one spot. On features she's upfront about her intentions, she isn't there to sing a hook or twerk in the background; she's there to kill that sh*t. Improving her pen game so that each verse is better than the last, Nadia knows that she won't be afforded the opportunity to be lazy or that the predominantly-male industry is waiting for her to be.

If how good she looks is going to grab your attention first then so be it; Nadia uses the agency of her body as a part of her brand and has no qualms tapping into that. Having been featured on some of the biggest and most commercially viable songs Nadia has become an ambassador of the new school and proves how our female rappers may be the hardest working of any of the main players today.

It's this visibility that has created a space for women writers, DJs, rappers and fans to claim ownership in a hyper-masculine space. A power that has given women the room to decide how they want to enjoy what comes from it, as well as the power to out problematic figures from performances while making a point of promoting inclusivity. It's the female buying power that indicates the taste levels in hip hop: the images women aspire to – be it overt sex appeal or boss bitch looks – the fashion we find appealing, and that is empowering. Women need know that we have that power.

We see this online in spaces like Twitter, which has become the first real go-to when one wants to see how well a project is doing. It's the women with the many followers, often brought on by teams as conversation drivers, tweeting out their opinions because their influence is the deciding factor over whether or not a hit will bang. It's the influencers who get asked to promote the big shows and yes it's the mention of Nicole Nyaba and Sophie Ndaba that make a line memorable, downloadable and dare I say, bearable. It's the memes, gifs, Instagram captions, snapchat videos. It's the girls, girls, girls, girls...

At the intersection of hip hop and identity politics women have found that they can create their own spaces that hip hop can live and breathe in. Pussy Party, founded by Phatstoki and Rosie Parade at Kitcheners where women and femmes dominate the space, learn to be DJs and ultimately feel safe enough to enjoy hip hop in the way they want.

What is most inspiring is that we have a new generation of women working their way towards being Lee Kasumbas in their own right. That we can listen to Loot Love on a prime weekend slot on Metro FM and be reassured that our voices matter. Knowing that the idea of collaboration isn't discouraged, that there's room for all of us to eat and still have healthy competition. Knowing that women have the clout to achieve on the same scale as figures who previously took up all the space. It's about acknowledging that hip hop is ours enough for it to be something we feel entitled to enough to hand over.

[nomaliqhwa]

Portfolio of original work with links to published work

Articles for Superbalist (2018)

HERE'S WHY #HERSTORY IS ALSO OUR STORY

https://superbalist.com/thewayofus/2018/09/07/heres-why-herstory-also-our-story/13509

Articles for QuartaPast Magazine (2016)

·         Zulu Michael Jackson Trial by Nomaliqhwa Hadebe

http://quartapast.co.za/2016/03/zulu-michael-jackson-trial/

 ·         Why the Art World Needs Afrikan Feminism by Nomaliqhwa Hadebe

http://quartapast.co.za/2016/09/art-world-african-feminism/

   Ongoing Series on battling depression as a black woman in Africa for Holaa Africa (2015- onwards)

·         Where Can I Place My Pain: The Intersection Between Privilege, Blackness and Mental Health http://holaafrica.org/2015/09/29/where-can-i-place-my-pain-the-intersection-between-privilege-blackness-and-mental-health/

 ·         A Very Not Nice Story: http://holaafrica.org/2016/01/17/a-very-not-nice-story-2/

 ·         Around Because and For My Mother: http://holaafrica.org/2016/01/25/around-because-and-for-my-mother-2/

 Guest Contributor on Melanin Indigo: Black Queens and kings. A blog dedicated to honoring the black youth of South Africa.  (2016)

·         Womxn of Color Winning : The Norm (Guest Contributor)  by Nomaliqhwa Hadebe  https://melaninindigo.wordpress.com/2016/01/23/womxn-of-color-winning-the-norm/

 UCT Varsity Paper (2015)

·         Stop and Listen (on student protests) By Nomaliqhwa Hadebe : http://varsitynewspaper.co.za/opinions/4274-stop-and-listen

 All posts for Rapfornication under the pseudonym Norman.

 2016:

·         Rapfornication & Friends Present: Our Top Ten http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/136384681497/rapfornication-and-friends-present-our-top-ten

 ·         The One Known As Jacque Turned To Scott”: Travis Scott By Norman.

 http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/139066085012/the-one-known-as-jacque-turned-to-scott-travis

 ·         Life Imitates Art Sometimes: Basquiat & Kid Cudi  By Norman

http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/144621086812/life-imitates-art-sometimes-basquiat-kid-cudi

 ·         Drug Dealers Anonymous: Rap, Fame and the Feds by Norman

http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/149139616537/drug-dealers-anonymous-rap-fame-and-the-feds-by

   2015:

 ·         A List Of A Bunch Of Songs We Liked by Norman with Rodey: http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/136303672972/a-list-of-a-bunch-of-songs-we-liked-this-year

·         Chasing Samantha by Norman:

http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/129073199787/chasing-samantha-a-short-story-by-norman

·         Odd Future: A Reflection by  Norman: http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/125758981377/odd-future-a-reflection-by-norman

·         A Conversation With Thandie & Norman: http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/123367515812/a-conversation-with-thandie-and-norman

·         The Perks of Bullshit By Norman: http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/118055861632/the-perks-of-bullshit-by-norman

·         No Church In The Wild by Norman: http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/121375280792/no-church-in-the-wild-by-norman

·         Norman Unconspiritizes Hip Hop: A Piece by Norman http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/112348322267/norman-unconspiricises-hip-hop-a-piece-by-norman

2014:

·         The Black Hippy: By Norman

http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/100768630567/the-black-hippy-by-norman

·         My Relationship With Kanye West by Norman:  http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/87700557482/my-journey-with-kanye-by-norman

·         Gambino Is A Mastermind by Norman: http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/83822163449/gambino-is-a-mastermind-an-incredibly-long-and

·         Listen To Vic Mensa By Norman: http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/83611015147/listen-to-vic-mensa-by-norman

·         Rapfornication Mission Statement:  http://rapfornication.tumblr.com/post/83621300185/rapfornication-mission-statement

 Awkward Norman: A personal blog where I explore my identity as a foreign black working class woman living in Cape Town’s white suburbia. Includes reflective pieces, music reviews, book reviews, academic essays and short stories.

(2013- onwards)

·         http://nomaliqhwa.tumblr.com/

[nomaliqhwa]

[nomaliqhwa]

[nomaliqhwa]

sunshine.

[nomaliqhwa]

uncovered by denim visual

1 of 1.

Directed by Nomaliqhwa

[nomaliqhwa]

I wrote another one, I hope I made sense about these black kids.

Drug Dealers Anonymous: Rap, Fame and the Feds by Norman

Introduction.

There’s a scene in Straight Outta Compton where NWA are about to perform after being served a gag order. The police have told the group that they cannot incite the crowd with anti-law sentiment “Fuck The Police”. The group decide, against the council of their manager Jerry that they will perform the song anyway. They tell the crowd that though the police have told them not to they will mostly because their lyrics ring honesty in the ears of most of the concert attendees. A few moments after the song starts the policemen in the crowd who are dressed as civilians move towards the stage and the group run off the stage. The police meet them outside as they’ve formed a barricade that basically leave them cornered. The boys are cuffed and thrown into a van where they simply just look at each other and laugh. The audience at outside burning a conveniently placed garbage bin on a conveniently placed bridge.

It’s no secret that rap music and the law aren’t the best of friends. You would think that the rebellious illegitimate love child of music and America would be rock ’n roll the way they frame it. The abrasively loud, noisy, drug taking, multiple women fucking, anti-disestablishment tunes that have rung in the ears of generations of humanity as a whole. Our grandparents listened to Elvis because he was the king. But like everything white and American this was just another item on the list of stolen and moronically appropriated expressions of “black culture”. Rock was the Blues and the Blues was the music of the blacks about the blacks for the blacks.

Many of these men and women made music about life littered with drugs, sex, prostitution and crime. The struggle attached to the proximity of destitution. No one really wants to tell you that Billie Holiday was a sex worker. No one wants to emphasize how Charlie Parker died. We like the shoo bab shoo bab of the blues and jazz but no one wants to get into how that was the communication form that the narrative of black took. Broken down. Sometimes stripped down to the least it could be that somewhat resembled a complete sound. It’s strange to think about music we celebrate in that way. It’s strange to think about music past pleasure. That the aesthetic feel of a genre lies not in the form it takes but what is packed it in. it’s true intention past being a song that sounds nice.

Modern day

It’s hard to understand rap music and its purpose today because it has branched off and become so much more than what used to be the bare essentials but it’s not hard to understand the people it is comprised of.

We have the new school of kids rapping. Many of them one would like to think are clean kids who made a hobby of playing with Alberton on Saturdays. Friends deciding to call themselves collectives on Facebook and throwing links to their music on sound cloud via their twitter. Harmless kids our age trying to make something of themselves. Trying to get signed to labels while also competing at every and any talent show. Trying to make cool music videos, win some awards, feature in some magazines, model for some labels, and get a shoe made by Nike.

It’s 2016 and Black Lives Matter. Drugs that don’t come in the form of codeine and sprite rarely get airplay on the radio these days. Your favorite rapper is a vegetarian because Gwyneth Paltrow said backstage at the concert in Paris that she’s never felt better. Your favorite rapper featured on three episodes of Regular Show.

We are moving towards the identity of a clean rapper seeing through the third eye and that eye saw gang violence and street cred and realized that a few hours on WORLDSTAR’s YouTube page, a few hours in the burrows with that one cousin Deon and his weed dealer Joe might get him the story about how Basquiat used to come by calling himself Mike and pained the one door. I mean this is what we want to hear

But there’s another aspect to it. We like the idea of vegan rappers eating in fancy restaurants in SoHo but we don’t really want to hear about Jamaica Queens anymore. We don’t want to hear about Marcy Projects. We don’t want to hear about Harlem. We don’t want to really hear about Brooklyn. Because that makes us face up to a dark truth that we conveniently misplace. That these are projects designed to house the black population. They are racist structures. They are poverty ridden, drug ridden, gun ridden high crime areas littered with horrific statistics of infanticide, rape and “too many homies who didn’t make it out”. No one chooses to live in the projects. Not even our favorite rappers.

But they are our favorite rappers because of the things that their songs say they did. The Jigga man was a dealer. As was Biggie. RZA and Raekwon were investigated in the connection to murder in 1999. A$AP Rocky peddled too. Some of them shout out names of their gangs and we like the sound of it because the beat drops so neatly about the territorial shout out. As listeners we love the authenticity that comes with it. “Its raw”, is something we like to say. We uncomfortably side with 50 Cent when he shades Rick Ross as being a correctional officer trying to make it seem like he was a part of a life he never was. We laugh at him, clown him again and again.  We want that real, is what we call into the radio shows demanding. “motherfuck _____ !”.

    Then the rappers get caught, the ones we lawd for being real, and it’s a tug of war between our morality and our pleasure. Hip hop is our vice.

    “Who shot ya?”

  When Bobby Shmurda got arrested it hit the hip hop community smack dab in the front of its face. It came at a time where that conveniently misplaced reality that these kids live was next to non-existent to us. Because these young kids were celebrity superstars. Glamorous. Bubblegum rap, right. And then you had Bobby hit the Shmurda and then Booby got arrested in connection to murder.

When magazines like Complex and XXL released the charges to the public and in a sense rehashed that conversation where rap is situated at a very complicated identity intersection. It was a conversation where in a sense we all had to go back and think about every time we said #Free____ what exactly had that person done to be in jail in the first place and what type of environment creates that kind of person that is so ingrained in a systemic fuck over that they can be making money, the door that says “this way out” is open but man still opts to charge into a dressing room at a performance and open fire.

Perhaps with our understanding of societal structures with time, the ability to practice fluidity, the access to information that allows one to understand why it is that with that specific identity they are situated where they are that they would embrace the fame and leave the gang life. A part of me though is still conflicted as I attempt to draw out this rational conclusion because I feel that we ask for this. We embrace fluidity as unknown individuals but hate that Jay Z has gone soft in his role as a husband and father. Reasonable doubt cast.

And capitalism being capitalism builds on this. Label heads want the thugs, the want the street rappers. It’ll be interesting to see how and if someone like Kodak Black will last outside jail as he raps about a life he cannot legally live anymore but that his music will demand that he does. It’ll be a saddening but understanding to see what happens with him when the company that he keeps, still heavily emerced in that life, either leave him or coerce him. Ask him to prove himself.

As of yesterday, it was announced that Kodak Black would i nfact not be released from prison. The 19 year old was facing 55 years in prison but with the persuasion of label execs and lawyers the judge was set to release him. That was on Tuesday. Yesterday the police located two other warrants out for his arrest including sexual misconduct so he was not release and it looks like Kodak will not be freed. 

it’s a hard way to try and take in hip hop, so many of our favorite rappers have been in and out of prison for parole violations on other felonies and I suppose those are the ones that we can comfortably stomach. Those are the ones that even white media will cover and write about in their gossip sections next to a picture of Taylor Swift because in a sense those are safe crimes. Those are Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears too much fun crimes. White women and Justin Beiber do that.

But guns, kidnapping, drugs, high speed police chases, battery, murder and the fucking credit cards with the scammers in a three strike system specifically designed to enslave black labor.. a system that also forces these offenders no “second chance” is another thing entirely. Reading Kodak’s rap sheet and seeing that he’s been in juvenile detention more than thrice in his childhood I do so very doubt that the transition into adulthood and the handling of responsibilities even down to the self were really possible. It forces kids into this corner and when they get there the system spits back to them the line about civility, as if that’s an option.

In that interview with GQ, Shmurda’s associate spoke about this incident where Bobby had left NY because everything in NY was getting intense and all those around him felt that the best option was that he stay as far away from it as possible by moving him, or at least trying. The following is an excerpt from Bobby Shmurda: His Surreal Saga and Exclusive Jailhouse Interview by Scott Eden:

“Sha Money tried to persuade him to stay in Los Angeles and get down to business in a studio there. But Pollard didn’t like L.A. He arrived late to sessions, Sha Money says: “He didn’t work, so it was almost like a waste. When he went to New York, he worked. So I had to go back to New York to record with him there. But I kept telling him: ‘Yo, you need to get out the city. Change it up.’ And he fought me.”

Pollard also abandoned the condo in Florida, returning to Brooklyn and his East Flatbush crew. “Bobby was like, 'I don’t understand why you won’t let me hang out with my friends,' ” recalls Flores. “It was a constant battle. Constant.”

  A few nights ago I tweeted “Free Bobby Shmurda too” and was met with some asshole’s response of “did you even read the charges bbz”. I don’t know whose mans this was but as I looked at ReTch’s charges sheet and the world and I anxiously waited for Kodak to be released or whatever the fate of this young man’s life would be I thought hard about what about the crimes. What about the fact that these incidents had taken place, he didn’t not do them.

Fucked up as it is Bobby Shmurda’s affiliate was charged with murder and sentenced basically to jail forever after a body was found in some creek in wrapped in plastic. Reading his very saddening account of how.. of how he got to prison he spoke about witnessing a murder. Scary as it was, knowing that he is still waiting to be put on trial and that he cannot incriminate himself anymore, I can’t sit here and type that this was either his first, or his last, or his only incident related to murder. It’s not reported and not ever shooter gets indited for murder because black bodies are disposable but that happens every day. Members of black society are terrorized by the drugs brought in, the guns in the street and family members lost. We want these kids to leave this life but who gets to be held responsible?

  “Fuck the police”

There is a fine line that I fear blurring where in the same breath that I ask for us to be rationale in who we ask to be freed, who we ask to get a second chance, that I recognize that America is very full of shit. And so must be our approach to seeking out the answer. The last two years with the increasing numbers of murders committed by police officers of black innocent bodies it’s irresponsible ignore the systemic violence that those who occupy the black identity are faced with right up until the end that does force one into “that life”.

A few days the Trump spokesperson was on television defending Trump saying something or the other. Next minute the reporter read her for filth where it turns out that this woman running this political campaign for Presidency was a shop lifter and had been arrested. It made me laugh then it made me sad as I remembered all that Assata Shakur wrote about her times in county jails filled with black bodies of small time offenders because of their record not in any way allowed access to a “better life”, people who have had to sell drugs to get by. It’s a selfish act, funny how so many dealers don’t touch the product even before they cut it. But they’re on the corner selling it.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Future even confessed to having to sell drugs even to his aunt who was an addict because what choice was there. This is a common narrative, but when we meet it in the music we consume, aside from the beat banging, are we encouraging autobiographical accounts or are we perpetuating a really fucked up cycle. Are we upholding the system. Are we complacent in our part of supporting institutional injustice and discrimination. Do we really care? We and perhaps artists are found in a position where they are rewarded for their glorification of this truth not necessarily the life of that truth. We want these kids to quit trapping. So when they can why won’t they? Why can’t they?

[nomaliqhwa]

[nomaliqhwa]

:) I guess I’m back to writing, that’s cool. yay me

Life Imitates Art Sometimes: Basquiat & Kid Cudi  By Norman

PT. 1

It took my fourth rewatching of The Radiant Child to re-remember how sad Basquiat’s dance with life, fame and happiness was. I started thinking how inevitable that tragedy is for people of color or that it must be a part of the narrative for the person to have appeal. To get people to want to come and pay us attention.

Drawing artistic parallels might be one of the most played out unnecessarily unfair things that as writers and self-proclaimed art critiques and scholars we choose to do, it’s demeaning. If every print maker was compared to Ernest Haeckel, if every painter was compared to Picasso and if every rapper coming out of somewhere that he wasn’t living in today the stories that these legends are build off of would mean nothing. So writing about 80′s art world rock star rebellious genius child and hip hop’s rebellious and often misunderstood wonder kid is a risk. A damn near stupid one at that but I’m going to do it anyway.

  808s, Cudi’s Heartbreak.

In a studio late 2008, with sci-fi movies and porn playing on the screens whilst on mute in the background, booze and a mix of drugs all over with some hangers on, producers and emotions in the mix Cudi and West set about recording what would be their strongest collaborative effort to date. It was dark and it was different. Auto-tune made Kanye’s voice sound more melodic whilst Cudi honed in on his humming range. Sometimes porn was on the screen. The collaborative nature of the process, with the taking away and building over, that draws its own parallels to the often overlooked and under appreciated Warhol and Basquiat paintings.

In the 80s Andy Warhol himself would tell you that he was played out. People had loved Warhol, bought Warhol, sold Warhol and then were over Warhol. This was just how people felt. People who for the first time in a really long time could bite into the high art with its minimalist paintings of invisible air. Everyone was a critique and they didn’t want to buy Andy’s work anymore. But in the art circles as Fab Five Freddy would put it albeit lots of 80s slang that I wouldn’t know how to articulate, “To us, Andy was a god”. Andy Warhol was what maybe Kanye West has come to represent to the kids. He was a mentor. He’s transcended whatever way the next magazine was defining art, he transcended whatever rules applied to artists. Andy was Andy, no one knew Andy like Andy knew Andy. No one loves Kanye like Kanye loves Kanye.

One evening a very strange and disturbed woman shot Andy Warhol. She had been one of the girls on his strange Factory movies with a forgettable face. Maybe she had once been his stars, golden girls or someone who hung around at the art shows and danced with him a few times at the Mudd Club. She shot him and he lived but it caused him to become incredibly paranoid and live in a perpetual state of fear. It made Andy who had been this soft spoken yet loudly eccentric figure into someone who was more closed off more guarded. Anyone couldn’t just go to The Factory anymore. Andy stopped making art.

One evening in late 2007 a 911 call was placed. The person on the other line was screaming that a woman, Ms Donda West was not breathing following an operation she had had the day before. In fact she had undergone three operations (liposuction, tummy tuck and a breast augmentation) the previous day and was home the next. She died whilst the operator was still on the other line. Her only child, Kanye West in his own words, “lost his soul”.

Artists need to move to be inspired. Connect to be inspired, engage with new people and new ideas to be inspired. Remember this.

                             Plain Pat and Emile Present: A Man Named Basquiat

KiD CuDi, that’s how you would write it back when that was a thing I guess. There’s a tape that the two producers Plain Pat and Emile made with him, A Kid Named Cudi. Its twenty tracks long and. There’s sad songs, happy songs, funny songs, brief songs and songs about drugs. We understand projects now to be reflective of a specific moment in time. That the themes visited and constructed reflect the mood of the then and the then points towards the now. It’s why we listen to old work. Why we collect old music. Why the past holds sentimental value for us even though we were never there. It’s why Pac and Biggie are your favourite rapper’s favourite emcees.

A Kid Named Cudi was a mixtape back when rappers still cared about a mixtape. Back when mixtapes were defined as a morphing of rhymes over beats that rappers wished they had had. Usually the distinction is clear, but for some reason or another this one played like an album. It plays like something that an artist has made after years in the game, three albums and a couple Grammys. The confidence and sincerity reads like an artist has done all that needs to be proved, fed into it and is now speaking to it. It was like a third exhibition at the Gogasin Gallery third year in a row. Or a room set aside  at The FUN Gallery for one person in an exhibition of over 100 artists. It was special, it felt fulfilled.

Kanye West signed him to G.O.O.D Music and he was making money, a lot of it. With the label he had access to a whole collective of artists who that.. I’m not going to say switched up his style but definitely played a part in shaping it. What was he rapping about is a question answered by the song Heaven at Night. Man On The Moon: The End Of Day, narrated by Common was an album about a person wrestling with demons. The demons of the mind. The demons of the darkness and depression taking over the body. It was an album that spoke to the suffocating nature of the industry and fame and pressure, the pursuit of happiness after losing it in a place you’re supposed to find it.

All of these questions being asked at a time when rap and the game weren’t interested in that.  MGMT, Ratatat, David Guetta and different themed videos in when men like Drake were making a claim for it as the self-proclaimed kings of emotion, without any emotion.

No one thought SAMO was a black guy. No one thought that t-shirts and window sills as frames and canvases would one day be worth millions. All made by the kid who spent his evenings as the last person in the club picking up coins on the floor for food money he didn’t need to be begging for was the same kid tagging prophecies on the walls in SOHO when graffiti and “street” artists didn’t write words, didn’t name themselves. This high school kinda sorta drop out with the French name. the drug taking, vagabond dressing father as an accountant, Brooklyn brownstone raised Jean Michel was going to be famous. No one thought he was SAMO. No one knew that stopping being SAMO would mean the death of Jean. No one thought a kid with everything he could ever possibly need would chase whatever he could possibly want, attain it and feel emptier than he had without it.

What’s black anyway? There’s a genre we call hip hop. It’s black and it’s ours and we hate when other people try translate it into something it’s absolutely not.

What’s art anyway?

[nomaliqhwa]

Noma Interviews Thandie

I met Thandie a few years ago, I was trying my best to pretend to know what I was doing with my blog. A  mutual friend really made a point of getting her name to me and after a whole lot of twitter interactions we met for a breakfast at a restaurant close to campus. I didn’t know what to think or what to expect. I was frightened more than anything that she’d see through my facade and realize that I knew nothing. 2014 had been a good year for young creatives and creators in SA for some reason or another. It was a pure air that we all seemed to have inhaled, perhaps the scent was naivity. The type that had us feeling that maybe we were all going to be famous and make more of ourselves aside from being kids with a tumblr and a cool twitter handle. Perhaps it was just being able to see in someone else what I thought and hoped I saw in myself, a young Zimbabwean free-spirited creative woman trying to make something out herself in Cape Town.

Since then Thandie has moved on to start her own thing that I have watched grow and grow. I couldn’t take offense because she was doing right by herself. From panel talks to photography shoots to shooting her own conceptualized music videos. The girl I met that day and the woman I know now almost seem like two different people. I asked Thandie to talk to me about everything from negotiating her way through this space as a young black foreign female film maker. From her influences, her sentiments of the “industry” and her journey of self-discovery by means of her creativity that has shaped her brand and ultimately herself.  

 .Start:

  Nomaliqhwa: What did you base the concept of the video around, what was that process like? And how much of a role did the actual song Manasseh play in that conceptualizing process?

Thandie: The song Manasseh heavily influenced the outcome of the video in terms of imagery. A lot of the message was represented symbolically which is  the sort of effect  you get with the music, a lot of imagery that you need to let sink in. The intention was to ignite consciousness and with that in mind we had an idea of what direction we wanted to take the video in. what it would bring. Thinking of how it would bring a certain knowledge to people. The concept relied on the idea of the word Manasseh as it was  the name that Joseph from the Bible gave to his son, it means "God has made me forget all my trouble". It was important that we drew from that on that for the overall concept.

The process of making this was spontaneous, H3nry and I hadn't planned to shoot on the day we did, but that’s just the nature of these things. Sometimes when not everything is available to you when you need it.  Filming equipment is costly and that’s limiting sometimes but we don't really consciously acknowledge that, we make the best out of what we have access to. Because if we keep waiting for things to be just right, all in order and all perfect we'd never get going man. On that day we happened to have an old camera from a friend and decided to walk to one of my favorite areas in Cape Town to shoot what we could as best as we could. That part was a lot of fun and frustrating , I love to experiment with shots so with the song in mind I kept to an aesthetic that I thought would complement the sort of images I knew I'd want to incorporate in the video, the kind of trippy vibes, spiritual and religious symbols too. I knew that would be a major part of it from the beginning, you know someone has to make this knowledge accessible, so that motivated the way we chose the flower of life or the ankh to be in the video.

It’s crazy how everything worked out though, because a few days after we shot, we met Mr. Thomas by fate, he is the one talking about life's blessing in the beginning of the video. We hadn't planned to speak to him, or let alone even know of his existence.  The content of that conversation was mind blowing and so well suited to what the video was about, that it became a part of it. It’s as if what we needed just came together regardless of everything else that was absent and would've made a good difference. Bringing it all together was both the most frustrating and most exciting part of the process though, it was a lot of paying attention to detail and realizing mistakes and learning, still working to make sure that vision came through with what we had captured. I was so fortunately blessed to work with Nani Chehore, we did the editing together and he completely understood the vision so it was a great creative synergy that made the whole process complete.

  Nomaliqhwa: What about yourself did you put into this video? It sounds strange but I think what sets music video directors apart from one another is there's almost a signature that they add to their work that allows for whoever to see to identify continuity between their last video and this one. I know this isn't your first time working on videos with Henry (but I will say that this is my favorite) but where is Thandie in this?

  Thandie: Thank you. A lot of what I believe in is what’s in the video, that’s who I am. There's been a (for lack of a better word) didactic spin that I like to give the videos, drawing attention to ideas I think resonate with humanity... I also love to experiment with camera movement and it just compliments the aesthetic I'm obsessed with right now.

 Nomaliqhwa: I think the thing that made the video for me so much better was the fact that I know that behind this is a student making the most of what's available in front of her without necessarily compromising on quality. My biggest critique of the local industry is that many opt for the compromised version because no one will really complain. We're an underfed market. What's your take on that and does it affect the final presentation of a video you've made? Does it matter? Are we in a vacuum that takes whatever? Does the local industry have standards? It's a loaded question I know

 Thandie: I definitely agree, we're a severely underfed market and it’s no surprise that quality is compromised often. But that doesn't necessarily mean that our local industry has no standards and will take whatever.  , it’s just about who they take it from. A lot of established artists get away with whatever because we already know who they are and know all the words to their music, apparently they can and do get away with it. For me that lowers the standard because their pieces are what you'll see everywhere and it just kills me because they have the resources but aren't going to push the boundary, but i suppose that isn't everyone's job or desire, well at least not in the same way. On the other hand there’s still so much art that people are making, really dope visuals that help keep the standard at a level we can live with, but that’s just it, there's no elevation from there, we're stuck. The standard is there and it’s not necessarily improving, but it exists. That’s what affects the final presentation of a video I've made and put my name on. It matters so much, I may not have the most expensive camera that will show the pores on a subject's skin from miles away but that’s not going to stop me from making sure my message, the content, the shots, whatever makes up the piece I offer something that will raise the standard, raise individual and collective consciousness you know. I'm about that, I'm about growth.

 Nomaliqhwa: I read somewhere that you were on the set doing a Dope St. Jude video. I hear what you're saying about there not being an elevator for the actually really solid bodies of work being put out but how was that? I also saw that you did a shoot for the cover art for Phresh Clique’s “MAM’ G”, it's a redundant question but where are women of color who are performers, directors and writers situated in all that constitutes “the industry”? Where and how do women artists negotiate their way from making a song to radio plays to video shoots and finally onto the consumers market?

  Thandie: The very first music video set I ever worked on was Dope Saint Jude's one for 'Keep in Touch’. I’m so grateful for ever meeting her because I learnt so much just from observing and listening. Not only creatively but as a black female body occupying this specific creative space in in South Africa/Zimbabwe I learnt a lot from her about what it meant for me to be that and want to make it in the creative industry. To be honest with you at times it can be incredibly demoralizing. There are so many of us here but I'm sure as you already know that no matter what, we have to work thrice as hard, for a fraction of recognition and success. It’s difficult to navigate a space like that because it’s not meant to accommodate you and you're constantly knocking doors down just to be heard in a place where no one really considers that you should be. I truly believe we are only here because we have given ourselves a voice, we aren't invited into these spaces but have made our way into them. But even then, you're not done, you have to survive to move up. To be honest with you its networks, these friendships we form amongst each other as well as with male creatives, that's what gets a lot done but that's also somehow regulated by the formal procedures of taking things up from having an offering to getting it on the radio or TV. Sometimes it’s just a matter of filling in forms, sometimes it’s talking to a good friend at a radio station and sometimes it's walking away from a good opportunity because you've been reduced to an object. You know it’s always different but usually your network helps a ton. I say we are here because this year has been a testament to that, we are more visible and supportive of each other which I think plays a key role in us being visible people like Tony Gum come to mind when I say that.

  Nomaliqhwa: It might sound strange worded out but being a Zimbabwean creative in Cape Town how is that working out for you? I know that you've done some work with Ben Moyo, with Tashinga Mutakwa and even gone on to be awarded the Filmmaker of the year 2015 by Creative Nestling. I guess I'm asking if that strong network of fellow Zimbabwean creatives works out and a lot of work comes out of those connections that's not just work from that Zimbabwean network. Have you been able to really situate yourself within this country with its creatives and integrate into “their” sphere? I've found that as soon as my nationality comes into question suddenly not as many doors are open to me and I have in turn become far more reliant on my connections from Zimbabwe who I know will have my back in whatever way they can often times more than anyone from here does. I'm not do sure if I'm making sense but I guess I'm asking are you a creative or a Zimbabwean creative in Cape Town.  

 Thandie: It’s working out really well for me because I've formed good relationships with people who I share a background with. I mean there's no denying that if it weren't for meeting Tashinga I wouldn't be where I am or working the way I do. I found out about him through twitter and it was the fact that he was from Zimbabwe that allowed me to literally force him into mentoring me, lol. I do believe though that us sharing the same nationality isn’t what’s kept bonds with people like Ben and Tash. It’s the work and it’s the energy. I've made sure not to solely rely on that network and instead work with other creatives outside of that sphere because I don't want to end up feeling limited by my nationality. Because I've seen how that’s a thing here, just like you've experienced. University is great because I’ve made  a lot of connections there and that’s where I’ve found the opportunity to break away from being stuck as just a Zimbabwean creative, which I am, but that's not all I am.

Nomaliqhwa: I hear you. You mentioned Ben Moyo and I was just about to ask you how being around him has influenced your work but I suppose I'll extend this to your creative process over the years. I think as people who are continuously producing something we hope is original and new and exciting the best solution is to keep moving, keep exploring until that ultra-light beam hits. Its scary sharing ideas with the same people you're competing with often so I know this almost forces people to opt to work alone, a route that proves to be unsustainable... What I like most about you is, like you said, the expansion of your network and seeing that in the projects you put out, a whole new everything each time.   My question is who are the people who have been the most impactful on your creative process? What did they/what was it that was brought to you that helped shape things?

  Thandie: You're making a lot of sense. Every time I work with or share ideas with someone I see it as an opportunity to learn something new. Everything is inspiration, the good and the bad, the small or the massive. With that said, I can easily say that all of the people I have worked with who have had the biggest impact on my creative process are definitely Tashinga and H3nry. With Tash I got my wings.  I had a laptop, I had Final Cut but until I met him I hadn't started doing much seriously. He gave me that chance, he put me on sets and gave me edits to do. I developed my skills, creativity and even my confidence. He was the one who showed me the value of networking. H3nry on the other hand has had a huge impact on my creative process because of the way our energies fuse.  Our ideas are essentially based on the same principles having been drawn from the same source of inspiration. Having someone like that around has made me confident in my ideas., being able to articulate what seems like the craziest ideas and to have that person who listens and understands who  can say to me “yeah, let’s do that. Let’s figure out how we’ll do that”, as opposed to “there’s absolutely no way to do that”. That’s a very good energy to keep around because it allows me to constantly push myself. To constantly learn and grow.

  Nomaliqhwa: I know that we spoke about womanhood and navigating in the creative sphere with that identity and I know that for some heteronormative reason our instinct is to associate women with being emotional. Which is strange actually because emotions can be anything and everything felt by everybody, always. Knowing you the way I do as this incredibly conscious human being aware of the energies in spaces and constantly feeding off them and sometimes being incredibly moved by them I know it's right that I say that you are an emotional person, an emotional woman. But what I want to know is are you sometimes caught fighting off the very emotions you work with in an attempt to avoid being labelled that? If as a woman you're emerged within this culture that like you say is suffocating you or evoking emotions like being uncomfortable, being angered by what's being said in the song, being saddened by the process of putting something together of what you feel is offensive do these emotions fuel you or do they present themselves as stumbling blocks?  Are you allowed to succumb to these emotions? Or will doing so close many doors?

  Thandie: I try to embrace every part of myself.  Being an emotional person is something I value incredibly because that is the most genuine way to connect. To connect with people, with things and with the creative content I am producing.   It’s all emotion. Linked to that part of our consciousness, its energy in motion which inspires our actions most often. . I'm completely fine with that and it's something I do not conceal or run away from.  In situations where I risk being labelled “emotional”, I’m not necessarily fighting my emotions to avoid the label, I’m just managing my response

I was mostly doing events at first and filming those, putting the footage together and it made me miserable, it stirred up my emotions so much because in that space I was constantly attacked by aggressively patriarchal nonsense. Just navigating a club scene as a female body is already a headache on its own because you draw unwanted attention of men. It’s even more uncomfortable when you are in that space professionally because you’re not being taken seriously because you're a woman. Couple this with the fact is that everyone is probably drunk and I found no one really wanted to accept the fact that I was there working not to be a piece of meat. I got so worked up in those situations that I would often confront the people that made me uncomfortable and had made my job more difficult. I had to walk away and I have my emotions to thank for that.  

My emotions drew me away from that toxic environment and gave me direction. I rarely do events now and I’m a lot happier and a lot more comfortable.   Since then I have had more room to experiment with creative pursuits and that's what I've always preferred. It’s definitely more of a challenging but it’s also more fun.  To me, that’s growth. In this space rather I rarely have to deal with putting something that I feel negatively about together  something that would otherwise disrupt my energy and I simply refuse to put myself in that position again because I know I wouldn’t be doing that body of work justice. The audience wouldn’t be happy and neither would the client because it would be evident that I just wasn’t fully invested.  I’d rather not risk that If I know something is not in line with the person I am I won't do it That is how I allow myself to succumb to my emotions. That’s how I feel my way through a piece, it being from the heart and it being how I connect. That’s how it will make sense to me and how I always hope it makes sense to anyone else watching.

I'm not scared of doors closing given I've experienced it so much, I've learnt that another one will always open and the ones that close were never meant for me anyway. Sometimes that's difficult to deal looking at rejection and contemplating the implications of it. But I’ve taught myself to always remember that (as cliché as it sounds) everything happens in its time, everything for a reason. That gives me peace and allows me to always be myself and so far that is working out well for me, I’m just honest with vulnerability and all the emotions that make me human. How can I want to shy away from that, being human is all I know.

 Nomaliqhwa: That's beautiful. Last question, what can we expect from you in the next year? Six months?

T: Haha, thank you. This is still a little weird for me talking about myself so much. Man I’m so excited about the next music video I’m directing H3nry's Marry-Jane  and this more than anything I've done so far will be the one piece I look back on and allow me to feel like I really did something that matters in the world.  I don't think anyone is expecting the route that this one will take. There's a lot that's underway and I won't give away too much but I’m doing more films this year, working on a really exciting web-series with Jabulile Newman as well. I'm trying to expand beyond just the motion picture medium. I’m obsessed with fashion photography and telling stories through still pictures so that’s another thing that I’ll have a lot of out this year. Right now actually my fashion spread with Hause of Stone has just come out, so that serves as a sneak peak of what's to come. I love art and I won’t stop at films and photographs, there's a lot more provocative socially and spiritually conscious content coming out this year and the next. I’m trying to expand into as many spheres of art as I can, I love expressing myself and want to find more ways of telling these stories.

Photo credit: @taunyane, @darkchoq and Thandie Gula Ndebele

[nomaliqhwa]

“The One Known As Jacque Turned To Scott”: Travis Scott By Norman.

Pt. 1

Seated on a terrace with French journalist Mouloud on a particularly summer day in Paris is seated Jacque Webster. He’s just been handed a French book about a black boy in South America in the 1950s, the boy in the book is called Jacque. It’s a 23 minute interview. One of the few, the most telling where the interviewer pushes no real particular motive. He’s not being asked about Rihanna, not about beefing with A$AP Rocky, he has been asked to define himself, his journey and where he sees himself situated in hip hop right now. At 23, he’s somewhat of an anomaly.

Breaking down the chosen stage name “Travis Scott” on its own is revealing. Travis, a name of an uncle whom Jacque he dedicates so much of his success to whilst Scott could be his way of paying homage to his music idol and one time label mate, Scott Mescudi.  Both are points that will be a constant in Jacque’s carefully constructed persona, Travis Scott. At one moment Travis looks Mouloud in the eyes and tells him about why he does this music shit. “I have a little sister. I have an autistic older brother. He’s 30 years old and he can’t talk. But do you understand that’s who mentored me, who taught me how to walk. He can’t talk but he taught me how to walk. And my mom, my mom can barely walk. I mean it’s not like we make sad music and shit but that’s why we do it”. It’s a line that makes sense of his work ethic, a work ethic that has made this 23 year old relatively new comer become one of the most sought out rapper/producers.

“The one known as Jacque turned to Scott”

It took three reworking’s before Owl Pharaoh dropped in 2013. By the time it did, he had been signed both to Grand Hustle as an artist and G.O.O.D Music as an in house producer. He had featured everywhere from Jay Z’s Magna Carter Holy Grail’s standout hit “Crown” to directly influencing the sound of Yeezus. Owl Pharaoh featured a full roster of some of hip hop’s biggest producer names by the time it was released. The likes of WondaGurl, Mike Dean, Allen Ritter, Young Chop, Toro y Moi, Kanye West and Travis Scott himself. The masses were divided. Many said it was a copy paste of Yeezus, whilst others said that Yeezus was a copy paste submit your paper as mine before you do to Scott’s sound. The nature of the relationship between Yeezus and Owl Pharaoh allowed the other to exist. Whichever route one chooses to take both acknowledge that the result was a project that amplified the role that production played in a song. Magnified. Re-defined, revolutionized.

The process of making Owl Pharaoh seemed to be a tedious affair. After Jacque signed as an in-house producer, as we know with G.O.O.D Music, everybody’s energy was completely dedicated to Cruel Summer with Yeezus set to release in relatively quick succession of it. Working on Cruel Summer and Yeezus also set back the release date for his project. For Jacque, it seems the only evidence of this time leaving a last impression on him is how whilst on his Rodeo tour, with frequent collaborators Young Thug and Metro Boomin’, his verse on Sin City is on the shows’ performance line up. The verse was somewhat prophetic of what was to come from the relatively unknown artist Travi$ Scott.

On the balcony Mouloud asks Travis about how he views himself as a rapper. Jacque, pulls a somewhat agitated look on his face, “don’t call me a rapper. Like what some of these rapper guys do is corny. Like I’m not a rapper”. Imploring Jacque to expand on this point, Mouloud asks him about his writing process and is quickly interrupted. “Like I don’t sit in my fucking house with a guitar and write, like I’m goddam Taylor Swift and some shit. Folk tales and shit. .. If I told you the real story behind why Antidote and Impossible came about like it would be a limb blast. But I must tell you, man, I was in a moment I was feeling lit and shit and then some shit happened there was an certain absence for like two weeks, a week and I just felt like by myself and then I sat in the studio for like five days and just went in. I freestyled the whole shit. One take. All the way up until the second verse. My third verse I came back from Dallas and did my the chorus”. Jacque then proceeds to mumble hum the tune of the song. It’s the not the first time this technique of his has been referred to.  

In one of Metro Boomin’s recoded studio sessions with the making of Skyfall, mumble like lyrics are then used for the beat to fit around. It’s maybe two minutes later and he’s by the mic singing the melody and a moment later him and Metro are jumping in celebration as “I’m trapped in my conscious/my trap is still bunky/look at all of these hundreds/hit up the hood pharmacist/he serve all the muddy/might shoot at your buddy/who shot at my buddy”. It’s one of the few songs that a more elaborate meaning is held. His rap style is something that has managed to catch us all off guard. Every song of his makes sense but it hasn’t made a point to communicate some supposedly deep meaning concept. Though Skyfall is one of the exceptions, simply one needs to understand that the song isn’t about drugs but rather rappers. “I don’t want to buy no more/ your shit ain’t getting me high no more” is speaking to some of the old heads that fell off.

Owl Pharaoh was a process and it took being reworked thrice before it was made public to the rest of the world. What it mostly comes off as is a sort of ode to the state of rap music as it was more than necessarily an introduction of “Travis Scott”. It served as a homage, an experience of someone trying to find his footing. It was adolescent angst.

Was it a cohesive? As an entire project, yes. Solely based on lyrics? No. Up until that point mainstream hip hop revolved around the art of storytelling. Rhymes that fit the beat that told a story, which matched the tempo. Examples of this “wave” lies in he likes of almost everyone in the 2011/2012/2013. People’s distain for Yeezus and ultimate instinctual urge to reject Travis Scott was rooted in both projects’ lack of coherence.

What Owl Pharaoh did was demonstrate his ability to knit bars together that had nothing to do with the bars just above them yet still maintained the fluidity of a verse. It felt, and to an extent it still feels like, the verses are always secondary to the actual sound of the song, verses almost serving as an accessory. Whilst the verse does not always serve as the most poignant element of the song, it still is incredible how that same intricate beat is reworked again to fit around the same bars that make little to no sense, or can be read as empty, which allows the song to sound polished, well-constructed, catchy. Good. It is masterfully executed each time and something that has remained something that is unique only to him. An example of this is Drive that features James Flaunteroy.

Blocka La Flame was his own rendition of Pusha T’s “Blocka” off his mixtape Wrath of Caine, a song which Jacque had crooned the hook of. The move was risky but it seemed to pay off. But taking it on he managed to display his willingness to be accepted into the rap elite but with a conditional outsider/ different opinion having status within these structures, it’s an ongoing conversation he’s having with good music.

Hell of a Night was a case of, “if I had done this, this was how I might have done it”, rendition to Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Instead of a celebratory attitude to dysfunctional chaos, it was an almost muted mourning. Where Kanye got into the details of his emotions whilst simultaneously experiencing and watching something beautiful fall apart, Travis Scott simply said that something was falling apart and left it at that. If a contrast can be made between the two, it certainly is that. Both throw themselves in the act the song dictates, where Kanye bleats his pain Travis chooses beat it all out on the drums.

Though Kid Cudi made no appearance on any of the songs on Owl Pharaoh, his presence was felt all over the body. It came in the form of “Kid Cudi type humming” and the awkward shy and insecure approach to this project that Cudi had himself displayed on his albums Man on the Moon I and Man on the Moon II. Dance on the moon might as well as been a song by Soctt Mescudi himself. Perhaps Dance on the Moon and the hums were displays of guilt. It’s no secret that Kanye and Cudi stopped seeing eye to eye around about the same time Travis Scott entered the picture and ultimately it could be the reason why the two are yet to collaborate. But I digress.

Owl Pharaoh paid homage to the music of the time, to the moment and refused to really fully display who La Fuego was. It music was the mafia then Owl Pharaoh was his ceremony of being made. He had to do it for them to take him seriously, if at all. For any of us listeners to in future to be willing to engage him. It was successful but many were left confused over what to feel about “Travi$ Scott”, who was he? If Owl Pharaoh had one shortfall, that was it. Though it was a solid body, a sustainable one even, no one could really tell you who Travis Scott was.

[nomaliqhwa]

:) 

[nomaliqhwa]

I can smile again

[nomaliqhwa]

Chasing Samantha: A Short Story by Norman

An entire world living under us where hip hop producers, indie band singers gone solo and drunk 20 something’s come play with one another exist. You decided to it’s time you found it.  Taking a slight stroll down this claustrophobia inducing packed alley there lies every remix to every song. Four hour mixes, jazz cortet and some broken synthesizers. Bodies block the exits and the entrance, I suppose once you’re stuck, whether you want to leave or not, you can’t. Walk a few steps more and there lies two bum looking guys on the floor and they’re laughing up a riot. Two steps closer and suddenly they’re bopping their heads so intently, so in sync. And even though all the lights in the street are dim you can see their faces. The one with the giant headphones looks at you and asks if you want to see what they’re working on. Tempting, but you pass.  The doors are opened and a brown faced, doe eyed, afro having girl wearing beach short shorts grabs you hand and tells you she knows a quiet place where you two can go and hang. You look at her and as much as you don’t know her you feel like she’s been there your entire life. “What’s your name?” You shout at the bar. “Have another one!” she shouts back. So you down a shot of tequila, bite the lemon and lick the salt. You look at the girl and she’s laughing but she’s also smiling. Nothing else in the room matters.  The dance floor is dark with red, yellow and blue lights swriling at the bottom, someone steps on your white Air Force Ones and you want to punch that asshole but the pretty girl grabs your hand and starts bopping her head. “There’s no love.. Playing with my my” it’s this electro soulful jam. It has a echoey feel. “Who is this?!” You shout, “Its Samantha, track one” she shouts back. “I really like this song” “the next one is better” she says before mouthing the lyrics to you “I knew you were the one for me.. Nah nah nah nevermind”. She smirks and moves her hand in wave like motions as bar for bar comes through the speakers. You don’t know the song but you want to. You want this girl to know that you took the time to know. The next track is a tight beat with the same words repeated softly. It’s time to get a beer. “Wait here!” You tell the pretty girl. “Sure, double vodka and sprite!"  Heading to the bar is a haze. The place is smaller than you remembered when you walked in. The barman must have an idea of what this is. Where you are. Who is she? Rome Fortune starts rapping, you know this song "she says my soul is pitch black, breaking hearts like back to back to back”. You’re smiling, it’s Pitch Black Toro y Moi’s song. Getting to the bar you order a red bull and vodka and get the pretty girl a double vodka and .. Shit you can’t remember. “Put lemonade in there!” “A Granada?!” “No, lemonade, like the fruit!”. He hands your drinks you head back to the pretty girl. She didn’t leave but she’s in a trance. You hand her her drink. “This song is called Stoned At The Moma” it’s another smooth number. Like jazz fused with 90s hip hop. It’s got a sentimental feeling and you feel like you’re in a warm well lit room but then it changes unexpectedly. “Can we sit down?!” You move to a couch the pretty girl sits next you.  You’re about to ask how she knows all of this, this song, about this place but then gongs go off and you hear a voice singing “do what you want, do whatever makes you happy..” And another gong goes off and there’s a snippet about a girl and his girlfriend arguing about fighting, life and love. You look at the girl and say “I want to be happy! Who are you?!”. She downs her drink “I’m not happiness! I’m just a lost somebody like you! Do you want to go?” You nod. She waves to the DJ and you two head out and jump onto a bus.  You’re the only two in the whole bus aside from the driver. You have no idea where you’re going you’re just following this girl. “Do you want to listen to the next song? It’s called Ambient Rainbow. It’s a bit creepy but I think it’s just his style. To catch in music that echo feeling when you’re in a deep trance on your own and the sound is speaking to you”. “How..?” “I know a guy, he got it to me because he wanted me to play a show and he wanted music like this and Ta-ku. I tried convincing him that Toro Y Moi and Ta-ku aren’t the same musically but he wouldn’t budge” she lights a cigarette “obviously I like the music, my favourite music right now is this. It’s the right kind of sad. It’s capturing a moment where you know shit is going to be better but not right now” she pauses “Rome Fortune has this one bit on the song Benjaminz and goes something like everyone wants a piece/I fought with lions in the belly of the beast then something something I gotta play the game to change the game and I think what the fuck! that’s all of us right now. Trying to change something, take something, believe something. Sad but happy, whole but empty”.  You answer, “I like his remix of French by Tyler, the creator” ,she smiles, she knows you’re trying. “I mean yeah it’s not that easy to take these guys who make this music and remixes seriously as artists in their own right but look at fucking Kaytranada, how you know that every track you see his name on its going to be heat. Maybe a year ago I wouldn’t even bother with an album but this is where hip hop or whatever you call this is headed. Sooner or later or maybe right just now no one will give a single fuck about someone dropping bars or saying anything. Cause all that noise is a disruption to the experience of music. That’s why I like Samantha, it’s everything I need music to be right now”. The bus stops and the two of you get off. She holds you hand and walks with you down the street.  You get to a house and the door is red. It’s her house and even though nothing says it is you know. “I want you to hear the rest of it and tell me what you think”. Up until that very moment it never dawned on you that you’d be in the intimate confines of a bedroom with this incredibly beautiful girl. “You want something to drink, wait in the lounge I need to change and set it up”. Guess that’s over. She mixes gin & tonic for the both of you and brings her laptop. Her wallpaper is a photo of her at a basement like club with a DJ booth in front of her and someone rapping on stage. It makes sense but it doesn’t. Who is this girl? You down your drink and light a spliff.  She comes in the room burning vanilla incense. She connects her laptop onto a docking station. “I’m going to play bytheneck, one word. I like it because it’s something that’s just chill. I don’t really care about what’s being said except if I did I’d like it. The beat does this thing. Wait no. I’ve over explained that. Listen to Enough of You and if you can get past the lowkey annoying voice and before you get fixated then THE USUAL comes on. Oh my fuck. Listen!” she plays and it’s the dopest song you’ve heard in the while. With the thimbles playing you’d think that it’s going to be dark but then this drive comes in and it’s hella intense. “Let me know I can’t be loving you/let me know why can’t you stop?/ Don’t matter what you gon do anyway, go fucking do it then” and then the chorus has you buzzing, your cheeks feel like their moving on their own and the clouts in the room bounce and move like a tap running and then you realize that you’re singing to this girl really aggressively “Why even try? Do I even want you right here tonight?/You know me, I'ma be my usual self/Put myself to work even though I know I don’t help!’. She laughs. “I knew you’d feel it. It’s weird when I saw that it didn’t have a feature I was like welp. Cause he’s not really like a rapper or anything. I don’t know. He just looks like a sweet guy that you’d hang with on campus and that really is what he is which is cool but then with such a heavy beat you want something equally as heavy. And it’s like a fucking anthem. Like a get the fuck out my motherfucking face without necessarily saying” get the fuck out my motherfucking face” You take a sip of your drink.

At this point Prayer Hands has gone on. It was annoying but also this a first listen so you’re not sure if this is what you’re supposed to feel until next time. Holy Nights is pretty catchy and in the middle this thing happens. The synthesizers come on and for a moment it seems like things will change but they remain calm .. with synthesizers. The last two tracks flow seamlessly into each other and when you look up you see that the pretty girl is half asleep. It’s been a long night. Then silence. You don’t want to wake her but you also don’t know where to go. It’s not your house. You just met this chick, what’s her name? Samantha.

[nomaliqhwa]

“I’ve had a rough year.”

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) dir. Wes Anderson

[nomaliqhwa]

The Life Aquatic Feat. Seu Jorge