FREEDOM: THE BRIEF HISTORY.

While it is known that Hip-Hop is an American genre, many didn't believe that it would be where it is in South Africa, today. I mean- South Africans took the whole genre and turned it into theirs, and the only rapper that tried to make it stay American because he has his roots there became irrelevant (we're looking at you, Da L.E.S). Many believe that South African Hip-hop reached its peak in 2014 but when you look at it, that was only the commercialisation of it and not its peak as believed.

Well, Hip-hop has always been in South Africa but with Kwaito being a genre, we couldn’t incorporate it into our sound because they were the same thing. Some were singing about being in the club, some were in the taverns. While some were in gang wars, the others were also in gang wars. The only difference between these is the ocean and distance, but when our machinery started doing the same thing as the Americans, we started to see a weird use of the American genre (The rise of TKZee and Boom Shaka) which started to add in with the notorious township flavour.

Before all of this, we go back to 1993. The rise of The Wu-Tang Clan was the turn of things in the American hip-hop industry, influencing “authenticity” with the most album to ever get kicked onto the ears of the people (haha, an Inspectah Deck pun), Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), and also the release of A Tribe Called Quest’s third album, Midnight Marauders. In South Africa, we got Prophets Of Da City’s Age Of Truth, which led to the group's ban in 1995, giving them international fame as they were exiled to the UK. This might not be the country's Hip-hop highlight and I only say this because it is always overlooked but we have to give credit to DJ Ready D and the boys, this was a great move and will forever be acknowledged.

Back to Kwaito. Kwaito sounded like Hip-hop in the TKZee era, giving us records like TKZee’s We Love This Place in the group’s 1998 album Halloween, Mapaputsi’s Izinja which gives us scratches from the already flowered producer, DJ Ready D, and 2 years later, Zola is also rapping with Kaybee and Amu on Ghetto Fabulous. This can even be traced back to Boom Shaka’s It’s Our Game (No Need To Claim) in 1996 but nobody likes to talk about that because of what they did to Universal after 1994.

So if you'd like to talk about how the current rappers are culture vultures, you'll have to consider how Kwaito in its way was Hip-hop made for South Africans just to stay authentic. Join me next time as we celebrate South African hip-hop and the journey that took it where it is today. Until next time!