Hip hop identity in a township reality. - Poppunt

“More and more of the kids are realising / oh shit I’ve been buying from this
Snoop Dogg and all these fuckers for such a long time / they don’t give a cent
back.”
His view on capitalism goes well together with the concept of Ubuntu:
“In Africa there’s a philosophy called Ubuntu / and Ubuntu is about I may be
because of others and what others do affect me and what I do affects him / so
for me capitalism doesn’t fit well with the concept of Ubuntu / because it’s a
handful of people manipulating oppressing the majority.”
Black Noise realises that not everybody is immediately going to follow them in the
things they say; these things need time. People need some proof that what they are
saying and doing is making both sense and a difference.
“Like because of the amount of people that we can obviously affect with we
speaking to / and also what you up against / like we don’t expect miracles to
change everybody overnight / like if we can change one or two kids
perspective of what they’re doing / then I think part of the agenda is being
achieved.”
2. Findings
2.1. Recurring topics
Most of the rappers or rap groups have two kinds of topics: there are songs about
fun times, and there are lyrics about the more serious matters in life. The first type
of songs are generally played when they perform for an audience wanting to party
and dance. Then singing about girlfriends, friendship, good times and so on is
appropriate to the situation. Many of our interviewees are convinced that singing
about more conscientious things does not fit into that kind of atmosphere. People
are not open for the deeper lyrics then, so it is better to keep them for more suitable
occassions.
There are only a few of our interviewees who mentioned the topic of ‘politics’.
Reasons for this minimal interest can be found in the fact that it is difficult access
the serious forms of media in the township areas. It is only logical that they can not
write about things they do not have a good understanding of, and bringing us to the
finding that most interviewees only write songs about matters that happen around
them. Their social environment does not stretch beyond the neighbourhood they are
living in, mobility still is a big problem in Cape Town. Public transport is unreliable