LOCAL AND ORIGINAL VISIONARIES…

Image: Courtesy of Zkhiphani.com

Sipho Ramaru

This might come off as being negative or an act of a brother suppressing a sister. But it’s nothing like that.

This is just an act of someone who believes that South Africa has its own front-runners who are as capable of doing it big in our small and progressively growing hip hop scene.

Some time ago, I checked the “Flabba’s last performance” on youtube and the video that was available, is the one that has Kwesta, Ricky Rick, L-Tido and them performing “Do Like I Do Remix”. Dope joint by the way!

But the problem with the performance, the femacee on the joint. Nadia Nakai, when she first came on stage, for a moment I thought it was Nicki Minaj. The lady is like a Nicki Minaj duplicate on that one. . .

You know why female emcees like Nthabi are the most respected in the game? Because they never do their thing trying to imitate anyone, or try to be the “baddest ****” in the game (as most female rappers would say), or Americans for that matter.

See, as soon as you accept your natural-self and decide to go with that…that’s when you’ll be happy with yourself and not try hard to be someone else. And that is when your original content will be appealing to a mass audience that likes originality!

I’m not squashing anyone’s hard work or hustle. . .matter of fact, I’m a cheerleader of dreams. I’m that guy behind dreamers and hustlers, cheering “Go Get What’s Yours!”. But our local rappers need to understand that they have so many young people looking up to them, and these youngsters will go with what their idols (public figures) go with. If you depict the perception that the Americans are our trend setters and the people to look up to, that’s exactly how our youngsters will also think.

It’s very important that our public figures realize the social responsibility they retain. Just like the old days where our leaders who fought for liberation were looking up to the likes of Chris Hani and Steve Biko who believed in black-consciousness and taking pride in who you are. The youth of our country needs leaders and visionaries as well, locally and originally made!

Let’s push our own local brands and produce our own influential figures. . .America already have their own.