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 Unity Band is at its best. The way they work their delivery is exhilaratingly professional. Fine tuned guitars softly hum now, screech there and moan there. Keyboards scream and shriek as fingers dance up and down on them. Programmed lights twist and turn, throwing circles of light up and down the walls, up the stage, up the captivated crowd. Tebogo Mapine, otherwise known as Mr. T, is on the microphone, dancing up and down in a sort of lazy but rhythmic shuffle, microphone on the right hand. It is a flawless collaboration between a young new age musician with a taste for the edgy and the “Hip Hoppy”, and an experienced band from an earlier time. The Hip Hop Awards night would turn out to be the crystallisation of all that is great and tragic about local Hip Hop. It would be a night of conflict between real Hip Hop and hypocrisy, consciousness and materialism, egalitarian unity and class differentiation, true artistry and empty showmanship, appreciation and jealousy, and reason and unreason.
The crowd trickled in with the usual “uptown Gaborone” look and drama; Young men with their model looking girlfriends hand in hand, short skirts, patterns of plaited hair, self confidence written all over their faces and glasses of wine held by feminine fingers. Amidst the “classy” mentality and the elitist appearances, the beginning started in a promising mode. Langston Hughes Poetry Association spoken word artist Molekanyi Tshipa uttered the spiritually invigorating, “Forward-a-yard” and the Exodus Poetry Group put political vitriol into beautiful rhyme going “This jokers in power they be acting absurd/but their luck is running out/sure enough/spread the word.” However rappers and their cliques gathered outside menacingly. With baggy jeans and sneakers, they would soon walk in each with a dozen “yes men” behind. It was becoming clear if the night was anybody’s it was the rappers’, their egos and their cronies’ egos.
Thus when the crowd had settled, the crews were seated at different sections of the sitting area. P-side to the far right front of the stage, Unreleased Records right at the central front and BabyPhat Records and some DC Clan members to the far left of the stage. The stage was set, and from then on, whoever had come solely for the artistic expression and the development of Hip Hop would be fed a tasteless dinner of rivalries and petty tumult for the rest of the night. As the night’s showman, part comedian and late-night bore Losika “LuzBoy” Seboni would put it, the ceremony was meant to be exclusive. “Kana rona re tsaya gore fa re duela P150 jaana, re duelela class,” he pronounced. He associated lower prices with lower class behaviour of chain smoking, whistling at girls and generally degenerate behaviour. The crowd laughed. It was clear the night belonged to a much higher class.
The Song of The Year announcement given to My People by Thato “Scar” Matlhabaphiri would get a cold reaction until someone decided to clap meekly. Coldness was in the air even as he stepped up to the podium to accept his award. T’s performance became the electrifying, exciting and entertaining respite from the fumes of hatred cutting through the crowd. A Latin beat from the Unity Band gave the night an air of celebration but not for long. The fires would burn fiercest when Producer Of The Year was announced a few hours later. In an open reaction of dissent, the P-Side Crew, a mass of post-adolescent to early 30s men and their hangers-on and girlfriends walked out after Presley “Prez Beats” Metshe from the P-Side crew lost to David “Draztik” Baucher of Cashless Society. It was indeed a Prez-produced background beat that was used during intervals and lead-ins to each award. The P-Side Crew and Producer Eric Ramogobya would hold court outside the hall explaining their disapproval to everyone who dared to listen. Inside the show went on with its animosities. And when Cashless Society stepped up to the stage to perform, the reaction was lukewarm. Some murmured their disapproval. The music system somehow went off with microphones levels getting lower and inaudible.
At the break, post-adolescent men in baggy jeans, baggy shirts and expensive Nike sneakers stood in the men’s toilets smoking and screaming expletives at their rivals. They sounded like African young men trying to be African American thugs. “F&*^ Scar,” they yelled. “Yeah. Yeah man,” another one chirped in as they exchanged high fives. It was indeed more than interesting that an art form that has come to be associated with lower class existence would nearly salvage the night. Kwaito star Odirile “Vee” Sento would offer a slice of township existence gone profitable. His dancers lost themselves in choreographed township moves and the crowd of largely suburban post-adolescents would clap and scream the way Westerners do when they see an African dance troupe lost in dance. But even Kwaito could not save Hip Hop from its own trajectory towards self-destruction. At the end of the night, Kabo “Orakle” Lekwalo, would get to the microphone and announce his disappointment at his exclusion from the many nominations.
“None of the players got what they deserve,” he lamented amidst restrained booing from some sections of the crowd. The night ended the way it started with nothing but more disunity among even the “chosen few” who have been allowed into this small circle called local Hip Hop. Apart from Robbie Rob’s excellent hosting, the DJs exquisite skills, T’s and Cashless Society’s performances, the night told only one story.
The story of how an art form, which started in the poverty stricken streets of America’s cities and is currently practiced in the streets around the world, has suddenly become what many people feel is a stage upon which the sons and daughters of wealthy families have come to indulge their materialist orientations and inflated egos and exercise exclusivity. As the night died, cars drove away to the glitzy Club Urban for more merrymaking. It is an ailing art form and it has another year to set things straight before another night of reckoning comes.
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