My J Cole World experience
Sharon Mathala | Friday June 24, 2016 15:42
Initially when I received the invite I was excited about travelling to the City of Gold, not necessarily to witness the man live on stage. I am not a fan, but to experience the much talked about Ticketpro Dome.
I had also read politician Botsalo Ntuane’s masterpiece about his private trip to England. You see what stood out in the piece for me was how he referred to the economy class as the ‘donkey class’. See at this point I was excited that I was going to ride along with KBL using economy class to South Africa to watch J Cole. To digress a bit, the humour of the article didn’t particularly impress me because he even stated that he was used to the business class in the plane because of my tax money.
What I would want to know from Ntuane is , is it the real reason he decided to defect back to the other party? But that is just me and that is a story for another day.
Fortunately, I was not to ride on the ‘donkey class’. We were to unlock J Cole travelling by road, something I did not mind.
When we arrived on Friday, the KBL crew took us on tour around a place called The World of Beer at SAB Miller. Basically they took us on a tour on how beer is made; how SAB Miller came into place, and we met the man behind the brews many, Charlie (not the Mmegi photo journalist). After the tour came the party bus. The real experience began and we toured around the busy life of Johannesburg in this party bus. The party was spot on and we enjoyed ourselves until we arrived at the hotel.
On Saturday after shopping around Sandton, courtesy of KBL, (we were treated like kings and queens) the party bus parked outside the hotel, en route the Ticket-pro Dome. I had read somewhere on the Internet that the event was sold out four weeks after tickets went on sale. As we got closer to the Dome I was no longer dancing, I was actually scared, scared of being in such a huge crowd. Of course Kast, of Fill up the Stadium, kept crossing my mind, because the rapper also had a similar concept that I very much endorsed.
As the bus parked near the venue, naturally I peeped out the window at the huge building. The fans were rushing and walking up to the entrances. As part of the KBL experience we were accorded VIP treatment, so I was not worried about the long queues we usually get here at home. The dressing really said something about my age. I was told Johannesburg was freezing cold, so I had dressed down to my neck. My fellow 20,000 attendants however were dressed like true J Cole followers.
They had socks pulled up their sneakers, the ladies tied shirts around their waste (I thought that fashion was long gone, turns out it’s back in vogue; it’s now all of a sudden cool to tie your shirt around your waist). As I walked to the VIP entrance I remembered a funny post I saw on social media that kids of today are so naïve that even if they see Chris Brown wearing his socks on the head, next thing Railpark mall would be filled with people with pairs of socks on their heads.
Inside the Dome, the music was so loud I couldn’t hear myself breath. The South African acts were on stage from Emtee with his rather awkward performance with presenter, model, actress, Castle Lite citizen president Pearl Thusi. Emtee, the new cool guy in South Africa, having scooped so many South African Music Awards (SAMAs) last month has a song titled Pearl Thusi. So at the event Thusi affectionately known as the black pearl jumped on stage when he played the song.
Apart from the fact that I feel the song, it is just lame and she really had no business on that stage. The young chap however did impress, but it was lyricist Nasty C who stole the show from the local acts.
Thusi and Sizwe Dlomo then finally introduced the man of the moment J Cole. There were a couple of booes from the crowd whilst waiting for 10 minutes for J Cole to come on to the stage. The ‘I can’t get enough I can’t get enough’ rapper finally blessed the stage.
He belted out his songs and whilst I was star struck, the man really did enjoy his time on the stage. Someone even threw a bra at him whilst on stage.
J Cole performed hit after hit for close to two hours. Attendants sang along to his songs throughout his entire performance. What also struck me at the Dome was that people freely smoked the herbal green leaf. Without fear or favour, they literally would pass it around.
The crew was to later party with J Cole at the after party at the Sands Hotel and returned home Sunday. I applaud KBL not only for the experience, but the fact that they saw it fit to reward its local customers. Of the countries that visited, Botswana had the largest ensemble.