Prophets of Da City

Last updated

Prophets of Da City
Also known asP.O.C.
Origin Cape Town, South Africa
Genres Hip hop
Years active1988–2001
Labels Ku Shu Shu Records, Tusk Music, Ghetto Ruff, Nation Records
Members Shaheen
Ishmael
DJ Ready D
Ramone
Mark Heuvel

Prophets of Da City (POC) is a hip hop crew from Cape Town, South Africa. They are composed of about eight members, though the exact membership fluctuates frequently; these include Ishmael Morabe (vocals), Mark Heuvel (dance), Shaheen Ariefdien, Ramone and DJ Ready D. Their style uses elements of hip hop music, reggae and traditional African rhythms. Their albums include Our World (1990), Boom Style (1992), Age of Truth (1993), Phunk Phlow (1994), Universal Souljaz (1995), and Ghetto Code (1997). They are currently signed under the independent record label Ghetto Ruff. [1] [ better source needed ]

Contents

History

1988-1990: Early years

The group began in late 1988 when Shaheen and Ready D experimented in a small 8-track studio (owned by Shaheen's father, Issy Ariefdien and Lance Stehr the current Ghetoruff CEO) and produced a demo that ultimately became "Our World" (1990), the first South African hip hop release. Although the production value was not exactly stellar it did attempt to interpret hiphop through their unique Cape Town influences and experiences (both musically and lyrically). The album had the first recorded Cape slang (local Afrikaans dialect) hip-hop song called 'Dala Flat' (do it thoroughly). It also consisted of an uptempo goema inspired 'Stop the Violence' and the hip house meets mbaqanga title track. It also featured the Abdullah Ibrahim inspired "Roots" that featured DJ A-ski on the turntables. Although POC was quite a novelty to the South African music scene, record labels were turned off by their social commentary and favoured a more party music approach. Lance, POC manager, set up Ku-shu shu Records and signed a distribution and marketing deal through Teal Trutone (Gallo subsidiary). In 1990 POC was nominated for the OKTV Award for Best New Group. They also embarked on an extensive 80-leg anti-drug school tour that reached an average of 70 000 students.

1991-1992: Boom Style

The second release in late 1991 was Boom Style (referring to the hardhitting punch of a TR-808 drum machine kick drum or self-praise of the way the music is kicking – although often mistaken to mean "tree style" because boom means "tree" in Afrikaans). While the album had a scathing attack on the apartheid regime in the song 'Ons Stem' (meaning our voice – as a response to the apartheid national anthem 'die stem' – the voice) and the innovative Hard Time on Stage, the follow-up to Murder on Stage from Our World, it was less experimental. The lead single, Boom Style, like their first single, Our World, aimed to fuse contemporary US hiphop influenced dance music with mbaqanga styled guitar riffs. While Our World was rather innocent and daring for its time, Boom Style reflected the realities of operating within the music industry and the pressures of the market on POC. The censorship board sent a formal letter to the label to express their displeasure over the use of the Afrikaner national anthem in which POC not only mocked 'Die Stem', but also disrespected Afrikaner and other colonial political icons. Their live shows incorporated all aspects of hip hop culture and not only emceeing. Turntablism, Breakdancing and even aerosol art at times were used to not only present POC but represent hip hop culture and expose to parts of South Africa where people did not know what hip hop was. The video for 'Kicking Non Stop' was censored because members of the crew put a portrait of the then president, P. W. Botha, in a fridge to chill. This year the POC social issues based tour covered another 45 schools.

In 1992 they were invited by Quincy Jones and Caiphus Semenya to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. This year they embarked on a Namibian anti-drug campaign, covering 65 schools. They also got increasingly more involved in facilitating workshops on deejaying, b-boying and developing hip hop writing techniques. Leading up to the first democratically held election in South Africa, POC embarked on a national voter education campaign. Although Issy Ariefdien has been involved in group's production since the first album, POC also brought former rival Patrick Hickey a.k.a. Caramel (then an emcee and producer with emcees from U.N.C.L.E.) on board as part of the production team for the Age of Truth album.

1993 and beyond

In late 1993 POC was invited to perform in Denmark at the Visions of Africa music festival and also embarked on a national voter education tour, covering high schools, community centres and universities. The aim was to explain the voting process to youth who never had the opportunity to vote in any national elections. The democratically held election marked an important moment in the history of South Africa, but also the history of hip hop in South Africa, because it was an acknowledgment of the popularity and power of hiphop as a pedagogical tool.

In 1994, POC performed at the inauguration of Nelson Mandela where they sang their song "Excellent, finally black President". The fact that they were invited was extremely important to them. The members of Prophets of Da City grew up during apartheid and this truly meant a lot to the group. Mark Schwartz writes, "Times were good until one day in 1985 when tanks rolled down the main drag of Mitchell's Plain Township, and Ready and his homie Shaheen put down the vinyl and picked up bricks and gasoline bombs to hurl at apartheid's army. For the next nine years, through a state of emergency, political upheaval, and economic turmoil, Ready, Shaheen and their posse Prophets of Da City persevered until finally they got to drop bombs at another revolution, as the only performers at the inauguration of South Africa's president Nelson Mandella". This step for POC was not only major for racial barriers but for rap in South Africa. This has been considered the song that brought hip hop more into the mainstream of South Africa when previously, hip hop had been more of an underground movement whose fans consisted mainly of the poorer class in the urban areas of Cape Town. [2]

In 2006 Sean Drummond and Dylan Valley, two student filmmakers, tracked down the whereabouts of the POC members. The documentary titled Lost Prophets was screened at various film festivals in South Africa.

POC celebrated 20 years since the release of South Africa's first hip hop album, 'Our World' in 2015.

Inspiration

Inspired by the production styles of the Bomb Squad (Public Enemy) and Boogiemen (Ice Cube), Age of Truth is arguably their most militant and musically daring album. This album is generally considered South Africa's first hip hop classic album. Although Age of Truth won album of the year in various publications, the majority of the songs were banned. The 1993 song Understand Where I'm Coming From provides background for some of the struggles about which POC raps by explaining many of the hardships faced in daily life. "The song is about empowering yourself as an individual and moving forward as a community" claims musician Ready D. [3] "Understand Where I'm Coming From" also appeared on the Tommy Boy Planet Rap album which featured 12 hip hop crews from around the world. The album was recorded and mixed at Bop Studios in the then Bantustan, Bophutatswana. The head engineer at Bop Studios worked with POC before and offered them a deal to record an album at an extraordinary reduced rate. POC found out that the aim behind Bop Studios was to entice big music stars to record there to legitimise Bophutatswana as a sovereign state. When the group heard about this while they recorded there, they included the lines "Fuck Mangope (Bophutatswana's head of fake state) even if we record here". The head engineer confiscated all the mixed DATs and confronted the group about certain remarks made on the album. After a heated debate the group left with a 'stolen' backup copy of the mixed album that eventually became the released version.

Lyrical themes

POC's songs were often filled with socio-political messages about the state of South Africa's social and economic issues in the urban areas, which were the most economically depressed. According to the article "Globalization and Gangster Rap: Hip Hop in the Post-Apartheid City", their 1993 song "Understand Where I'm Coming From" was a "lament about poverty and social dislocation in the ghetto, questioning the wisdom of patriotism in a class stratified society", as can be inferred from the opening of the song: "Why should I fight for a country's glory / When it ignores me? / Besides, the township's already a war zone / So why complain or moan?" The song also questions the degree to which this new post-Apartheid South Africa is actually new, since there are still racial and class inequalities throughout the communities. The music created as a result of these types of struggles takes the form of hip hop because "young African and Coloured youth... see hip hop and its subcultures as the art form that best expresses their feelings of economic marginality and social dislocation". Many connections can be seen between POC's style of hip hop and the broader American style of hip hop. In "Understand where I'm Coming From", feelings of rebellion and separation from central government are rapped about just as they might be in politically conscious American hip hop; also, in the POC song "Dallah Flet 2", "negative and misogynistic attitudes towards single mothers" are rapped about, something which author Zine Magubane claims is "ubiquitous in American rap music". [4] POC's gender politics on Age of Truth was first analysed in a 2001 article titled “Black Thing: Hip-Hop Nationalism, ‘Race’ and Gender in Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap” by Adam Haupt, who argued that some of the gender-based problems on this album could partly be explained by the crew's black nationalist politics. [5] Black nationalism, like other forms of nationalism, tended to privilege patriarchal imperatives and marginalised female subjects. Hip-hop nationalism in the early 90s reflected some of these problems. As Haupt's analysis of Cape hip-hop activism in the book Stealing Empire reveals, POC's work is best compared to black nationalist US hip-hop of the late 80s and late 90s—and not gangsta rap, as suggested by “Globalization and Gangster Rap: Hip Hop in the Post-Apartheid City”. [6] This is particularly significant in the light of their parody of gangsta rap on songs like "Wack MCs" off Phunk Phlow. Stealing Empire contends that the sometimes simplistic cultural imperialism thesis in some scholarship about hip-hop beyond the US is limited when considering the artistic and political agency of activists and artists who hope to use hip-hop as a means to engage youth critically about their lives in South African townships. By way of caution, Magubane's article credits the Black Consciousness song "Black Thing" to Black Noise when it was, in fact, composed and recorded by POC.

Notable co-performances

The group has also performed around famous artists like James Brown, Public Enemy, The Fugees, Ice-T, Quincy Jones and more. [7] [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chuck D</span> American rapper (born 1960)

Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, known professionally as Chuck D, is an American rapper, best known as the leader and frontman of the hip hop group Public Enemy, which he co-founded in 1985 with Flavor Flav. Chuck D is also a member of the rock supergroup Prophets of Rage. He has released several solo albums, most notably Autobiography of Mistachuck (1996).

Turkish hip hop refers to hip hop music produced by members of the Turkish minority in Germany, and to a lesser degree by hip hop artists in Turkey. The Turkish minority, called the Turks, first drew inspiration from the discrimination and racism they received while living as migrant workers in Germany in the 1960s. Turkish hip hop uses Arabesk music, a folk style that finds its roots in Turkey during the 1960s, and is influenced by the hip hop music of America and Germany. Album artwork, lyrical content, and the Turkish language are used by hip hop artists to express their uniquely Turkish identity.

Hip hop music has been popular in Africa since the early 1980s due to widespread African American influence. In 1985, hip hop reached Senegal, a French-speaking country in West Africa. Some of the first Senegalese rappers were Munyaradzi Nhidza Lida, M.C. Solaar, and Positive Black Soul.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music of South Africa</span> Overview of music traditions in South Africa

The music of South Africa exhibits a culturally varied musical heritage in conjunction with the multi-ethnic populace. Genres with the greatest international recognition being mbube, isicathamiya, mbaqanga, afrofusion, kwaito, South African pop music, afro house, South African hip hop, Shangaan electro, bacardi house, bolo house, gqom and amapiano.

Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, between the late 1980s and 1990s. It is a variant of house music that features the use of African sounds and samples. Kwaito songs occur at a slower tempo range than other styles of house music and often contain catchy melodic and percussive loop samples, deep bass lines, and vocals. Despite its similarities to hip hop music, kwaito has a distinctive manner in which the lyrics are sung, rapped and shouted.

Black Noise music entertainment is a hip-hop crew hailing from the Cape Flats in Cape Town, South Africa, which gained street popularity, primarily after the group chose to reach out to Cape Flats youth with the inclusion of members from Mitchell's Plain. The crew, along with Prophets of Da City (POC), is credited with being a pioneer of Cape Town's 'conscious' hip-hop scene in the late 80s and early 90s. The crew's line-up has changed significantly since the early 90s, but Emile YX? has been the crew's mainstay. Black Noise is South Africa's oldest active hip-hop crew and Jansen, born on 20 July 1968 in Cape Town, has been instrumental in employing Black Noise for youth development initiatives, such as workshops for township youth. He went on to establish a non-profit organisation called Heal the Hood and launched landmark hip-hop events; these include the annual Hip-Hop Indaba, African Battle Cry and Shut Up and Dance. The crew has conducted workshops and performed extensively in South Africa as well as in a number of European countries. Jansen and Black Noise have also launched a number of albums, DVDs, poetry anthologies and books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melle Mel</span> American rapper from New York

Melvin Glover, better known by his stage name Grandmaster Melle Mel or simply Melle Mel, is an American rapper who was the lead vocalist and songwriter of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

Fun-Da-Mental is a British multi-ethnic hip-hop–ethno-techno–world fusion music group formed in 1991. The group is notable for its energetic fusion of Eastern and Western musical forms, for its outspoken political stance, and for its strong Islamic affiliation and advocacy. Fun-Da-Mental's political stance has led to the group earning the label "the Asian Public Enemy". The group's work has led to international attention and collaborations with artists from Pakistan, South Africa and Siberia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mobb Deep</span> American hip hop duo

Mobb Deep was an American hip hop duo from Queens, New York formed in 1991. Consisting of rappers/songwriters/record producers Prodigy and Havoc, they are considered to be among the principal progenitors of hardcore East Coast hip hop. Mobb Deep became one of the most successful rap duos of all time, having sold over three million records. Their best-known albums are The Infamous (1995), Hell on Earth (1996) and Murda Muzik (1999), and their most successful singles were "Shook Ones " and "Survival of the Fittest." They were known for their dark and hardcore delivery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tumi Molekane</span> South African rapper and poet (born 1981)

Tumi Molekane is a Tanzanian-born South African rapper and poet. Often considered one of the best lyricists in South Africa. He was the lead vocalist of Tumi and the Volume, that was officially disbanded in 2012. In 2016 Tumi relaunched himself as Stogie T and released an eponymous album titled 'Stogie T' which featured Da L.E.S, Lastee, Emtee, Nasty C, Nadia Nakai & Yanga. He has 2 singles from the album. The first single "Diamond Walk" features rapper Nadia Nakai in the video. His second single from the album By Any Means which features a hook and verses from Emtee and Yanga.

GHETTO RUFF is an independent South African recording label specializing in kwaito, hip hop, soul, house, gospel and rhythm and blues. Having been formed around the need to have a voice against apartheid GR released Prophets of da City who had tracks banned by the government of the day.

Boom Shaka was a pioneering South African kwaito music group consisting of Junior Sokhela, Lebo Mathosa, Theo Nhlengethwa and Thembi Seete. They released their first single "It's About Time" in 1993, and subsequently released their debut LP, titled "Kwere Kwere" in 1994. Boom Shaka was one of the most successful bands of the mid-1990s in South Africa. Their music was the soundtrack for many young people in the newly democratic South Africa. The group was viewed as representing "the hopes and dreams of a people after liberation". Boom Shaka also achieved international success in London, among other places.

Shaheen Ariefdien is a South African rapper and anthropologist.

Hip hop or hip-hop, also known as rap and formerly as disco rap, is a genre of popular music that originated in the early 1970s from African Americans and Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. Hip-hop music originated as an anti-drug and anti-violence genre consisting of stylized rhythmic music that often accompanies rapping, a rhythmic delivery of poetic speech. In the early 1990s, a professor of African American studies at Temple University said, "Hip-hop is something that blacks can unequivocally claim as their own." By the 21st century, the field of rappers had diversified by both race and gender. The music developed as part of the broader hip-hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, breakdancing, and graffiti art. While often used to refer solely to rapping and rap music, "hip hop" more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of the culture, including DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KRS-One</span> American rapper

Lawrence "Kris" Parker, better known by his stage names KRS-One and Teacha, is an American rapper from The Bronx. He rose to prominence as part of the hip hop group Boogie Down Productions, which he formed with DJ Scott La Rock in the mid-1980s. KRS-One is known for his songs "Sound of da Police", "Love's Gonna Get'cha ", and "My Philosophy". Boogie Down Productions received numerous awards and critical acclaim in their early years. Following the release of the group's debut album, Criminal Minded, fellow artist Scott La Rock was shot and killed, but KRS-One continued the group, effectively as a solo project. He began releasing records under his own name in 1993. He is politically active, having started the Stop the Violence Movement after La Rock's death. He is also a vegan activist, expressed in songs such as "Beef". He is widely considered an influence on many hip-hop artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brasse Vannie Kaap</span>

Brasse Vannie Kaap (BVK) was a hip-hop group from the Cape Flats in Cape Town, South Africa. They rapped predominantly in the Cape Flats dialect of Afrikaans. The original line-up included Deon Daniels (Boeta-D), Roger Heunis (Hamma), Ashley Titus and Enver Pietersen. Bboys Cheeze, Baby-L and Levi joined the group soon after they started to perform live.

Jaiva, Township jive (TJ), Soweto jive, Soweto sound or Soweto beat is a subgenre of South African township music and African dance form that influenced Western breakdance and emerged from the shebeen culture of the apartheid-era townships.

Boom bap is a subgenre and music production style that was prominent in East Coast hip hop during the golden age of hip hop from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.

Julian Du Plessis, known by his stage names Snazz D or Snazz the Dictator, is a South African underground rapper and music producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in hip-hop in South Africa</span>

Since the early 1980s, South African hip-hop has grown significantly as both a musical and social movement. It started in the Cape Flats area of Cape Town in the early 1980s. The first all-female hip-hop group was Yo Girls, who also emerged in Cape Town in the 1980s. Over a decade later in 2002, the group Godessa became the first all-female hip hop group in South Africa to sign a record deal.

References

  1. "Prophetsofdacity". Myspace.
  2. South African hip hop | PRI's The World
  3. Waterman, Chippie. "Ready D on Prophets of da City, the "Understand Where I'm Coming From" video and hip hop culture". The Cape Argus Big Noise, 1 February 1997. http://www.icon.co.za/~cyman/chippie3.html.
  4. Magubane, Zine. “Globalization and Gangster Rap: Hip Hop in the Post-Apartheid City.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 208-29. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.
  5. Haupt, A. “Black Thing: Hip-Hop Nationalism, ‘Race’ and Gender in Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap” in Coloured by History, Shaped by Place (ed. Zimitri Erasmus). Kwela Books & SA History Online: Cape Town, 2001.
  6. Haupt, A. Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion. HSRC Press: Cape Town, 2008.
  7. South African Music
  8. "Encounters". Archived from the original on 3 April 2008. Retrieved 30 March 2008.