For a while, during our adolescence in the nineties, it felt like hip-hop could answer all of life’s questions for us. While it evolved spontaneously, it was nurtured by healthy doses of street corner intellect and convergent esoterica to such an extent that relating to hip-hop has often felt like relating to an all-knowing, all-powerful being.“You are dealing with heaven, while you are walking through hell. When I say heaven, I don’t mean up in the clouds, because heaven is no higher than your head and hell is no lower than your feet.”–Rakim, as told to journalist Harry Allen.
I had these thoughts dancing in my mind when I visited an old acquaintance in a Craighall complex the other day. I remembered once, almost ten years ago, riding wild in the streets of Joburg trying to decipher his copy of Ghostface Killah’s woozy classic Supreme Clientele. Ghostface, a proclaimed adherent of the Five Percent Nation’s beliefs (they believe that Allah is the physical black man – Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head), took language to extreme heights by melding the “supreme alphabet” (a coded language based on ascribing meaning to each letter of the alphabet) to his already heady, psychedelic street poems. That album pretty much cemented his place as one of the culture’s premier lyricists, even though much of his subject matter tread worn ground.
Today, Mfundisi Dlungu is a self-employed architect. When we do reminisce about hip-hop’s importance, it is with the distance and objectivity of hindsight, and arguments about who is the “freshest” are underscored by an existential urgency.
Seated on opposite ends of a work desk in his lounge, Dlungu – an athletic figure in a pale yellow shirt, cream jeans and white cross-trainers – cues tracks on his iPad as we chew the fat on our favourite subject. “What made me check for it [hip-hop] was that they were saying that Islam was a religion for the black man, and not Christianity,” says Dlungu. Emerging from the kitchen, he places drinks on wooden coasters and continues. “But when I checked both of these religions, neither belonged to us. So how could we, as Africans, lay claim to something that is not ours?”
Dlungu, a “Christian by default” who never goes to church, adds that it was the mixed messages that led him to doubt hip-hop as a catalyst to spiritual awakening. “Even these cats who were representing that Five Percent thing, they were still about drinking 40 ounces [a measure of beer]. How are you gonna be a Muslim if you’re drinking and fucking whores?” he asks rhetorically. “There wasn’t consistency in what they were saying. In terms of spirituality, the only thing I found in hip-hop was “keeping it real”. Do you! That was the only thing more than the religious part of it because that was a mess…”
Today, the idea of keeping it real is something of a laughing stock in hip-hop. It is an antiquated concept based on keeping your subject matter congruous with your daily reality. Nevertheless, it did bestow on Dlungu a strong template for forming his own identity. Today, he still speaks in “golden era” hip-hop slang laced with expletives but without the requisite accent as he dissects the culture’s sinister materialism. “Who can relate to holding money and just throwing it out there, unless you are a stupid motherfucker,” he says in reference to a standard image in mainstream hip-hop videos. “Even if I was to make my money I still couldn’t relate to that. You can relate to Shaq saying ‘my biological didn’t bother’. It just inspired me to be an individual.”
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