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Can’t Help It - Lady Alma and MdCL.

Lady Alma is a diva in the classical sense and Mark de Clive-Lowe, a maestro in the contemporary sense. When the two team up, they create a slice of future soul to help you navigate some confusing times. This is a cover of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder’s Can’t Help It, was recorded about five years before MJ died and released shortly after his passing. Lady A gives it the Philly touch while Mark adds the London bruk feel. Thank me later.

Contributed by @KwaneleSosibo.

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R!OT - BIG FKN GUN.

This is the second BFG track I’m posting and I can’t promise it will be my last. These young bloods have definitely been putting in mad work, throwing curve-balls at Bra Sol so that he raps like he’s in the Armageddon described in about half of Ayi Kwei Armah’s books – where losing is no option.

This sounds like it was recorded by Roots Manuva in Lee Perry’s brain, in 2019. Either that, or you’re about to black out next to the tavern jukebox in one of those sprawling shantytowns north of Durban, because your drink has been spiked. When you wake up barefoot, feeling remorseful, hit up boom.fm for more where that came from and brush up on your Durban township slang while you at it.

Contributed by @KwaneleSosibo.

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S’tshengise - Manelis.

Way before the whole Durban Kwaito Movement blew up, shifting pop sensibilities towards ambiance and nursery rhyming, a generation of Durban MC's dug deep into their lineage and the local street culture to advance language in ways that would make the great Zulu linguist Thokozani Nene dance in his grave.

Manelis is an archetype of that generation, that saw the reflections of themselves and their surroundings with each listen of Redman and Boot Camp Click. The result of putting his own stamp to influences is that, like Ol’ Dirty Bastard, there is no father to his style, making him the older god of the poetically flung, recontextualised Zulu proverb. On this track, S’tshengise, the title of an EP released in 2009, he teams up with the Eastern Cape beat maestro Top Shayela and ace turntablist P-Kuttah.

Contributed by @KwaneleSosibo.

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All The Dots - De Tropix featuring Afrikan Boy.

I dug De Tropix the first time I heard them. They had that bashment flavour with Kingston credentials, tricked out with a twist of outsider urbanity too. It was with good reason too. Damon Bowen (DJ/producer/vocalist) is a London cat, while Cherry B (dancer/singer) is from the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent. I first heard of them around the time M.I.A.’s second album came out, and they have, often unfairly, been lumped into the imaginary M.I.A./Santigold/(De Tropix) box. Unfair because their third world pastiche seemed more spontaneous and way less self-conscious.

Back after hibernation, they've brought a new sound, that’s more uptown club than ghetto dance, to this track off their Skyward EP. There’s still that post-recession tension to it, though. Afrikan Boy, the schizophrenic Naija/Londoner who rocks the second verse, seems to be fine-tuning his accent too. One day it will all make sense.

Contributed by @KwaneleSosibo.

[noondaytune]

Money - Impande Core.

I stumbled upon this cover of Pink Floyd’s Money while trawling through Facebook and saw the link to Impande Core’s profile. I’ve been digging on this East Rand band for a hot minute now and I must say it’s been a rollercoaster ride of brilliant music and disappearances.

I have it on good authority that they are on a resurgence campaign and perhaps this was done to prove some kind of a point. The point has been made: “We are way more versatile than you give us credit for you suckers. Don’t sleep!”

As for the cover itself, it doesn’t do the song any favours, in the sense that they play it pretty much straight down the line, but what Impande Core lacks in terms of cash register effects and multi-tracking, it makes up for in dollops of ghetto-blues urgency. Considering the past week, the only appropriate thing to add is that this is livicated to the soldiers, I mean miners, in Lonmin, shot in cold blood by the defenders of capital. Keep an eye out for this band.

Contributed by @KwaneleSosibo.

[noondaytune]

Wunga - BFG.

One of the lasting images that stuck with me from Malcolm X’s autobiography was his description of a junkie quitting the habit cold turkey, with help from some Fruit of Islam social workers. The idea of community in this current socio-political climate is perhaps the most revolutionary South Africans have to hold on to.

This is why the track Wunga is perhaps the most haunting Johannesurg-based electric rap outfit BFG has put out since their persistent internet campaign took hold some four years ago.

Solomon does nothing new except brag and boast over a tripped out, slowed down broken beat grove. Zulu raps over some fresh beats stay subversive. So while Wunga is ostensibly a song about the effects of the cocktail drug turning township youths into zombies, what you get instead is Solomon taking on the properties of the drug, as he injects all manner of boasts into your bloodstream.

The drawn out, swishy synth lines, thundering toms and well-placed taunts of “fak’ ugesi” do more than merely complement a junkie’s demise.

I would have loved to put on their recent single Make It Happen, but this remains too compelling as an example of the artist as subject (matter). Or is that the artist as mind over matter.

Contributed by @KwaneleSosibo.