He ripped through opponent Priddy Ugly in one of his now-infamous celebrity boxing matches, then hopped over to Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown, where he performed at the Back To The City festival, returning after a two-year, pandemic-induced hiatus.

The past few years have been interesting for the rapper, who has sought to distance himself from the core fanbase that made #FillUpTheDome a reality. Add to that list Sizwe Alakine, who eschewed the moniker “Reason” when he decided to focus on his burgeoning Amapiano career.

While a cursory glance by the common citizen might suggest hip-hop has reached a low, heads in the know recognise that the real and the dope is still available in steady supply. One needs to dig deeper, beyond the surface level of Nasty C and AKA — who’ve got a banger in their latest effort Lemons at over two-million YouTube views after three weeks — to understand there exist Zulu Mecca, Tyson Sybateli and more.

While traditional hip-hop media was dealt a heavy blow in the mid-2010s with the demise of Hype Magazine’s physical format, outlets such as podcasts — the likes of The Sobering — and YouTube channels dedicated to cyphering, such as Sotra Cyphers, have carried the baton and kept the culture alive.

On the afternoon of Sunday, 11 September, when rapper Maglera Doe Boy is due to attend a curated presentation of his debut album Diaspora, Braamfontein is a lulled stranger, its streets reflective of the texture of the day: muted, with minimal traffic and ample parking space — especially on the street where The Artivist, the venue hosting the session, is situated.

Maglera Doe Boy draws on popular culture for his subject matter.

Slated to start at 3pm, the event has yet to see any people arriving 15 minutes later when I get there. This is a sign, a bad one at that. Among the many things Covid-19 taught us is the importance of time and how crucial it is to not waste it. That the event doesn’t start until two hours and some change later feels like a personal affront, so I leave, but not before interacting with the select few people who’ve been invited.

The themed affair has many adhering to the dress code — “dress to impress the Italians”, according to the invitation. It’s a black-tie affair featuring Joburg cool sized and dolled up like they’ve just de-cluttered their wardrobes and put the best-fits on for the occasion. Think gangster flick aesthetics tailored to meet the demands of modern-day city living.

Conversation flows freely and the bits I catch centre mostly around music industry-related issues, for this is a music-insider event, after all. People speak of the state of South African hip-hop — it seemed to be on the rise but now no one is really sure what is happening — and of the album itself — he needed to take us, the old fans, through this transitory phase, for it feels rather disconnected from the rapper who used to lose it over beats by the likes of Apu Sebekedi and Khalil Masia, who produced timeless bangers such as Contra and 10 Deep, respectively.

When I do go outside, the white minivan transporting the MC arrives and parks temporarily in a slot opposite The Artivist, while alternative arrangements for a more permanent parking spot are made. I dip. Time’s a-wasting, as Erykah would say.

“You had to be there, man,” tweets Maglera the following day.

I feel nothing!

For the past two years, the rapper born Tokelo Moyakhe, who hails from Makazana (Kanana township in Orkney), has destroyed every record he’s been on. His verse on producer MashBeatz’s Never Sleep (alongside Thato Saul) is this year’s best, bar none. Every word spat and every bar laid belongs to a memory bank of rap’s most delicious delicacies. He’s a tongue-twisted flow-meister with the speed of a racetrack stallion and a magnanimous, unique installation in the sea of otherwise forgettable faces flooding rap at the moment.

This knack for content and delivery carries through on songs such as Dor do Povo, about the realities of ghetto living, which include being stuck in a vanity project with the self that refuses to go, irrespective of how old its inhabitants become: “To never grow is to never grow/ you never know until you know, the highs are in the lows”. And on Makazana, an homage to his hood, described by the anchor in the opening news clip as “once a thriving mining area but now a pocket of poverty, unemployment and crime”.

This draws to mind a similarly reported clip towards the end of 25K’s Pheli Makaveli about his hood, Atteridgeville, where the news anchor talks about it as an area with high levels of unemployment and drug abuse, one “plagued by an escalating rate of crime”.

What these news reports always fail to make clear is that this shit is all by design.

Stylistically, Maglera draws from a range of subject matter in popular culture. He’s a gaming head in one life, a bodega supplicant in the next, and a Mexican druglord with the suave outlook of a learned, in-touch professorial candidate elsewhere.

He doesn’t stand alone, however. Maglera Doe Boy is part of a generation of South African hip-hop that has finally found its own mode of expression, though it regularly ventures out Stateside for a touch of inspiration. He’s so effective with his lyrics, and so intentional with his song-making, that it can be hard to trace exactly where he’ll head to next — just know and trust that it’s going to bang, regardless.

In his lane are MCs such as Thato Saul and 25K, proficient wordsmiths with a talent for detailing the most daring true-crime hood narratives on their songs.

“From a language perspective, it was so important to tap into somebody like Maglera,” says the event’s curator Kabelo Moremi.

“If you think about how he positions the township [as] being a diaspora, meaning that it’s a collective of people who have been dispatched from their proper regions, you can think about the melting pot that the township is of different cultures, different languages, different traditions. And this is somebody who draws, like a sponge, from all of those traditions.”

This moment is not without its forebears. There have been many iterations of it, from Gugulethu’s own Driemanskap’s spaza raps (remember S’phum’eGugs?), to YoungstaCPT’s trap anthems detailing his side hustle while pursuing greatness in the underbelly of Hillbrow (I’ve Seen It All, Mwanangu).

Spaza, a style of rapping commonly associated with Xhosa-speaking MCs from the Cape Flats, absorbed the idiosyncrasies of hood life, from language to clothing to social issues, and fomented a uniquely Capetonian rap identity that encompassed other artists of that era, such as Rattex, whose signature joint Kulcha would get the crowd riled up whenever he’d perform it in clubs and park jams between 2008 and 2011, when his public presence began to wane.

Wordsmith MC Thato Saul.

YoungstaCPT, on the other hand, had a revelation. The Lil Wayne influence he previously flaunted got substituted with a style of rapping that bore a close resemblance to how he speaks. This he explores in great detail, and from multiple angles, on his debut full-length album, 3T (2019).

As he told Sabelo Mkhabela in an interview, “I knew that the only way I was going to make people understand the situation in these ghettos like Grassy Park, Ottery and Lotus River is to take them right back to the start, and if I’m wrong, go do your own research.”

What’s fascinating for me is how the MCs weave hood narratives into their songs as though they shared the same backyard. There’s a line running from Mahikeng to Potchefstroom to Tshwane. This line skips Jozi before landing in the Vaal Triangle, where it recoils and re-traces its steps to the rustle and bustle of the Joburg metropolis.

It takes in language and fashion and parades historical allegiances on songs as though they were daily bread and manna from the heavens. It’s a historical pathway, too, of miners and their tales of migration; of  gangsters and their territorial contestations; of apartheid and its undying legacy of dispossession, zoning, state-instituted oppression through violent force and so much more.

This, what is happening in rap, is not just a flex, it’s reclamation of identity, of history, of the very souls of black folk. It’s the blues of our bruised, misused daily lives.

A few days after Maglera’s event, I went to check out KO’s listening session for his SR3 album. He’s also been instrumental in crafting a sonic and lyrical identity that is very much South African in its makeup, from the sghubu-laden beats, to the bars lifted off of kwaito’s rosy past, to the very content of his raps, while encompassing elements from global pop culture, mostly American.

Before sounding off on the 13-track offering, he mentioned the album was supposed to be released in 2020 but he decided to hold back since he felt it was “outside music”. The wait has yielded results, for now we have bangers such as Sete (with Young Stunna and Blxckie) which hark back to the days when Cara Cara was causing traffic on the airwaves, the highwaves, the hood hangouts and the festivals.

This current form owes its proliferation and almost-immediate acceptance to OGs such as Skwatta Kamp, HHP, Morafe, Brasse Vannie Kaap, Jitsvinger and many others who have made it a point to deliver perfect products while keeping their roots rooted in Mzansi expression. It is to them we tip our hats.

Rap is still Alive in South Africa

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The rapper, whose real name was Adolph Robert Thornton Jr, was buying cookies at Makeda’s Butter Cookies at about 1pm Wednesday when a gunman drove up and shot through the window.

“The tragic shooting death of rap artist Young Dolph serves as another reminder of the pain that violent crime brings with it,” Memphis mayor Jim Strickland tweeted. “My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.”

Dolph, who has 4.4m followers on Instagram, released his debut studio album King of Memphis in 2016. The album peaked at number 49 on the Billboard 200 chart. Young Dolph followed up with his album Rich Slave, featuring the single RNB with Megan Thee Stallion, in August 2020.

Born in Chicago and raised by his grandmother in Memphis, Young Dolph, as the oldest brother of his siblings, learned early to be self-sufficient. His parents were addicted to crack, and his options for making money in a neighborhood racked by violence and poverty were limited to “hustling”.

“We were in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades, seeing this living hell,” he told Glamour Base Ent.  in 2018. “I’ve just always wanted the money. I told my grandma a long time ago that I was going to take my mom and dad out the hood. I was a little boy saying that shit. I ain’t never really had no dad, just the street’s ways, and I’m giving [people] game that their dad was supposed to be giving them, on these tapes and lyrics. My whole thing is about giving these folks the real.”

Dolph started free styling with his friends as a teenager, and began releasing mix tapes in 2008. “It can be at a spot, it can be in the trap, it can be in the car driving – we just fucking around,” he told Glamour Base Ent. He built a reputation as a confident rapper hungry for success; as he rapped on , off the 2017 mix tape Rich Crack Baby, “I clocked in when I was 12 and never clocked out”.

“I’d rather motivate somebody all day long,” he said in 2018. “To me, that is timeless music.”

He also used close brushes with death as fuel for his music. In 2017, a beef with fellow Memphis rapper Yo Gotti devolved into a spray of bullets at Dolph’s SUV in Charlotte, North Carolina, before a club experience; Dolph turned the alleged incident into promotion for his album Bulletproof, featuring the song 100 Shots. (Charlotte police told the Glamour Base Ent. that they counted “no more than 50” bullets on the scene, and did not establish if Dolph was connected to the incident.)

Dolph was nearly killed that September, after an argument with three men in Hollywood Boulevard’s tourist district turned physical; one man shot Young Dolph three times, leaving him in critical condition.

“I’ve been targeted since I was 17, 18, 19,” he told Glamour Base Ent. “I just knew that I was good.”

Yet he wasn’t “a person that lives in fear”, he added. “You got some people who really worry about that kind of shit. I don’t.”

Dolph is survived by a son and a daughter.

Watch :

Young Dolph KING Documentary Ft Gucci Mane Blk Haysues Enigma Series

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On Tuesday (May 4), the Dreamville Records boss ramped it up when he randomly tweeted, “Is this thing on?” But the elusive Cole quickly returned with the announcement fans have been waiting for — a release date for The Off-Season. 

According to the man himself, J. Cole’s sixth studio album is expected to arrive Friday (May 14), bringing the long, laborious wait to an end.

“Just know this was years in the making,” he wrote alongside the album’s dramatic cover art. “My new album The Off-Season available everywhere 5/14.”

J. Cole has already given the highly anticipated album a test drive. On Friday (April 30), Cole took to his Instagram Stories for a rare social media update and let the world know his latest project had officially passed his personal driving test.

“Just rode through the city to The Off-Season,” he wrote. “Dawg… Too excited.”

If the success of KOD is any indication, The Off-Season will surely appease Cole fans. KOD debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 upon its release, selling over 397,000 total album-equivalent units in its first week, earning Cole his fifth consecutive No. 1 album in the United States. HipHopDX Editor-in-Chief Trent Clark called the project “one of the most important rap albums ever” due to its themes.

The 12-track project boldy tackled addiction to not just drugs but money, sex, power and relationships. The closing song, “1985 (Intro To The Fall Off),” also sparked controversy as a “backhanded well-wish to a particular young gunner [Lil Pump] whose slander breached Dreamville County” and “a one-size-fits-all forewarning that riding Hip Hop trends will eventually take artists down a dead-end street.”

With all eyes set on J. Cole, fans now have something to anticipate in the coming week.

The post J. COLE FINALLY ANNOUNCES ‘THE OFF-SEASON’ ALBUM COVER ART + RELEASE DATE appeared first on Glamour Base Entertainment.

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During The Million Dollaz Worth of Game Ep. 111, Floyd Mayweather was asked “the roughest fight you ever had?”. Floyd proceeded to say Manny Pacquiao was the best fighter he fought but also mentions Emanuel Augustus & Miguel Cotto as rough fighters.

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During a recent interview with the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast co-host Wallo, Birdman revealed how much money Cash Money pulls in annually solely from the masters they own.

After co-host Wallo asked how an artist can make money off the masters, Birdman explained around the seven-minute mark, “If it has a value. That’s a value. If you don’t have a value, you sitting on some shit that’s dead — but it’s still your shit. But our shit had value. We license the music. I just started letting people sample my shit. There’s a gang of ways to make money off your masters. We generate $20 to $30 million dollars a year just on our masters.”

In 2005, Lil Wayne founded Young Money Entertainment under the Cash Money umbrella, ushering in artists such as Nicki Minaj and Drake. The label has released 14 chart-topping Billboard albums, including Weezy’s Tha Carter V, Drake’s Scorpion and Nicki’s Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded. 

But along the way, the relationship between Lil Wayne and Birdman started to unravel and Wayne ultimately sued Universal Music Group and Birdman over unpaid advances and rights to his catalog. In 2015, Wayne filed a $51 million lawsuit, which was eventually settled in 2018.

Under the new agreement, Lil Wayne collected over $10 million from previously failed payments and Young Money’s ownership was transferred from Cash Money to Universal directly. Birdman’s 49 percent stake in Young Money was also transferred to Wayne. In June 2020, Lil Wayne sold his master recordings in a settlement from Republic Records to Universal Music Group for $100 million.

Wayne previously discussed the situation in a 2016 interview with ESPN’s His & Hers, comparing his issues with Cash Money Records to Chris Bosh’s own difficulties with the Miami Heat.

“Everything I’ve done for them, they wouldn’t be them without me,” he said at the time. “But I’m off the team, so it’s, ‘Screw him as long as we can, make sure we’re going to screw him as much as we can, and when we can’t no more, let’s see what happens to him.’ That’s what it looks like they’re doing to Bosh, and I hope he make a comeback.”

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“It’s been extremely difficult for me to remain quiet in light of all the things that have transpired, and all the egregious allegations being tossed around about me and my wife,” he said. “But there’s a reason for that, and I don’t mind sharing it. You see, if a person does not have any right to criminally or civilly have you in court … the best thing they can do is get you for defamation … Drag you in court, make you pay their legal bills.”

He suggested the people behind the allegations were simply trying to bait him and his family into calling them “liars,” which may give them grounds for a civil suit. T.I. said he felt as though the burden of proof was on the accused rather than the accuser, but emphasized that all alleged victims need to be heard.

“Women, Black women in particular, should be supported, protected, defended, and uplifted,” he said. “However, evil has no gender … A threat comes in all shapes and sizes …”

T.I. went on to describe his wife as a “beautiful person” and a good mother who doesn’t deserve any of this. He also said his and Tiny’s sexual activities have always been done with consenting adults.

“What we’re not gonna do is open the door to my bedroom … But I will say this: Whatever we ever have done, has been done with consensual adults who [are] into what we into and like what we like …” he continued. “We never forced nobody, we never drugged nobody against their will, we ain’t never held nobody against their will, we never made nobody do anything … Never raped nobody.”

The rapper said the abuse allegations were doing harm to actual victims because they were nothing more than baseless claims. He then suggested those who have accused him and his wife were simply trying to gain clout.

“These are not stories of actual events, and I have proof of that,” he said. “… I have proof of people who have gone on live … and later say, ‘I just wanted some clout. I can’t believe they actually posted that shit. I just wanted some clout.’ So that’s what we’re dealing with … How are you going to be a victim and an attacker at the same time?”

He reiterated that all victims deserved to be heard and treated in a way that would make them comfortable enough to “show their face” and say, ‘This is what happened to me. This is who did it,’ so the necessary steps can follow. This is not that.”

The scandal made national headlines on Thursday after a woman named Sabrina Peterson began sharing screenshots of DMs from alleged victims. The messages described instances of sexual abuse and assault and included claims that T.I. and Tiny required women to take drugs before entering their home.

A spokesperson for the couple told Complex they have had issues with Peterson for more than a decade, and may pursue legal action.

“Mr. and Mrs. Harris want to be on record and more importantly want the public to know they emphatically deny in the strongest way possible the egregiously appalling allegations being made against them by Sabrina Peterson,” the spokesperson said. “The Harrise’s have had difficulty with this woman for well over a decade. They are taking this matter very seriously, and if these allegations don’t end, they will take appropriate legal action.

Complex

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Gunna has previously collaborated with a number of WUNNA’s guests in recent months, joining Travis Scott and NAV on “Turks” at the end of March after appearing alongside Young Thug on “Diamonds” in December. When he originally released “SKYBOX,” it arrived with a stop-motion music video that featured Gunna on a hot air balloon voyage.

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Drake, Lady Gaga, and The Weeknd are possibly facing a massive breach of their personal information: A law firm that represents the artists, as well as other major musicians, was reportedly hacked this week. The hackers are requesting a large sum of money and threatening to release artists’ personal information.

Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks was recently hacked, according to a report from Page Six. The firm’s website is down and hackers are alleged to hold over 756 gigabytes of data from its artists including contracts, endorsement deals, personal emails, and other personal details. The information is reportedly being held at ransom for a whopping $21 million as they threaten to publicize “personal details” pertaining to Gaga, Elton John, Barbra Streisand, and more.

As a report from Complex states, a firm’s representative confirmed the hacking and has called upon “experts” for help: “It can be confirmed that we’ve been victimized by a cyberattack. We have notified our clients and our staff. We have hired the world’s experts who specialize in this area, and we are working around the clock to address these matters.” Those experts include the FBI, who have reportedly identified the hackers as REvil or Sodinokibi.

The law firm also noted that they were not the only ones to be victimized by the same hackers. A representative stated that HBO, Zoom, and the Texas court system have all been hit with a very similar data breach, calling it a “global extortion scheme.”

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