Soundz of the South

LETTER TO BIG MAN G -By Mphutlane Bofelo

 Child of hip hop!

Your hair is a political banner
Fifty-inches of black thread
Flying higher than the red flag
Kinky rug thicker than dolly pattern’s wig
The size of a brick is
The sole of your snicker
Like Jesus on water
You stroll in the air
Knees ninety degrees
Pants fifteen degrees below the bum
A symbolic expression
Of the state of the world
A reflection of the state of the heads
Of the heads of states….

Child of hip hop!

Let diamonds and pearls
 Ooze from your flows
Rather than chain you neck
To keep your butt
Indebted to the markert
Let the glow of your lyrical light
Glitter more than the Bling-bling
Around the wrists of R(hyme)A(nd)P(omp) masters
 Showbiz fat-cats playing
Ping-pong games with words
Hoping verbal aerobics will
Help lower down high cholesterols
As they smile & shout cheeeese
 To the click of the camera
Chewing McDonald humbugger
 Washing down with whisky and Jack D
 Waiting with baited breath
For the official announcement
Of the best radio & television advert
Thinking the airwaves can ever be a substitute
For the irrepressible medium of word-of-mouth
Person-to-person & heart to heart
Frank talk among the masses underground
Forgetting the media can never
Replace the indefatigable communal press
Of the word on the street
The message on the wall
Unplugged & uncensored discourse
 Between the people and their poets
Through the open mic
Without the middle man & the trappings of capital
Or the lure of record deals & the seduction of SAMA awards

Son of man!
They say pronunciation
Has no master
We can all say
The same facts differently
& mean one truth
We can spell truth differently
And say onething
But is our interpretation of facts
And the meaning we attach
To truth and things the same
And does our worldview
Not inform how we pronounce things
Does not our pronunciation
 Pronounce who we are
& does not who we are
Inform what we mean
When we shout hip hop
Do we really mean and say
One and the same thing
Do we pronounce the same reality?
Or are the truths we pronounce
Defined by the world we live in
If our worlds define our realities
& our realities inform how
We pronounce ourselves
Then who we are
Defines the hip hop we pronounce
Thus my question to you
Son of a beat
Sucker for melody
Glutton for word-pictures
Seeker of remedies in images
Born to the sound of the beat-box
Cyphos for nursery
Street-battles for schools
Open mic the alma mater
The vinyl a weapon
Of mass ranting & unflinching raving
Your movement is a dance
Every moment of your life
There is a beat in your head
Your heart pumps thousands couplets
 Three-thousand time in a second
Your mouth spits a rhyme
One kilometer per second
Deejays scratch endlessly in search
Of mere echoes of the beat
 Of the tu ne released by your sneeze
Son of a gun!
 Which hip hop do you pronounce?
 & what does it pronounce
Is it hip hurrah! The chant of a raver
Is yours hip-hip hurray! The rave of a pop-star
Or is it the prayer of a street gambler
Hey, pop!
The scream
Of the dice thrower
Calling for 5:2, 4:3, 6:1
Or 6:5 Madice!
Hey, pop!
 A song to the Knox man
Quick buck a gateway
To fame and crass consumerism
More booze and plenty booty
Is yours a He-pop?
 A male-centric music genre
Peddling lyrical debauchery & sexist rhymes
Naked nymphs on album sleeves
Porn-jive orgies on the screen
Nudity dances disguised as choreography
Or do you mean
He pops?
Finger popping
Heroin popping
Bling-bling slave
Glorified thug
Advertorial pawn
Zombie of the markert
Dancing on the mainstream stage
Eh, pop! Or is it, hi pop?
Greetings to the popular
Halleluiah to fashion and trends
Or is it high tech pop
Pop rocking at high-voltage point
Technotronic e-noise & gibberish vocals
A mass slaughter of people’s eardrums
Or maybe you too are on high hop
A qualitative jump
From exteriorities to the intrinsic
Popular music elevated
To the higher level
Of grassroots consciousness
Aesthetic excellence & thematic quality
Nurtured from the sweet nectar
 Of the soil underground