Adam Haupt Live in Cape Town
FUCT is one of those grotte which conservatives might avoid and which diligent cops give a good run through on a night out on the town. Watching our men in blue on the go to the sounds of really great drum ‘n’ bass and mostly commercial hip hop is perversely entertaining. But, visually speaking, this Blunt concert had much more to offer by way of side-events.
Viz-U-All Dredd fiddled with slide, film and video projectors. Graphic art, cartoons and an incredibly old Star Trek movie set the scene – no live broadcast of that fateful French soccer event to be found here. Viz-U-All Dredd also seemed to have little regard for chronology and temporality as some of the movies were played in reverse order and the projections themselves were often back to front.
The loops in some of the Star Trek scenes were pretty interesting. With an amicable scene being set, one would have hoped that Blunt’s supporting act, Most Valuable Playas (MVP), would deliver the goods. As with many younger crews, MVP seemed to forget that they need to engage with their audience to get the vibe going. Their DJ also made a few slips and one of the songs bombed out, unfortunately.
There’s also the Americano posturing which they seem to love. As we grooved tentatively to their tunes, a woman blurted out unceremoniously, “Same old misogynist bullshit.” Their last song said it all in terms of stage presence: “Party over here, fuck y’all over there.” Not particularly helpful in the feel-good vibes department.
For the record, there are other young Cape crews such as BVK who avoid the gangsta route: “Yo man, what’s up, kid/ Let’s do this for the honeys/That’s not the way we praat in die Kaap/Jy moet wys raak of waai want jou valse accent don’t make you kwaai/You not Chester Williams so don’t even try to try before I skop your gat like Popeye”.
Violent rhetoric aside, this crew points to the creative potential which African hip- hop possesses.
Blunt could be read as a new SA hip hop success story: brothers getting together with white boys to kick out really hard- core rhymes, riffs and beats. Combining MCs, a DJ, a drummer, keyboardist and lead guitarist in live performance, Blunt live up to their name in every possible way and any Rainbow gunk which one might be thinking is soon bashed into smithereens.
The high-pitched synth sounds at the beginning of their set might have you thinking that you’re in for some G-phunk, but their fast- paced act and slick time changes soon dissuade you of this delusion. I was so touched by the hard-core reality of it all that I went up to hug the PA in the hope that the energy would not dissolve into that good morning air.
At last Cape Town can gratify those hip-hop heads who have a very definite taste for alternative rock. While I got excited about the music, Blunt’s lyrical content might raise a few concerns. It is clear enough that, in many ways, they draw their inspiration from crews such as Ice-T and Body Count. The precedents which Body Count have set with Body Count and Born Dead are not particularly inspiring if you’re gender sensitive.
Consider Mamma’s Gotta Die Tonight, in which the speaker kills his mother because she is racist. Ice-T goes into great detail about how he mutilates her body and mails it to different parts of the States. In KKK Bitch, Ice-T shags the daughter of a Klan member.
Lyrics like “she sucked my dick like a motherfucking vacuum” and “I know her daddy would really be after me when his grandson’s name is Little Ice-T” could hardly be called progressive, nation- conscious hip-hop. Of course, misogyny is very at home in the rock genre as well and this might explain why Body Count has been doing well among metalheads.
All in all, when listening to bands such as Blunt, one needs to consider whether they take in problematic aspects of the rock and hip-hop genres uncritically.