Do I accept New Age Kwaito as Hip Hop?

@Una_Ramses

Growing up, I had no sense of confidence at all and the only thing I was mainly good at was to find comfort in being under a friend’s shadow, but that all changed, when I discovered Hip Hop. All of a sudden, my communication skills puzzled into place, and I discovered the homey feeling, I never knew I was longing for.

Now that everything in life started making sense. My family saw how my new adoptive culture was bringing inner peace to their low self esteem child, these triggered them investing more in this Hip Hop, they didn’t even understand. As much as they hated the violence, gangsterism, and popularized lifestyle that the culture idolized at the time, they saw it as a lesson of ‘choice’ one had to learn, on what’s right and what is wrong when choosing a lifestyle.

When I began forming part of the fraternity, the Hip Hop scene in South Africa was in its inferior state, or let me rather say grooming stage. I saw it grow with me over the years. Which is why I easily become a bit skeptical about new elements being brought in, because that blights the cornerstone the fraternity was built on.

Most hip hop heads I found and those I came in with, went through the same process and share my sentiments, on Hip Hop being anything other than Hip Hop and worst of all having its name synonymous with another culture’s name that rivaled it from the get go. At the same time, we can’t ignore how times has changed, since B.O.P released Ase Mo States and Mzekezeke’s Amakoporosh. Hip Hop is now play-listed by people who dismissed and labeled it as un-African.

Music must reflect the space it is being done in and right now, the air breathe as though this ‘climatic change’ is good for the culture, its ability to transcend barriers of having it’s own distinct SA identity and the growth of the fraternity.

Does one accept this change? Change can never be good until you face it head-on.

Going on about the person I fell in love with before marriage to the kwaito element is no more the same, does not elp the situation and drifts away form what the culture was built on, which is acceptance of diversity.

Every step a couple takes in a relationship, brings a new dimension and affects the couples outlook of the relationship, doing so individually. The right thing to do, in such an instance, it is to embrace the change and see it through.

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