Bro. Mtume,

I hope someone from South Africa responds too.

But the obvious answer is that KWAITO is young, urban, full of expression and upbeat. It is faddish but also has some substance. In some ways it parallels American Hip-Hop, and in other ways it doesn’t. Yeah, Mtume, we’ve already heard “Joy and Pain” used in a Rap/Hip-Hop application ala Rob Base. However, you must remember that certain countries are JUST GETTING some of our modern-Post 80’s stuff. So, they’ve had the equivalent of listening to our reruns getting a perspective on Hip-Hop music. At least in some of the West African countries I know of, Hip-Hop was viewed as VIOLENT and OVERLY SEXUAL, thus an anti-popularity ensued. The American videos that got shipped over there didn’t help matters much either. But things are changing with the rise of Kwaito and Japanese Hip-Hop.

Would I listen to Kwaito on an everyday basis, probably not. However, it is refreshing to hear a different way of creative expression. Even if they sampled/stole/interpolated some of the songs I hold dear. And remember too, their audience is not Americans, but other South Africans who might not have heard our music before.

BTW, I see things have changed for the better about International Hip-Hop since the Telemary Diaz post.

P.S., the security code part to submit on this site is challenging to say the least.

         Mtume says:         

Yes, we know the security code thing is a pain. We had to do it though, because we’d started getting upwards of 300 spam ‘comments’ per day. We did notice that the legitimate comments slowed down right after we installed the security code, and that’s too bad. We liked it the way it was before, but unfortunately the spammers have made comment filtering a necessary evil.