I went abroad junior year of college and had to put up with this little Irish-American red-head potato of a co-ed who thought the Irish Public Army was the absolut kewlest. Three words: Celtic Knot tattoos. Wretched.
She was a damned loon. But ever since knowing her, I've been fascinated--self-righteously and sneeringly fascinated, but fascinated!--by some Americans' faith that the country their forefathers emigrated has an inherent cache of authenticity. When these folks finally take the flight, they usually smack into an alien culture like a bird into my grandma's big panoramic window. ("Bonk!" says Non.)
(Pretend I actually provided the necessary segue here)
Let's say a giant sock monkey takes a crap. Now picture that piece of crap attached to some guy's neck: he's SockTurdHead. Now imagine SockTurdHead is a famous South African musician.
Now add one drunk American thug gangster rapper and... whap goes the birdy!
Last Thursday, Ja Rule had a run-in with Mzekezeke. The masked kwaito star was interviewing him for the TV show One when things turned ugly.
"I asked him all about 50 Cent and stuff but got quite irritated that he did not know about Soweto, which has such significance for us. He was drunk and then just started swearing continuously and talking about what a gangster he was and stood up and began pushing me around," Mzekezeke said.
Soweto is a slum at the center of everything SAfrica has gone through in the past 20 years. On the same South African trip Senor Rule had his entourage threaten to snap the neck of local DJ who played a 50 Cent record, and apparently disrespected every African artist he came into contact with.
To be fair: I don't know that Mr. Rule was expecting anything more than another concert and afterparty. But he still clearly spent the better part of a week acting like a stinko butt pipe.
A San Francisco alt-weekly casts the whole thing (in breezy alt-weeklyese) as part of a larger trend:
Ja assumed Africa would feel him unconditionally, and he wasn't the only one: agit-rappers Dead Prez made a similar sojourn, and though they were far more respectful of the conditions of black life there and, as a result, far more loved, they also crashed the nation's tenuous postapartheid landscape with their clunky, us-versus-them moralizing.
Go read it. I can't tell you if thug anthems really are a fit for African culture, or if this is just about people reacting to some good beats. But this seems to be preliminary evidence that the idea of gangsta rap goes over a lot better with locals than gangsta rappers themselves.
Now I wouldn't know a real gangster from a weight lifter with a panty on his head. But the mystique has caught on with locals. Shiny knock-off watches, diamond ear-rings on men, and aping the obnoxiousness on TV. Tonight at dinner, one group's Alpha Snackbag told the waiter to quit asking for them to pay the bill. If he didn't? "Man, I will f--- you up."
Very tough talk from a guy wearing earrings.
(Thanks to Daudi for linking to the original story Ja Rule-as-Axl Rose story.)
