wassup?I have this to say to da cap-and-bling-wearing yoofs of my hometown:

Wise up. The people you idolise are not like you at all.

You are genuinely living on the edge, but your heroes only pretend. They have never suffered a day in their lives, they have no idea of what it means to be hungry, and while they rap about their nines and how they cap motherfuckers, the closest most of them have ever been to a firearm is when they play Halo 3 on the XBOX they bought with your money.

They have no right to promote and glamorise gangsterism because they have never experienced it. It is big business to them that you continue to believe the lie that they are “hardcore”.

You are aspiring to be something that does not exist. It is only unhappy circumstance that creates a parallel between the reality of your lives and the fiction they sell.

These people are on a different continent, part of a country that bombs other countries for oil. Within that heirarchy, they are a minority. Stop pretending to be a minority, you are not.

Bring me some lyrics in your own South African voice about stuff you know about. Rap to me about how it’s hard to put food on the table, or how the new SA has panned out for you, or the challenges of doing the right thing when your peergroup is hellbent on self destruction.

Then we can talk about “keeping it real”.