Prophets of Da City
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Prophets of Da City (POC) is a hip hop crew from Cape Town, South Africa. They are composed of about eight members, though the exact membership fluctuates frequently; these include Ishmael Morabe (vocals), Mark Heuvel (dance), Shaheen Ariefdien, Ramone and DJ Ready D. Their style uses elements of hip hop music, reggae and traditional African rhythms.
The group began in late 1988 when Shaheen and Ready D experimented in a small 8-track studio (owned by Shaheen's father, Issy Ariefdien and Lance Stehr the current Ghetoruff CEO) and produced a demo that ultimately became "Our World" (1990), the first South African hip hop release. Although the production value was not exactly stellar it did attempt to interpret hiphop through their unique Cape Town influences and experiences (both musically and lyrically). The album had the first recorded Cape slang (local Afrikaans dialect) hip-hop song called 'Dala Flat' (do it thoroughly). It also consisted of an uptempo goema inspired 'Stop the Violence' and the hip house meets mbaqanga title track. It also featured the Abdullah Ibrahim inspired "Roots" that featured DJ A-ski on the turntables. Although POC was quite a novelty to the South African music scene, record labels were turned off by their social commentary and favoured a more party music approach. Lance, POC manager, set up Ku-shu shu Records and signed a distribution and marketing deal through Teal Trutone (Gallo subsidiary). In 1990 POC was nominated for the OKTV Award for Best New Group. They also embarked on an extensive 80-leg anti-drug school tour that reached an average of 70 000 students.
The second release in late 1991 was Boom Style (referring to the hardhitting punch of a TR-808 drum machine kick drum or self praise of the way the music is kicking - although often mistaken to mean tree style because boom means tree in Afrikaans). While the album had a scathing attack on the apartheid regime in the song 'Ons Stem' (meaning our voice - as a response to the racist apartheid national anthem 'die stem' - the voice) and the innovative Hard Time on Stage, the follow up to Murder on Stage from Our World, it was less experimental. The lead single, Boom Style, like their first single, Our World, aimed to fuse contemporary US hiphop influenced dance music with mbaqanga styled guitar riffs. While Our World was rather innocent and daring for its time, Boom Style reflected the realities of operating within the music industry and the pressures of the market on POC. The censorship board sent a formal letter to the label to express their displeasure over the use of the Afrikaner national anthem in which POC not only mocked 'Die Stem', but also disrespected Afrikaner and other colonial political icons. Their live shows incorporated all aspects of hiphop culture and not only emceeing. Turntablism, b-boying and even aerosol art at times were used to not only present POC but represent hiphop culture and expose to parts of South Africa where people did not know what hiphop was. The video for 'Kicking Non Stop' was censored because members of the crew put a portrait of the then president, P. W. Botha, in a fridge to chill. This year the POC social issues based tour covered another 45 schools.
In 1992 they were invited by Quincy Jones and Caiphus Semenya to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. This year they embarked on a Namibian anti-drug campaign, covering 65 schools. They also got increasingly more involved in facilitating workshops on deejaying, b-boying and developing hiphop writing techniques. Leading up to the first democratically held election in South Africa, POC embarked on a national voter education campaign. Although Issy Ariefdien has been involved in group's production since the first album, POC also brought former rival Patrick Hickey a.k.a. Caramel (then an emcee and producer with emcees from U.N.C.L.E.) on board as part of the production team for the Age of Truth album.
Inspired by the production styles of the Bomb Squad (Public Enemy) and Boogiemen (Ice Cube), Age of Truth is arguably their most militant and musically daring album. This album is generally considered South Africa's first hiphop classic album. Although Age of Truth won album of the year in various publications, the majority of the songs were banned. The song Understand where I'm coming from also appeared on the Tommy Boy Planet Rap album which featured 12 hip hop crews from around the world. The album was recorded and mixed at Bop Studios in the then Bantustan, Bophutatswana. The head engineer at Bop Studios worked with POC before and offered them a deal to record an album at an extraordinary reduced rate. POC found out that the aim behind Bop Studios was to entice big music stars to record there in order to legitimize Bophutatswana as a sovereign state. When the group heard about this while they recorded there, they included the lines "Fuck Mangope (Bophutatswana's head of fake state) even if we record here". The head engineer confiscated all the mixed DATs and confronted the group about certain remarks made on the album. After a heated debate the group left with a 'stolen' back up copy of the mixed album that eventually became the released version.
In late 1993 POC was invited to perform in Denmark at the Visions of Africa music festival and also embarked on a national voter education tour, covering high schools, community centers and universities. The aim was to explain the voting process to youth who never had the opportunity to vote in any national elections. The democratically held election marked an important moment in the history of South Africa, but also the history of hiphop in South Africa, because it was an acknowledgment of the popularity and power of hiphop as a pedagogical tool.
