The Plug x Castle Lite present: 100 Most Influential People in Urban Culture
“There’s no argument. I am a hundred percent the reason why hip hop is drenched.” Part of his Utatakho Remix verse that shook up the fourth quarter of 2019, Riky Rick stakes his claim on the game boldly with that bar. Hubris is almost a cornerstone of hip hop, but who really got the block […]
Khuli Chana: The Blueprint
Khuli Chana begins “Endurance” – the opening track off his upcoming album, Planet of the HaveNots – with the lyrics “’Ha o tshwere Chana go ka palang?’/ the confidence was colossal, no sekala se se ka e kalang/ had to learn quick or hung out to be dormant/ flipped a couple of pages, learned all […]
Tarryn Alberts: Tenacious
She began dancing at four years old when her grandmother would put her and her cousin in a clown suit for the entertainment of the family at gatherings, and make them sing and dance for the aunties. She’s taken up the aunty baton, and her cousins’ kids now perform for her in what has become […]
Sne Mbatha’s Universal Language
There’s a reverence in the way that Sne Mbatha speaks about dance that is usually reserved for the church’s faithful when wrapped up in worship. Where the latter is swathed in dogma, Sne’s voice almost takes flight – as her body does mid-sequence – as she tries to describe the phenomenon to me. “I’m really […]
DJ Doowap’s Artistic Awakening
DJ Doowap has just performed at Afropunk in Brooklyn this past weekend. It’s hot on the heels of her performance at RoseFest on the 9th August, where she dropped an original track as part of her set. “Dude! At RoseFest I just dropped my own track, and I started performing it. I picked up the […]
Breaking Free
In choosing the the creative direction for Women’s Month, we wanted to feature artists on the cover who aren’t musicians but contribute to urban culture just as much as rappers do. Dancers, DJs, even fine artists shape the culture that young people are consumed by without necessarily being the focal point of it. We need […]
Dee XCLSV: Inspired
Musical idolatry is a fickle thing; faced with your role models in the flesh, the idea that you held of them in awe may turn out to be one cloaked in the emperor’s new clothes. Didintle Mothine joined the second season of the rap reality show The Hustle intent on impressing his rap elder statesmen, […]
Tony X’s Rising Star
The tale of the musician who began performing in church and graduated to the bright lights of the secular music industry is one as old as time. Their voices usually enhanced by the discipline and training required by the church choir, this is the back story to one of Punchline’s finest; Tony X. “My parents […]
Luna Florentino’s road to music redemption
Luna Florentino excites me. Whether its listening to him freestyle around words that Queen Azizzar throws out at him during a Massiv Metro interview, or taking in Fresh Prince of Rustenburg one song/week at a time; there’s an ease around the mic that Koketso Ramafuthula embodies that’s difficult to ignore. Narrating his life story as […]
Manu Worldstar’s new frontier
To many people, finding the distinction between a South African expression of a culture of Bronx, New York origin seems a natural progression. To others, that differentiation skirts a blasphemous line of diversion from the altar of hip hop foundations. Manu Worldstar is losing his religion in musical exploration and blurring every line that comes […]
Punchline Season
In choosing the the creative direction for the group cover, we wanted to pay homage to the one of the greatest hip hop covers of all time; the Vibe Death Row Cover of 1996. 96 was an iconic year for hip hop. Referencing that cover meant showing – just like Death Row at the time […]
Imraan Christian: The Storyteller
Meeting Imraan Christian, the person, is foreshadowed by the idea of Imraan Christian, the artist. Ours was an encounter at a vegan restaurant, surrounded by the fruit orchard and vegetable garden that supplies the farm-to-table establishment. Robed in a white long-sleeved linen shirt and a similarly slacked bottom, the idea of his ‘son of the […]