We never get flowers when we can still smell them.This is truth not just a thought.

Excuse me if I haven’t been my friendly self lately, online and in real life. So to borrow from Dionne Warwick “If you see me walking down the street…..And I start to cry…..Walk on by…..Make believe that you don't see the tears…Yes let me grieve in private”. The thing is I am having a difficult time accepting that Brown Dash is gone. And I know that, that is only natural, we live and we die but somehow his death is hard to fathom. Maybe because of the generosity of his spirit. I met Brown before, back when I was still a chain smoker at Wits University School of Art, I stay with a stringent uncle in Ferndale, Randburd-Joburg, he always tried to keep me on a leash but like a sweet sixteen I’d always sneak out, knock about around that vicinity and Brown Dash would pull in at the Zennex Garage on Oxford Rd in his Mini Cooper. You bet he was looking like a superstar, calm as ever, in his white Chuck Taylors, Khaki pants and a plain white T-shirt. He oozed humility, pleasant to watch him exchange pleasantries with the petrol attendants there; he even bought me cigarettes every now and again. And now he is gone. But what breaks my heart the most, is all that postmortem love dude has been getting.MTV Base, Vuzu TV, Channel O, Metro FM, Y FM, Capricorn FM were amongst the first media houses to express their condolences, and I am thinking ‘but y’all didn’t play his music nor videos in a while, why love him now?’. Even TS Records shouted him out on Twitter, and this are the same people that left him out in the cold to dry. Ok, I’ll say this much, I don’t really know the details of that fall out in depth BUT as far as I know they wanted nothing to do with him. Ludacris said it better “Most of this record executives done care nothing about you, if you stop selling records, they’ll act like they don’t know you”. But you see Brown Dash didn’t stop selling records, I mean the people at TS Records are mean at that, look what they did with Zahara, and they could possibly sell water to an ocean. The sin that did Brown Dash in was that he wanted more money off those record sales (I won’t say anything about TS Records repossessing the Mini Cooper from Brown, because that’s just too cruel). Since then even radar couldn’t find him. At least not until Mandla Spikiri brought back to life, he featured Brown alongside bad boy Bricks Mabrigado and hip hop giants Teargas on Ngeke Balunge.Man, he even got another shot at fame at the 18th South African Music Awards but he slipped back into latency right after that performance, I know you were oblivious to that performance because I didn’t see your tweets about how dope that was. Nine days later he died, but he came back, on Twitter, trending. And that’s why I am hurting, that eishhh is messed up. We should have told him how much we loved when he was still here, but I guess it’s true what Kanye said “People never get flowers when they can still smell them”. R.I.P Simphiwe Mpamile.

The A.K.A Review

Alright, listen, seat back relax and allow me to kick some knowledge. You see, there is a rapper and THEN there is rapper, to delineate further: there former is anyone that can jot down a dope sixteen and spit it (hell, you don’t even have to jot it down, if you can spit it off the top of your head like a New Era cap, that’s even sicker. The latter is A.K.A. He is rapper’s rapper, the South African answer to Drake, captain of the in-crowd, the poster boy of the new cool. He is many things that he is also known as (which explicates why he calls himself A.KA. if you didn’t get the memo). Real name: Kiernan Forbes. Anyway, I had not given audience to his anticipated debut album Alter Ego until recently, well? Not until the day after the South African Music Awards to be exact. Not because I am hater or a skeptic but because I wanted dude to prove himself just in case he turned out to be whack and good at nothing but talking smack. And proving himself would take more than radio interviews, television appearances and magazine covers. That off course he got in abundance, thanks to publicist PR guru Farah Fortune, Head Honcho also threw their weight behind him and then there was the Show Love team to plus on that. But to me that was still nothing but hype that I wasn’t buying into, meaning I was Ray Charles to all that, I was thinking sold out concerts, proliferating record sales and awards, especially a SAMA. My reasonable reluctance was due to the fact that A.KA used to be 1/3 of the now defunct rap pack called Entity, and that entity wasn’t so much of an entity when it was all said and done. So you see, he still had a mammoth of a task to win me over. Even when his singles (All I know, Bang featuring Khuli Chana of Morafe fame, and the star studded Victory Lap) were topping the local charts, winning him groupies and veneration, I wasn’t listening. However April 31st came. Hip Hop Pantsula tweeted: If you are still not an @akaworldwide fan, watch the SAMAs tonight. You will be converted. #ConfessedFan. Wa Rocka San. I pulled back into my dusty orange striped couch, glass of red wine in hand, cigarette in another and I kept my eyes glued to the telly that night. And I was blown away, I sipped my Shiraz in awe as A.K.A tore the stage apart along side Jack-Out-Of-The-Box-Parow, his energy on stage is apodictically electrifying. I was heartened by the glint in his eyes that said he is passionate and committed to his art. So first thing the morning after the SAMAs ,I dashed to the nearest music store still in my slippers and I had a good listen. Now I refuse to review the album because mostly likely you’ve already heard it and you have already formulated concrete opinions on that album but I’ll say this much: Snakes and Ladders is a stand out track, so is Reign featuring Buffalo Soldier. Homeboy is aware of his influence on pop culture and honestly he deserves all that glow and all that glory. Plus he has been busy: A.K.A was the supporting act for the 2010 Rick Ross concert in Cape Town, plus he performed at the ESPN 2010 Annual Basketball Event in Pretoria. He was also the Official MC and Host of the MTV Base MAMA 2010 Private Media Event while performing at the Rize Concert in JHB as supporting act. So, yeah, “he is a beast, he is a problem”. Now I am done.