I live in a city at the tip of Africa, Cape town, probably one of the more well known cities in Southern Africa. This city is pretty much the trend setter for fashionable things such as clothing, clubs, resteraunts and what is "hot"and what isn't in South Africa. The atmosphere in Cape Town is laid back for the most part with big forests, the meeting of the Indian and Atlantic oceans providing two seperate closely situated coastlines to explore and enjoy, all under the watchful eye of table mountain. However as we celebrate ten years of democracy things are getting busier and people are starting to get theirs. There is a greater sense of oneness among the people, more businesses coming up... basically just developing in all aspects of the economy and things have never been more how they should be now, then ever.

As the economy grows it seems that the aspects of commercialism tag along resulting in the whole trendy vibe of which there is definately no lack of here. This aspect has no doubt spread into music as it inevitably would, resulting in the rise of commercial rap acts, rnb artists and making as much money as you can by trying to sound like another artist who has broken into the scene using already popularised sounds which are known to sell records. Although this isn't yet a  musical monopoly, local record companies have definately begun to exploit this idea. Our city is still coming up so it wouldn't be right to drown out the creativity with this growing problem, there are tons of great artists in South Africa but I'm also willing to bet half of them don't get the chance to spread their musical word. The scene is spread out, ranging from traditional African music to rock bands to rnb to hiphop to rap music... pretty much all musical aspects are represented here but again I stress the lack of exposure and the chances are you could go to Cape Town and miss out completely on the best of what we have to offer.

To focus in on the hip hop scene, yes all aspects of hip hop are represented in CT, just to run through what we got goin on: Graffiti artists are around and have been around pretty much since the late eighties when guys first started to see what was going on in the states. The exposure from overseas pretty much spawned the beginning of hip hop round here. The oldest crew we have here is probably Black Noise, comprising of bboys, graff artists and a dj or two, these guys are gettin old, they gotta be in their late thirties by now but these were the ones who first started bombin the lines and the trains, afterwhich the next generation followed with paintin popularised as the in thing to do in the highschools nowadays. So the writers do their thing, I'd say there's a niche of around 50 active writers at the moment, amongst them are one or two crazy muthafuckas who do it to the fullest. Bboy wise stuff is very limited to the extent that there are only 3 or four crews I've heard of before. But with the popularisation of hip hop there will be kids who will do it for pure reasons, respecting the culture and the elements. Being an MC is probably the most popular aspect of hip hop round here and besides the 'Eminem, 8 Mile' jump-on-the-MC-bandwagon types I will say that we have some underground guys here who take their rhyming very seriously. I do beleieve we have some soldiers down here that could rival the best. Needless to say the DJ scene here is small, a lot of house/rave music guys running around with only a small contingent into hip hop and an even smaller contingent into scratching with an even smaller tiny contingent into more than baby scratches. As far as I know we have about three guys maybe into things like flares, transforming and all that and basically lookin at scratching from a musical perspective. It seems hard to believe just three guys thinkin like that but we still are small time around here, however we do have a DJ Battle once a year known as the African Hip Hop Indaba but the emphasis is on pleasing the crowd and this is more for the club djs that mix. Things that happen overseas only arrive here ten years down the line so I'd have to say give it time and we will grow slowly. The weird thing is there wouldn't have been anybody doin this shit here if I didn't stumple upon the mass of information relating to scratching on the internet. This gives me the opportunity to keep up to date and buy the new stuff online through places I discovered like turntable labl, sqratchattack, Dstyles.com, Qbert's site and Asisphonics.net. Now the word can be spread by means of the web.

Seeing the different directions being taken now by people is great as it provides a fuller, wider range of styles for different listening moods. I have been experimenting with scetches myself. Unfortunately no album or anything yet but I'm still developping styles and as the new guys get involved around here hopefully we can get some representation in pyhsical form for you all out there. For the moment check out my soundclick page for some tidbits and more. I guess in a nutshell the scene in Cape
Town is still newborn but there is hope for the future.

Peace

J- cutz

Stylus Destroyers

Check the address below to listen to some of Jay's music. You can also find tracks by J-Cutz in the archived shows at Turntable Radio.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/7/carbondioxidemusic.htm

Many thanks to Jay for his time.