CASSPER'S 012 CENTRAL TURN UP A TURN DOWN

I hustled tickets the moment I heard the news that SA’s biggest rapper right now, Cassper Nyovest, would be in my homecity Pretoria as part of his Refiloe national album tour and to promote the AG #Hashtag phone as part of his lucrative deal with cellphone maker AG Mobile. Since I failed to get tickets to the sold out J.Cole gig happening at The Dome in Joburg the same night, I hoped and assumed  this turn up would give J.Cole a run for his fans, boy was I wrong!

Cassper finally rocked up, after keeping the small crowd waiting for more than three hours. Photographer: Henk Steyn

The gig was hosted at live performance venue 012Central last Saturday night, but I was quite disappointed when I came through. No, not at the fact that the 1 200 people capacity venue barely had more than 200 people when I arrived more than 1 hour after the party officially started at 6pm (I suspected most heads that night preferred getting lit at J.Cole), nah, It was because they were playing friggin house music to get a hip hop party started, like wtf dudes?

As the night progressed, I was expecting more fans to fill up the place until Casspers arrival, which was supposed to be at 10pm, but surprisingly the crowd never got bigger and the boring mood strangled us until Cassper finally arrived at around 10:30pm.

Yes! No more house music, finally some hip hop we could all bump our heads to. Cassper performed songs like Tse Tswembu Tse Blind feat DJ Drama from New York and Fever feat StonBwoy which are some of my favourite tracks from Refiloe album, and even brought out incredibly sexy female rapper Nadia Nakai from his Family Tree record label to rap joints like Money Back which is receiving moderate airplay right now.  

Nadia Nakai performing her lead single Money Back. Photographer: @brightdm_

Though Cassper and his artists put everything into their performances, their raps were ravenously swallowed by the horrific sound quality. Maybe that could explain why barely 30 minutes into his performance, Cass practically gave up rapping and broke out dancing to house and kwaito instrumentals, which again is totally weird considering this is supposed to be a hip hop party, like seriously Family Tree, WTF do you take us for?!

Turn out was quite dissapointing. Maybe everyone was at J.Cole? Photographer Henk Steyn

The show barely lasted an hour, with half of it consisting of Cassper taking selfies with fans and doing impromptu interviews with bloggers such as yours truly. So I dropped some questions and it turns out he was late because he was actually at the J.Cole concert the whole night, WOW!

So let me get this straight, not only did you keep your PTA fans waiting for more than 3 and a half hours, but you tortured us with house music the whole time we waited, while ironically you were having a blast at a real hip hop party with real hip hop music? How insulting to hip hop purists!

Cassper on stage with his Family Tree artists, Gemini Major and Nadia Nakai. Photographer: Henk Steyn

What makes you a fatter hypocrite is that you posted a video on your Facebook page PTA Soundcheck at 012 central with the squad!!! begging PTA fans to show up at your show that night instead of J.Cole, while you went to support J.Cole yourself as we were waiting bored for you to show up at your own show! WTF is going on here?!

Look Cass, thanks for the interviews and we appreciate you taking time to interact with your Pretoria fans, but next time you throw a gig and keep us waiting for hours with shitty house music, I’m going to be an AKA fan! 

What do you think of Cassper's stunt?