PRESS RELEASE#2: INTRODUCING DJ MOORISH B

26-year-old Bongeka Maphukatha from Johannesburg, South Africa is possessed by the ghosts of the moors.  These ancient spirits transform her from a friendly call centre agent by day, into a fierce vinyl wielding hip hop DJ named Moorish B at night, whose reputation as a turn-up DJ created a buzz on social networks recently after suddenly appearing in the DJ scene early this year.

This happened within a space of six months after her graduation from the strictly female DJing school Fuse Academy in downtown Jozi in December 2015, Moorish B secured multiple one hour sets during 2016’s winter season at upmarket cocktail bars like Capellos FourWays branch, Liquidchef Chef in Rosebank and the annual hip hop culture festival Back to the City 2016 attended by 20 000+ people in Joburg to name a few.

Unfortunately, Bongeka’s demanding 9 to 5 job in the customer care industry, which requires her to work 7 days a week, or more than 8 hours a day sometimes, combined with the back to back bookings that were rushing in, forced her to time out from DJing and turn down gigs for a couple of months.

"I apologise to event organisers whose gigs I turned down, and to any fans who are disappointed at Moorish B’s absence from DJ line-ups around Jozi.  But my demanding job and the music venues requesting my booking contract happened all at the same time and it eventually became too overwhelming. But I’ve found balance now and all I want to do is to jam dancefloors again.” Bongeka Maphukata/ Moorish B

[Have you seen the  Moorish B press release after this one? Read it here PRESS RELEASE#3: DJ MOORISH B HEADLINING 1818 HIP HOP JAM SESSIONS THIS SUNDAY]

She’s back with a fury, her latest mix; Trap and Trill which dropped a fortnight ago is testament to this, created using basic DJing equipment; a four-channel virtual DJ on a 2 channel Numark pro2 controller, Trap & Trill is still getting positive reviews on the Moorish B Facebook page. 

Moorish B is itching to continue the buzz she created in the first half of 2016, any event organisers and nightclub owners whose target market is millennials (youth market: 18 to 35-year-olds), looking for a hip hop DJ who knows how to spin relevant tunes that pack dancefloors, but at a reasonable booking fee, look no further than Moorish B. Please open the attachment to view her rate card.

END OF PRESS RELEASE

·         Moorish B bookings/sponsorships/media interviews please contact Mooketsi

·         Listen to the freshest Moorish B mixes on her Mix Cloud account: Moorish B

·         For Rate card/artist bio/contact Mooketsi

POEM ABOUT THE MOORS

Oh remember the moors, forget ye not the moors!

  Those revered dark skinned conquerors from North Africa,

Noblemen who charged across the Mediterranean millennia ago in spectacular fleets,

Overlords of Africa’s last colonies in Europe,

Docking on the beaches of the Iberian Peninsula,

Fanning out across Western Europe,

On missions to civilise the indigenous Europeans,

Resulting in Europe’s golden era, the Renaissance Period,

An era that glistened until wars drove them back to Africa

Forgotten are their contributions to Western civilisation

Slowly eroding like their breath taking mosques & universities,

That took Europe out of the Dark Ages,

Temples they were forced to abandon,

When they were chased back across the Mediterranean,

Oh remember the moors, forget ye not the moors!

Those dark skinned warriors, who brought light to Europe.

You Snooze You Loose In Cop Capital

After years of collecting sneakers, I thought I pretty much knew everything about them. Like the best places to cop them or which brands are the coolest. Well, that’s until I stepped into Cop Capital, Pretoria’s first & only sneaker boutique, damn I got schooled!

The lesson began with the founder of Cop Capital; a 2 meter tall, hundred and something kilogram sneaker eater named Werner Olckers whom I attended the nearby Pro Arte Alphen Park High School with back in the early 2000s. He’s just as cocky as he was in high school, and talks like a no BS kind of hustler, but his business acumen and life experience gained after matric sticks out like a scuff mark on a cream white sneaker when he starts explaining why the streets shouldn’t sleep on Cop Capital.

“I founded CC in early 2015 after the band I was in released the final record for our record label.

“After the music venture, I naturally decided to open a sneaker shop in Pretoria firstly because I’ve been collecting sneakers with a passion for over 15 years and also because I love my home city. I’m from Pretoria, we’re SA’s capital city, and I wanted a place here where sneaker heads can cop rare, hout couture sneakers without venturing to Joburg or Cape Town, hence the name Cop Capital.”

He pauses to gaze around his store, pride sparkling in his blue eyes, and continues “Everything you see in the store is handpicked by my staff who are avid sneaker heads. We research and consult suppliers before buying stock. We specifically cater to the individual who doesn’t want to wear sneakers everyone else is wearing. Once a sneaker is brought here it’s gone forever so you either cop it or drop it, you snooze you lose.”

Indeed, looking around the small shop, I don’t recognise most of the 50 pairs on sale selling between R1000 and R3000, but surprisingly there aren’t any Nikes or Jordans, standard brands for any sneaker head, “In terms of the tier we’re supplying, many other competitors have the Nike market cornered and I don’t sell my clientele what everyone else is selling because we’re all about individual expression.”

The current stock is still very impressive though, “We have the only pairs of Puma’s Chris Stamp collection in Pretoria. We also have the Adidas ZX-Flux Split Packs which I haven’t seen anywhere else, most of the New Balance stock is exclusive to PTA and we also have interesting collaboration packs from Asics.”

As we’re talking, a couple walks into the store. Ziggy, the dreadlocked salesperson on duty springs from his counter to assist them, he says something to them that distracts me from Werner, “ask me about any shoe in here and I’ll tell you about it.” 

They look surprised at the challenge, so the girl points at a random shoe, but before I can hear if Ziggy can really walk the talk, my attention trails back to Werner, whose describing how travelling abroad really opened his eyes to the sneaker game.

“I visited the biggest sneaker markets overseas; from Hong Kong which arguably has the largest market in Asia, to Amsterdam and London where sneakers are more of an alternative lifestyle than a culture and New York which I believe is the sneaker capital of the world.”

Werner’s vision is to build a local industry comparable to the best out there, without necessarily selling kicks that’s the same as the rest out there. With a growing online store, it’s easy to see this vision becoming reality, “customers can also purchase sneakers online and we’ll be delivering free to major cities. We will also sort you out if you’re ordering from the smaller towns.”

Exclusivity is a recurring theme during our chat, “Our kicks are higher tier, platinum ranges which we refresh every six months.

“When you walk out of here with a pair of kicks you’ll have a spring in your step because you’ll be confident hardly anyone is wearing your shoes.”

After the interview, Werner slips back into his office and the couple who came in earlier to browse thank Ziggy for his help as they exit the boutique. They look impressed, whispering to themselves in Afrikaans, but I catch something in English I completely agree with,

“Those guys really know their sneakers!”

Do you think Cop Capital is South Africa’s leading sneaker boutique store?

What about sneaker culture in South Africa, are we on a global standard?

Please share your opinions in the comments section.

Cop Capital website:  www.copcapital.co.za

Article originally published as No Sleeping in Cop Capital on JHBLIVE.COM

The Makaveli Theory: Did 2Pac fake his death?

“Fuck you!” uttered Tupac before chocking on his own blood and losing consciousness in a policeman’s arms after being shot several times. The revelation of ‘Pac’s last words’ was made in May 2014 by Chris Carroll – the first officer on the bullet-riddled scene of  25-year old Tupac Shakur’s drive-by shooting, which happened on 7 September, 1996 in Las Vegas, a few minutes after he and his record label boss Suge Knight left a Mike Tyson boxing match. But is 2Pac really dead?

Tupac’s ‘fake death theory’ is something of a taboo topic on contemporary hip hop forums. It’s a subject to be kept on the hush unless you want the hip hop Gestapo knocking on your door after midnight with long knives concealed. I too dismissed these conspiracy theories until I did some digging of my own and unearthed so many mind boggling clues suggesting… Pac is alive. It’s been 20 years since Pac’s gruesome murder shocked the world, and still new fragments of the story are coming to light.

Retired Las Vegas cop Chris Carroll says he only revealed the final words of one of rap’s G.O.A.Ts (Greatest Of All Time) in 2014, 18 years after his brutal murder because he “didn’t want Tupac to be a martyr or hero because he told the cops ‘fuck you’” with his final breath. But looking at how so many people around the world are still getting 2pac or Thug Life tattoos so long after his death, it’s obvious that any attempt to stop Pac’s ascent to martyrdom are futile.

Almost every year since his ‘death’ 20 years ago, more evidence is emerging suggesting he faked his murder in order to fool his enemies and stage the biggest comeback in music history. Even Carroll’s statement is a bit dodgy. He says that he called for an ambulance to take Pac to hospital, whereas Suge states that he is the one who drove Pac to hospital. Someone’s fibbing.
I could write a book using this mountain of information, but I selected these three key points as I feel they irrefutably prove that Pac lives.

The hologram Pac actually made a comeback at the 2012 Coachella music festival in California, as a state of the art 3D hologram.  He performed his infamous single, ‘Hail Mary’ from his last album alive; The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory where he began using the name Makaveli, after an Italian philosopher Machiavelli who coincidentally faked his death at the same age Tupac was allegedly merked. The projection shouted “What the fuck is up Coachella?” which is really spooky because Coachella only came into existence in 1999, so how could he have known about it? That’s like the Brenda Fassie holo which performed at the 2013 Hansa Festival of Legends shouting “Sanbonani Festival of Legends.” Could Tupac have pre-recorded the holo specifically for Coachella?

Not Tupac's corpse?!

His autopsy picture After his alleged death (seven days after the shooting), Pac was cremated and his public funeral plus memorial services promptly cancelled. What is intriguing is that Pac always rambled about his funeral in his raps but never once mentioned anything about cremation plus no pictures of him in hospital were ever disclosed. Moreover, it’s illegal in the state of Nevada to cremate a murdered body before an autopsy. A graphic picture of his sliced up torso lying on a morgue table did surface on the Internet a while ago, allegedly to show that an autopsy did take place. But it was soon debunked as a fake – because one: Pac’s body was missing a recent Machiavelli neck tattoo, and two: the image is an identical match to a frame of him lying in bed at the end of the ‘California Love’ music video, so the image must have been edited using some old school software.

Pac's last picture alive a poor photoshop job?

His last picture aliveThe final picture of Tupac alive was him and Suge Knight in their vehicle parked at a red a robot. What is really weird is that if you take a look at the ignition you will see that there are no keys in it. The date at the bottom of the pic is wrong, and since they were stopped at a red robot, why is there no reflection of the red light on the windscreen or on the vehicle’s smooth, black surface which reflected the camera flash so brilliantly?  Also, the picture of Pac sitting in the front passenger seat, looking blankly outside of his rolled-down window has been proven to have been cut and pasted in from another pic.

The epilogue
Some people say that Tupac’s disappearance was linked to powers way bigger than the rap game, because he knew a lot about the Illuminati and was going to spill the beans on the occult societies controlling America, instead of taking their offers to join them. Rumours say he is hiding in Cuba, which doesn’t have any extradition agreements with America. Reports have also surfaced that soon after his “cremation” there were thousands of calls to the police in Haiti saying that Pac has been spotted in numerous locations around the island.
Where Tupac is, why he faked his death and when, or if, he will ever return might be a mystery, but one thing is for certain – the evidence points to him being alive. If hip hop’s secret police come and drag me away screaming and kicking in the dead of night for writing this, never to be seen or heard from again, let them come… I’m not afraid of speaking the truth.
“Expect me nigga like you expect Jesus to come back / Expect me nigga I’m comin’.” – 2 Pac; ‘Untouchable’

Do you think 2Pac lives or do you think he is really deceased?

Article originally published as The Makaveli  Theory by Mahala magazine