I am no politician but even I have heard that South Africa is experiencing what analysts have called a leadership vacuum. And I am no musician but again, my ears have reliably informed me that there is a gaping hole in the CD rack where quality local Hip Hop ought to be.

Already I see brows furrowing under the flat peaks of Ama KipKip caps. Some heads may disagree but when I talk of quality local Hip Hop, I am not talking about the imitative crap that would not exist had MTV Base not introduced us to T-Pain and the autotune revolution.

When I talk of quality local Hip Hop, I am not talking about the dreadlocked posers who owe their style, swag, and dress sense to Lil Wayne.

What is missing in our music is truth, originality, self-confidence.

Where, oh where is the Sowetan Mos Def, the Common of the Cape, or the Redman from Rustenburg? Where are those self-accepting musicians who are proud and brave enough to shout out of their backyards in a voice that can be said to be their own?

I know they’re not in the mainstream where the bathers are begging, biting and borrowing in between breaths, stupidly trying to swim overseas. Why drown in foreign waters when you could stand, proudly, on African sand?

Just because you are slapping the asses of UJ strumpets, posing in front of rented Audi A4s, bragging, boasting and stringing together Dr Seuss similes in vernac, it does not make what you are doing proudly South African.

It is a derivative we have seen before. You are just doing it in a language that those of us who did not go to private schools can understand.

Gordimer and Coetzee are Nobel Laureates for literature, Tutu and Mandela for peace, but in the time of Juju and JZ, one can see that it is going to be a very long time before another South African is awarded a Nobel Prize for political savvy.

The same directionless hopelessness pervades the local Hip Hop industry which is why we will, in all probability, fail to produce any authentically South African artists of international acclaim.

Hats off to AKA, in terms of quality, there really is no separating his sound from the very best international acts doing it right now, but in terms of offering the world the musical equivalent of a hot bowl of bobotie, no act is repping like Die Antwoord, and it is just such an unashamedly South African identity that is missing from most of our Hip Hop.

HHP [Hip Hop Pantsula] has, and will continue to do his thing but it is a shame that more artists are not following his example.

I guess the question that remains at the bottom of the kettle when all the water has evaporated is: while we are busy trying to be others, who do we leave it to, to be ourselves?

WORDS: Lumumba Mthembu