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Rufaro Samanga
Apr. 03, 2019 09:21AM EST

South African Twitter Reacts to DJ Sbu's Speech at Nipsey Hussle's Memorial Site

DJ Sbu claimed to be "Africa's ambassador for hip-hop" but South Africans are asking who sent him in the first place.

DJ Sbu, real name Sibusiso Leope, is a house musician and has for the longest time been thought to be the masked kwaito rapper Mzekezeke. DJ Sbu seems to always be in the limelight and often for what South Africans feel are the wrong reasons. Albeit a prolific and successful entrepreneur, his perceived "antics" at times overshadow that.

Most recently, DJ Sbu made his way to Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles where a vigil was being held for Eritrean-American rapper Nipsey Hussle who was recently shot dead outside his Marathon Clothing store. In a video clip that DJ Sbu posted onto his Twitter page, he's seen with a megaphone amid the crowd and introduces himself as a musician from Johannesburg, South Africa.

In the video clip, DJ Sbu goes on to say, "I'm here as an ambassador for hip-hop music and the culture in the entire African continent. I represent musicians from the whole continent."

Whilst many South Africans have been dragging DJ Sbu, others have jumped to his defense saying that any African is an ambassador for the continent and DJ Sbu's gesture was symbolic of just that.

The musician later responded to one Twitter user asking who elected him as Africa's ambassador by saying:

"Myself. The day you start traveling to other continents only then you will understand that as soon as you leave your country or continent of origin, automatically you represent where you're from. No one has to elect you. Its your consciousness that should kick in."











Music
Image: Ian Watts

The New Fela Kuti Box Set is Curated by Femi Kuti & Chris Martin

And they said the perfect holiday gift doesn't exist...

Fela Kuti's 50th anniversary reissues released this year have reminded us why his status as a legend continues to ring true.

Through the year, Partisan Records (the homes of Fela's catalog) has released a number of special reissues, and now Vinyl Box #5 is set to drop just in time for you to be named the coolest gift giver in your friend group. The highly-anticipated fifth installment of vinyl reissues was co-curated by Fela's son, Nigerian afrobeat ambassador Femi Kuti and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.

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Spotlight
Photo by NurPhoto via Getty Images.

A Year After #EndSARS, Nigerian Youth Maintain That Nothing Has Changed

Despite the disbandment of the SARS units, young Nigerians are still being treated as criminals. We talk to several of them about their experiences since the #EndSARS protests.

On September 12th, Tobe, a 22-year-old student at the University of Nigeria's Enugu Campus was on his way to Shoprite to hang out with his friends when the tricycle he had boarded was stopped by policemen. At first, Tobe thought they were about to check the driver's documents, but he was wrong. "An officer told me to come down, he started searching me like I was a criminal and told me to pull down my trousers, I was so scared that my mind was racing in different ways, I wasn't wearing anything flashy nor did I have an iPhone or dreads — things they would use to describe me as a yahoo boy," he says.

They couldn't find anything on him and when he tried to defend himself, claiming he had rights, one of the police officers slapped him. "I fell to the ground sobbing but they dragged me by the waist and took me to their van where they collected everything including my phone and the 8,000 Naira I was with."

Luckily for Tobe, they let him go free after 2 hours. "They set me free because they caught another pack of boys who were in a Venza car, but they didn't give me my money completely, they gave me 2,000 Naira for my transport," he says.

It's no news that thousands of Nigerian youth have witnessed incidents like Tobe's — many more worse than his. It's this helpless and seemingly unsolvable situation which prompted the #EndSARS protests. Sparked after a viral video of a man who was shot just because he was driving an SUV and was mistaken as a yahoo boy, the #EndSARS protests saw millions of young Nigerians across several states of the country come out of their homes and march against a system has killed unfathomable numbers of people for invalid or plain stupid reasons. The protests started on October 6th, 2020 and came to a seize after a tragedy struck on October 20th of the same year.

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Interview

Meet Uyi Omorogbe: TikTok's Resident Menace and Founder of Clothing Brand NASO

We spoke with the viral 'Annoying My African Parents' creator about online success and his upcoming brand collab with Converse.

TikTok sensation Uyi Omorogbe has figured out a way to get a laugh out of your African parents without a life lesson being attached to it. The Nigerian-American's account has amassed more than 3 million followers for doing something few of us are brave enough to even think about - annoying his very African, very tired parents.

Uyi's TikTok success came from a very well-thought-out, fearlessly millennial approach using the undeniable power of social media. After learning about the app and how quickly creators found audiences, he figured that creating videos while donning his own garments would garner attention to both his comedic talents, as well as his African-inspired clothing brand NASO. And he was absolutely correct. The 23-year old gained millions of followers within 10 months, and his audiences continue to grow as his brand and talents expand.

Uyi launched NASO in 2019 as a way to pay homage to his Nigerian heritage and have that manifest through his clothing and style while being able to give back to and share his success with his family and community. NASO loosely translates to "That's right, well done" in Nigerian slang and the name certainly matches the vibe created through Uyi's company. The Colgate University grad always dreamed of giving back to his communities - both Nigerian and American - and created NASO with the hopes of being able to make tangible changes in education while sharing West African fashion with the world.

NASO built their first school in Urhokuosa village in 2019 (only a few months after starting the company), where his father was born and raised, and has plans for more ways to help develop and improve education within the West African nation, as well as neglected communities within the US.

We spoke with Uyi about his funny bone, building success with your family, and NASO's upcoming collaboration with Converse.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Maeva Heim is the Founder the Beauty Industry Has Been Waiting on

The 31-year-old founder of Bread Beauty Supply is changing the conversation around haircare for textured hair.