Music
Photo by Sabelo Mkhabela.

ProVerb’s Memoir Is A Huge Slap In The Face To South African Hip-Hop

In his memoir, one of South Africa's revered lyricists ProVerb and his co-author compromise his rich story with trite motivational talk.

The Book of Proverb

ProVerb has had a strange relationship with the SA hip-hop scene. Albeit being one of the most gifted lyricists the country has ever seen, he has grown to flow less and hustle more. Despite this, his name still comes up when the greatest (South) African rappers of all time are mentioned. MTV Base placed him as the 7th in their list of the greatest SA MCs of all time in 2018 for example.

The rapper-turned-media personality dedicates a paragraph of his memoir, The Book of Proverb, to explaining his complicated relationship with hip-hop. "Although I built my brand as a hip-hop artist, I never enjoyed full support or success from it," he writes. "Music is and always will remain a passion, but it stopped being viable when it stopped making business sense to me. If I was given more support, I might continue, but for now, I'll focus on my other hustles."

On the cover of the book which was released towards the end of 2020 by Penguin, Verb is wearing a charcoal blazer and sporting a white ball cap, so one can be forgiven for getting into it expecting both sides of his story. This memoir, however, is too vague to be a worthy read if you aren't necessarily reading to get motivated but to be simply informed and inspired.

While a few of The Book of ProVerb's chapters touch on his rap career, most of the book is about ProVerb the man, personality and businessman. Not so much one of the country's finest lyricists. This omission is a huge slap in the face for his fans and SA hip-hop fans in general.

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The Mysterious Road to A-Reece’s ‘Paradise II'

A-Reece has all eyes on him in anticipation for his upcoming album 'Paradise II', but the South African rapper is not perturbed.

A-Reece loves The Matrix—a movie about, among other things, our power as human beings if we realise the vastness of our potential and the fact that there's more to life than what we know. The movie depicts a world under the control of machines while a few enlightened humans who "escaped the Matrix" rebel against this simulated reality humanity is trapped in.

Two weeks ago, A-Reece released a trailer of sorts referencing scenes from the 1999 sci-fi blockbuster. Fans agreed the trailer was for Paradise II, the South African rapper's upcoming album.

Just like Neo, A-Reece did escape the Matrix. Ever since 2016 when he left Ambitiouz Entertainment, the label that launched his career into the mainstream, the talented South African lyricist has been free-falling further away from industry circles and the public eye.

This includes social media. Save for his Twitter bio ("busy working on the album") and Instagram stories, some showing him teasing unreleased music, A-Reece has been relatively quiet since releasing two songs in January. It's still not clear if those two songs will be on the upcoming album, which he announced in a cryptic tweet in the same month.

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