I hate disclaimers but I’ve got an itch for self-deprecation and I am no charlatan so… please note: This is a rock and roll review by a hip hop head. If I make any ridiculous references, misnomers or outright errors… please forgive me. As my man Q-Tip said: “This aint rock n roll, cos the rappers in control.”

But Poison City has recently given birth to a seriously kak-ill rock and roll band. And they go by the name Black Math… catch them in a ghetto near you before the imminent world tour. read more…

Harare International Festival of the Arts begins, as all festivals should, with a beer in the hand. Some rites are universal, and after 20 hours on a bus from JHB, my sanity is wearing thinner than those patchy tyres. All the busses were allegedly fully booked when I arrived at Park Station: luckily, I got a tip-off that a steaming bag of Nando’s can make tickets materialise, out of nothing, into the sticky afternoon air. The only disadvantage of boarding the shittiest bus was finding myself stranded at the last pit-stop before the border at 3am, clutching Cheas-Naks in a sleep-drunk haze. A hasty rollie’s worth of contemplation assured me that braving the allegedly tsotsi-rich road on foot trumps abandonment in no-man’s-land. read more…