What Shane Eagle Winning Best Hip Hop Album at the SAMAs Means For South African Hip-Hop
Originally published on the Mail & Guardian.
Shane Eagle is the latest rapper to receive the coveted Best Hip Hop Album trophy at the SAMAs. “It was about fucking time,” says the rapper when asked by Fred Mercury, former editor of Hype magazine, what the award means to him.
Shane and the former editor of South African hip-hop’s only print publication are chatting at Kulture Gallery in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, on a Saturday afternoon. The 22-year-old rapper is hosting a popup store of merchandise — hoodies, T-shirts and prints of customized photos of him — themed around Yellow, the album that won him the award.
Towards the end of the event, Shane, Fred, Rudzani Netshiheni (the current editor of Hype) and Vaughn Thiel (Shane Eagle’s manager and business partner) gather for a Q&A session in front of an audience of Shane’s fans. Joining the fans is the rapper Riky Rick who was up for the same award with his Stay Shining EP, and is hosting his own popup store next-door on the same day.
“You don’t do this shit for the accolades or the awards, but it does feel good for someone like the SAMAs to be like, ‘you deserve this.’ We work hard for this shit, so it’s a blessing,” continues Shane after expressing his gratitude to his fans who have showed up in numbers today to take selfies, buy his merchandise and get to spend time with other Shane fans.
Yellow, according to the rapper, was streamed more than 2 million times on Apple Music. He won Best Newcomer at the 2017 South African Hip-Hop Awards, the only award show that gets close to pleasing the hip-hop community in South Africa. The SAMAs have a weird history with the genre. In 2004, kwaito star and R&B artist Zwai Bala won Best Hip-Hop Record. In 2012, the hip-hop category was renamed Best Street Urban (like wtf?).
The hip-hop albums that have won the award have mostly been by established mainstream rappers — the likes of HHP, Flabba, Khuli Chana, AKA, Emtee have all won the award in past years. While leftfield and less mainstream rappers such as Zubz and Tumi Molekane, have all only made it as far as being nominated.
Enter Yellow, an album that’s sentimental lyrically, sonically moody, boasts no radio hits, and is released by a small independent company, Eagle Entertainment, which Shane owns with Vaughn. The 22-year-old rapper is the only artist under the label. Shane Eagle has managed to build a name for himself in just two years. In 2016, he appeared on the rap reality show Vuzu TV’s The Hustle, which he didn’t win, but made sure he used the clout that he gained to build his name.
“I feel like my job isn’t that hard because I work with Shane,” says Vaugn when his turn to answer Fred’s question comes. “Eagle is like the greatest artist in Africa. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I think it’s really dope that an organization like the SAMAs can also see that. We all know how award shows go, and all the politics involved. And us being an independent label, to compete with some of the biggest labels in Africa and for Shane to walk on that stage and represent the kids and the people that ride with him and understand the vision, I feel that was the most important thing for me.”
Being independent in South Africa as a rapper is no child’s play. Radio airplay, which is still important in SA, is hard to come by. Bigger independent labels such as Ambitiouz Entertainment and Mabala Noise, alongside majors like Universal and Sony, own a huge share of South Africa’s hip-hop market, their rosters boast artists such as Emtee, Nasty C, Gigi Lamayne, Zakwe, among others. We’ve seen artists such as Priddy Ugly, who were torchbearers for independence, signing to labels because it seemed impossible to break through on their own.
Independent artists such as Cassper Nyovest and AKA are only a select few who are prospering in the mainstream scene independently. Things are rapidly changing, however. The rapper A-Reece, who left Ambitiouz Entertainment more than a year ago, was celebrating his single “Meanwhile In Honeydew” reaching a million views a few weeks ago. YoungstaCPT, Dookoom, Stogie T, Dope Saint Jude, Solo & The BETR Gang and Yugen Blakrok, among others, have all managed to score European tours without the backing of any major label or big indie label, while only amassing niche fanbases in SA.
While artists prospering independently is a prevalent thing in the US and the UK, independence only started making sense in South African hip-hop recently. And Yellow bagging the big award is one of many signs that labels are losing the monopoly on talent. The Internet is playing a huge role in artists getting rid of the middleman. Artists release music in their own terms.
The rapper Solo, whose debut album .Dreams.A.Plenty (2014) was released by Universal, released his sophomore album independently. He told the hosts of the hip-hop podcast The Sobering earlier this year about the shortcomings of being signed to a major label. He also made reference to his short stint with Electro Mode. When he wanted to release his joint album with his crew BETR Gang, titled We Need A Title, he wanted fans to pay him an amount of their choice for the album. “They (Universal) were like, ‘nope,’” he said. And then he went on to mention that the same project, which he ended up releasing independently, outsold .Dreams.A.Plenty.
The biggest misconception about independence, however, is that because we have the Internet, it’s easy and cheap. In a world where every rapper is tweeting links to music everyday, artists need more aggressive and clever marketing schemes. And their clout and connections also help a big deal. Being independent means not having the luxury of receiving a huge budget from a label — all you have is yourself and your limited resources.
Eagle Entertainment has clearly cracked it. The label takes its business seriously. Their headquarters, which are in a fancy office park somewhere in Randburg, double as a studio. Stepping in, you get the feeling that you are in a professional space. When I visited the office for an interview with the rapper last year, he showed me around the space whose decoration and theme are both sophisticated and quirky with subtle touches of the color yellow — a true reflection of Shane’s personality and image. He emphasized on the importance of professionalism when he took me to the boardroom, which he said is where they meet with brands, potential partners and clients.
“We don’t have any major sponsors for this thing,” Vaugn tells the attendees at the popup store about the countrywide tour Shane will be embarking on in a month’s time. “We’re putting up our money, and we’re gonna do this thing without anybody telling us we can. Without any brands saying go ahead. We’re doing it on our own like we’ve done everything else.”
Shane is an advocate for breaking the rules and showing the establishment the middle finger. “I feel like it’s 2017, and there’s nothing that labels can do that we can’t do ourselves,” Shane told me last year. “It’s a new era, we have technology, and everything is so close and easy. So many experiences have made me feel like the music will always do the talking. Labels are so old school. How can technology be moving so quickly yet human beings still wanna be thinking the same? You need to step out of that.”
In 2013, AKA’s debut album, Altar Ego (2012), became the first rap album with English lyrics to win the award, which was called Best Street Urban. He also became the second rapper to win Best Male Artist, after HHP took it in 2011.
For a long time, rapping in English in South Africa put artists at a disadvantage. English rap was not South African enough. But that has changed, thanks to the likes of AKA, Stogie T, ProVerb, Zubz and a few more, who paved the way for the new crop of rappers who mostly use English. Nasty C, Rouge, A-Reece, Zoocci Coke Dope, and lots others, are bigger than they could have been in the mid-2000s when artists that used indigenous languages — HHP, Skwatta Kamp, Mr Selwyn, H2O — were at the forefront, while the likes of Optical Illusion, Mawe2, Ben Sharpa, and more were looked at as American wannabes. Relatability and accessibility were credited for vernacular artists’ success.
But we are in a new era. Globalization, fueled by the prevalence of the worldwide web, is blurring the line between local and international when it comes to aesthetic and taste. Also, hip-hop has grown in South Africa. It’s no longer a niche genre like it was, just a bit more than 10 years ago. Which means there are more fans who appreciate lyricists regardless of the language they choose to express themselves in.
But this surge in the number of English rappers brings with it its own shortcomings. A reasonable number of critics have pointed out that South African rappers sound American. AKA, in his song “StarSigns,” rapped “In the era where niggas sound so American/ no pride in their own heritage/ whole vibe so negative/ ain’t nobody gon’ remember them.”
Damian “D Planet” Stephens, a veteran label head and one third of the group Dookoom, expressed his disappointments in Shane Eagle’s album winning Best Hip Hop Album at the SAMAs.
“Yellow is an L for SA hip-hop,” he wrote on Facebook. “Further reinforcement that to be successful in SA, you must sound as much like you’re not from here; accent, flow, singing (auto-tune), cultural references, general themes — all straight from the States. Why would I listen to Shane Eagle when I can listen to Drake or Vince Staples or J Cole or 6lack? I mean, everyone praising the fact that he won a SAMA with ‘lyrical content’ and non-trap beats, but no one cares that he’s basically doing rap karaoke?”
He has a point. Shane Eagle’s music has a strong stylistic, thematic and even sonical resemblance to J. Cole’s. It doesn’t scream “South African” — from the production to the rapper’s accent, it has a huge American influence. As opposed to Dookoom — it’s easy to tell that the group is from South Africa, from its lead rapper Isaac Mutant’s unapologetically Cape Coloured accent and slang, to the topics being covered — post colonial South Africa and its issues of race and class.
But who’s to say what doesn’t sound South African in a country that’s as diverse as ours? There are kids who can’t speak any indigenous language and they grew up on hip-hop, and not kwaito, house or bubblegum. Do they not have a right to tell their story in their own way? Are their self-absorbed stories not South African stories?
What originality means is subjective, but the question those critics need to answer is why the kids who are here filling up Shane Eagle’s popup store and reciting every lyric of his, resonate to his music this much? Is sounding American just a hip-hop issue or a societal one? Hip-hop is always a reflection of the society it exists in. And right now, kids who “sound American” are a significant number of the population, and are gravitating towards music that tells stories they can relate to, the issues they discuss when they meet up at Kitcheners or sit outside Father Coffee in their hub, Braamfontein.
Yellow can be streamed/ downloaded here.
