Cape Of Good Dope

A while ago, I asked a kid at a music festival who his favourite band was. “All the African Dope bands,” he answered.

This is as good an indication as any of how African Dope Records has grown over the past couple of years. They endorse and release some of South Africa’s finest hiphop, electronic and other beat-driven artists, and have created a very loyal audience through quality music, good packaging and cool parties.

If you’re a newcomer to their style, don’t be alarmed. Beyond all the image and dope-driven marketing lies listenable, yet innovative music.

Many acts on this compilation will be familiar to Dope-heads: the magnificent Moodphase5, Felix Laband, Constructus and Kalahari Surfers.

Soon to join these names will be Godessa, Cape Town’s all-girl hiphop crew set to overwhelm you with tight rhymes and tailor-tuned style in the near future. Their track here, ‘Social Ills’ is already catching on and their debut release sometime next year promises to be quite a thing.

The voice of Amon China (previously of Firing Squad) makes a welcome return on the Red Lion track ‘Rise Up’. There’s a lot of cross polynation going on, with Waddy Jones and members of Godessa singing on various tracks, for example.

African Dope is a proper indie label, and all proper indies have Label People, and all the Label People here assembled are moer-of-a-talented.

The Constructus track here, ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing (The Robot Song)’, seems typical of their recent forays into the unchartered waters just off the Ziggurat. It bobs and weaves over a croaky Wormstorm beat, taking the original song and stomping it into a squashed tincan of blue crane sounds, Sibot’s scratching and Waddy’s crooning mantra.

Waddy’s also vocalist on The Man Who Never Came Back’s ‘Crypticism’, an uncomfortable tale of our silly surrounds over beats seemingly made from stretching pieces of cold plastic over old furniture. Nice splices of Afrikaans lyric in there too. The rapping is disjointed, witty and unconventional, so run and hide if you’re a Warren G fan.

Neon Don brings us ‘Life Is Neon’ - a buzzing hiphop tune exploring the Don’s mental world of ‘intra-dimensional travel’ and such like before Mr Mo presents us with a ‘smooth jam’ of note with ‘A Millimeter’ – all deep, bassy bump and grind with squelchy bits in between. Very nice.

Felix Laband offers a remix of the hidden track from ‘4/4 Down The Stairs’. ‘Sad Girl In Japan’ gains severe funk here, the vocals just simmering echoes for the most part, the music expanding and retracting like a high bridge on a silly weather day. ‘The Movement’ by Joshu continues this smooth beat middle section of the CD together with ‘Pornography’ by Pug, the latter using some of that funky old guitar shit to great effect.

DJ Dope’s ‘Jimmy Kills Us’ clangs here, grooves there and generally oozes things to life, while The Sticky (‘Golf’) sounds like three bands rehearsing in the same building – to great fuzzy, laidback funk effect.

From here it’s more from Mr Mo, Lions of Zion (feat b.wise in the rather stop-start ‘Iternal Fire’), Sibot (feat Gini Grindith on the mad, mad ‘Klone Gardening’), Tykoon Suit (with MP5’s Denver), the Waddy-moniker Yang Weapon and Gray Blakk (yip, ex-drummer of Blunt), whose closer ‘The Red Eyed Turtle Dove’ might just become a bit of a classic. Not only does it end with “it spends much of its time on the ground, feeding on weed”, but any song that samples a Piet-my-vrou, crickets, doves and the African Fish Eagle has got my attention anyway. Get out your birdbook, mister, and start grooving in the reeds.

It’s not all hits here, but they’re all interesting enough to merit inclusion on what’s gonna become a fine stoner cruising-around-with-beers-in-the-boot soundtrack for the summer.

Stick it in the player, turn it up and go sit on your roof and watch the sun go down nice and slowly. It’s what we grow around these parts, and it seems that the ground is rather fertile lately.

(African Dope Records)