OkMalumKoolKat — the ca
With the musician’s new album out, we revisit how art evades life’s crimes and the ways that male power protects its own — and erases everyone else
Exhibit A
Mlazi Milano: Here is an album of 17 immaculately produced songs by OkMalumKoolKat — Smiso Zwane, to use his given name. Certainly the most audacious attempt in recent memory to intersect mainstream hiphop lavishness with a pop sheen.
For anyone not new to the afflictions of Windows computers in the late 1990s to early 2000s, the cover of the album, with its allusions to the vaporwave movement and incomplete file transfers, evokes the surreal and longing for a past that did not seem desirable at the time. The Portuguese have a word for this brand of nostalgia — saudade.
The references that make up the anatomy of Mlazi Milano are pretty obvious. Gqom with its break beats and emphasis on drums is the primary point of departure. Spacey newwave sci-fi pop that is all dread. On the album OkMalumKoolKat taps into
“The entire night is their event. We collaborate on choosing DJs, they run the battle themselves and we split the night right down the middle in terms of finances. They needed a home, and we were kinda focused on the same audience and the same goals in terms of pushing local producers,” says Adendorff proudly.
The party acts as a feeder for the hip-hop and electronic scene. It’s not the only link between the two worlds they occupy, though — as the booking of the Uppercut DJs at the festival attests.
“What I’d like to show in the performance is that hip-hop is electric,” says Adendorff. “I feel like a lot of people a particular Durban strain of musicmaking: the ability to say fun and whimsical things on dark, ethereal beats.
Lyrically, OkMalumKoolKat has more in common with a Derek Walcott than an AKA or Riky Rick. Everything falls on the offbeat, sentences run on, streams of consciousness come out of nowhere and are later abandoned for other avenues. His music has a limping, improvisational quality that is central to his appeal. have a misconception about that. At its very core, it’s electronic. It comes from the generation of sampling and using gear, using turntables. What we’d like to play is a set with a hiphop backbone but sounds like what people consider to be electronic.”
With his past life as a wedding DJ, Adendorff is used to juggling moods and styles — a trait that’s kept Uppercut vibrant and cultishly revered.
The skill of balancing music one believes in along with a sprinkling of singalong hits is a large part of Uppercut’s success, along with the depth of the team itself. The current core team of Adendorff, DJ Nasty Ed, visual artist Fiancé Knowles and host
One of the standout cuts on Mlazi Milano comes 12 tracks in. La liga’s 3:30s unfold at an unrelenting pace. Full of thuds and layered synths, the track is made even more infectious by OkMalumKoolKat’s signature flow that is built entirely on a foundation of catchphrases as opposed to long continuous stories.
No artist since Arthur has influenced pop culture the way OkMalumKoolKat has. Arthur did it through dance, churning out signature moves Methabolism is amplified by a bench of rotating collaborators.
Uppercut will be joined by a laundry list of local and international names over the festival’s three days, including Los Angeles’s Stones Throw Records founder Peanut Butter Wolf, the United Kingdom’s Coldcut, heavyhitter YoungstaCPT, newcomer K-$, Zaki Ibrahim, Moonchild, Kid Fonque, Dark Swano and Hessien+.