White’s just right to be in the swim of things
NOWIT’S all-white parties on the stretched out lawn, North! Da L.E.S’s annual All White Pool Party is not just a lyric in a popular song, it’s one of the hottest tickets in the first quarter of the year. Now in it’s seventh year, the pool party that takes place in the north of Joburg – he is the North God, after all – will happen at his home on February 6.
The event was originally scheduled to take place this Saturday, but the date changed due to concerns about the weather.
But, for the first time since its inception, the rapper is downsizing.
“How it all started for me was it was just a normal house party,” begins the artist who was born Leslie Mampe.
“I just wanted to throw a party once for myself and my friends. At the time, there weren’t that many daytime house parties happening in Joburg. And then the next year, I decided I wanted to throw a house party again at about the same time.
“And that year, I decided to put a theme to it and name it the All White Pool Party,” he continues, “and once there was a theme and a name, it just kept growing. That’s when brands and companies started getting involved. The reason why the party had celebrities was all organic because most celebrities are my friends. The party was just meant for us to unwind as peers and friends and for us to just be in our own space where we can share ideas.”
This is why Da L.E.S says he has decided to cut back on the guest list. “Over the past three years, we’ve had a lot of people and it’s nice to have had that support, but this party is only meant to be for close friends, peers, colleagues in the industry and just for us to have a good time. So I have to take it back to the original concept,” he explains.
Naturally, this has become a marketer’s dream. The more Da L.E.S tells people to ‘check their inbox and too bad if they don’t have mail from him’, the more people want to go to this party. Maybe it’s because of the impromptu performances that tend to take place in a yard full of Jozi music’s most famous.
“We always end up performing at the All White,” says this founding member of onetime crunk group, Jozi, “but it didn’t always used to be like that. Sometimes we’d have DJs. But it’s a creative platform. And it’s at my house and it’s my party and I love entertaining people, so there will be performances.”
His new album, North God, is out so it only makes sense to perform some of the songs from it. “My new stuff is out and we’ll have Burna and AKA there so we’ll probably do some A-Team stuff,” he laughs. “The reason why I’m talking about the All White in this chilledout tone is because everything about it is very organic. Whenever we’ve performed, it hasn’t been a planned set. Sometimes the DJ will just drop something for us and there’s a stage. And I prefer it like that.”
He also prefers sunny skies on the day.
“The pool party is dependant on the weather,” he says. “It’s not that the party won’t happen at all this year if there’s bad weather, it just might have to be moved to another day.”
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