South African Hip Hop and Pop has a very blurred line as far as differences. For my south African pop song I chose My City by artist, Toya Delazy. Because I chose South Africa as my country to select from both of my songs were in English which made it a little easier. The video is a black and white kind of grayscale theme. It is comprised of buildings rising higher and lowering throughout the theme “my city”. Then it goes into her on top of one of the high rises singing and kind of spoken word and her featured artist Cassper Nyovest rapping.The lyrics are “ My city I love my city my city, I love my city my city I love my city”. The rest of the song goes into trials and tribulations of life but refrains to the idea of her loving her city and where she comes from. The overall idea i get from the video and lyrics is similar to that of American artist Alicia Keys. I feel that the two artists styles are very similar and this song is kind of like New York “Empire State of Mind”. The beat of this particular song isn’t what I would consider American pop to be, because the song doesn’t have as much of an up tempo as I am used to hearing. You can watch the video though the link below. My City Toya Delazy I think that this artist can be classified as a Hip Hop hybrid, combining: pop, R& B and Hip Hop.
As far as Hip Hop is concerned in South Africa, I stumbled upon named , Kiernan Forbes or AKA. The song and music video that I chose to use for this comparison is Baddest featuring Burna Boy and Khuli Chana. Baddest AKA ft. Burna Boy and Khuli Chana . First of all I really like the beat of this song it’s very similar to some American rap artists I would listen. I’m getting a kind of Drake and Ty Dolla sign vibe from all of these artist. I would classify this as a banger. The lyrics of this song include “And we the baddest team We the baddest team and we the baddest team We the baddest team”. The lyrics are typical of many rap songs. I get the same feeling about the video its the typical rap video girls, sex,clothes, money, toys and streets. This relates back to the Hip Hop Ghetto- Centricity and the commodity article. The Virtual Ghetto is an idea that is very relevant. Advertiser and artists and labels have found what sells and they haven’t let up on producing this sort of saturated content since then. The article also reinforces the idea that Hip Hop is also based on materialism and brands. This video begins in a store with name brand clothing and throughout the video and the lyrics, you can see fashions and brands that are well know.