No Rocawear skirt?

As promised, a post on the Jay Zee and Rhinana concert, albeit some while after the actual event. I’ve wanted to post on this because it was just such an incredibly interesting experience.

Paula and Carly (a.k.a. Pimp and Schnitz) called me to say that they’d be coming down for the concert from Grahamstown and to ask if I’d like to come along. I had absolutely no idea what either artist actually sang, but I knew the names, and figured it’d be fun just to hang with my gal pals if nothing else. So off I went to book a ticket.

Like a real nerd I set about doing some research before the actual concert. I managed to pinpoint a few familiar songs that each artist sings, discovered that Jay Z has a fashion label called Rocawear and that Rhinana was born in 1988 in Barbados. All very interesting, so off I go to the concert armed with my knowledge, my lingo (for shizzle my nizzle) and my friends.

What I found astounded me. The crowd was an interesting mix, quite young and fairly representative in terms of racial mix. Heineken is sponsoring the tour and the branding was by no means subversive. This is interesting because as up-and-coming marketers we’re constantly told to speak to the youth using clever and non-obvious tactics. This was not the case at this particular concert. Everything down to the predominantly green lighting on stage smacked of Heineken, which was of course the only beer available. Smirnoff Spin (another RGBC label) was available but was served in Heineken cups. The artists themselves also had no skaam in terms of self-promotion. Rhinana walked on stage to lip-sync her songs looking as if she’d forgotten to put her skirt on. Interestingly she didn’t seem to notice her little blunder despite the fact that she kept looking at her rump every thirteen seconds and she shook the shit out of it while precariously balancing in her thirteen-inch stilettos. She then unabashedly told everyone to go out and buy her new album. Very subversive.

Jay-Z on the other hand was incredible. The man commanded that stage like few performers can. So much so in fact that the crowd took to literally praising him with a hand gesture of flat palms with the thumbs and forefingers of each handing touching. The gesture was eerily reminiscent of a religious gesture, but everyone was doing it…

Again though the overt commercialism was astounding. I couldn’t really make out many of his lyrics but references to the R – O – C were abounding and peppered the lyrics of almost every number. I wonder if there’s a link to Rocawear there somewhere? He really drove his message home though when he came out on stage at the end of the night to do a few shout-outs to the audience before shacking up with girlfriend Beyoncé at the Cape Grace. The shout-outs went a little like this:
“I see you over there with the limited edition Rocawear jacket. Very cool. And you there in the Rocawear Velour Full Zip. You’re pimpin’ tonight. And my honey over there in the Rocawear Studded Roc Vest. Mmmmm!” I think you get the picture.

The narrative behind the whole thing was also very interesting. Talk of the hood, the struggle and all those lost along the way. The whole experience gave me the feeling that my favourite academic bell hooks might have been onto something when she wrote about the replacement of a racial divide with a class one when blackness is marketed back to the impoverished black masses by the minority that manage to break away. Don’t even get me started on a feminist perspective on the event, you don’t want to know!

In all, a very enjoyable and interesting experience. Can’t say I’ll rush to put my cash in their coffers again in the near future or ever. But I do feel a little richer for the experience.