In his artist biography he blends his brand of self assuredness, with some sense of Afro-centricity: “It seemed as if no one was willing to step up and put the city on the map among the others in Africa - until now.” His Facebook page suggests he is quite embedded in Cape Town’s hip hop scene. Some of his work taps into “coloured” cultural politics, such as doing an interview and photo shoot over a Gatsby (a working class Cape Town version of a sub sandwich), and he has a clever, infectious homage to Cape Town, “ Salute Ya” (a popular Cape Flats greeting) sampling Afrobeat and giving a shout-out to Cape Town hip hop legend Mr Devious. I also think he is a lot more talented and relevant than he is showing us here.
I don’t think sounding American is quite enough to cut it. Since he is trying to make a career out of his work, can one really blame him? This is what sells, right? I get the feeling that audiences have developed somewhat though (even mainstream). (Let’s not even talk about the second rapper on the track.) I get the sense that he is doing this forced, derivative“swag” to appeal to a mainstream audience. It’s evident in the video that his style is imitation American. But then I checked out this music video, called “ Baggy.” YoungstaCPT claims very much to be doing what he calls “straight up Cape Town hip hop” and I have to admit I hadn’t been this excited about a local MC for a long time. The next time I heard of him he was opening for Lil’ Wayne. His warm engagement with the crowd and funny, witty freestyles made him the clear favorite. A lanky and charismatic young man with a big grin, introducing himself as Youngsta, stole the show.
In the middle of their set they invited a few local MCs to get on stage and drop a couple of verses. The first time I heard about rapper Youngsta (government name Riyadh Roberts) was during Public Enemy’s tour of Cape Town, in a club awkwardly named Chuck D and Flavor Flav rocked the crowd that night, with a high-energy performance lasting longer than two hours (according to Flavor Flav’s giant clock necklace).
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