Pheli Makaveli made sense because Pheli is the slang name for Atteridgeville, which is where I come from.” Zoocci picked up on that influence as we were working on the project. “But the inspiration behind it comes from me growing up, listening to a lot of West Coast hip-hop-2Pac, Dre, Snoop, NWA. “The title Pheli Makaveli was suggested by Zoocci Coke Dope,” 25K explains. Though not overtly socially conscious, Pheli Makaveli does paint a picture bearing political undertones: feeling neglected and let down by the politicians they vote for, the people resort to unlawful means of survival. The story of 25K is also the story of Atteridgeville, a township west of Pretoria.
“It sums up a bit of everything about me from back when I was in the streets, hustling, when I used to stand on the corner, hoping to make a little sale.” “The project is about my upbringing, my story and my journey before the music and when I fell in love with the music,” he tells Apple Music. How it got there is something of a mystery.From the onset, 25K’s debut album Pheli Makaveli tells the gripping story of a young hustler on the come-up. and represents the northernmost artifact left behind by the Vikings. It was found atop a cairn on an island north of Upernavik. After getting back, someone showed me an article about Upernavik in Outside magazine, in which he says all of the same things, almost verbatim. I wrote down some of the things he told me in a little notebook. He had a terrifically dry sense of humor, and was at once very cynical about Greenland, but also committed to making a life there. I helped him move some rocks, and talked to him while digging. He was understandably more intent on shoveling his basement out before the ground froze. I tried to talk him into taking me out kayaking, but the timing and the weather never worked. It took him months to get permission to build––he complained of rampant nepotism––but he got it, and now he’s struggling to get a structure up before winter. I met a lab tech from the hospital who was trying to get a kayak rental business off the ground. They looked oddly lovely against the gleaming white walls. There were countless dead flies on the floor and windowsills. Inside, there were chandeliers made from brass salvaged from a 1921 shipwreck. I found the most beautiful building in Greenland, a church built in 1839. Afterward they gave him two kinds of seal meat: one regular and one that confused him as to whether it was “seal lung” or “seal young.” At one settlement, of sixteen homes, they pushed two desks together at the school, and put paper down over top, as a place to see patients. He worked mostly out of the hospital, but sometimes did overnights to the smaller settlements, scattered up and down Baffin Bay. I met a Danish doctor who was staying in Upernavik for a month-long residency. So, I repeated the trip a second time, in the rain, to reclaim my victory: N72✤8’18.2” The next day, I saw an aerial photograph of the island, and realized that I’d missed a small spit of rock that jutted out even farther. On my first trip, I spent a while trying to find the northernmost spot on the island, thinking it was probably the northernmost place I’d ever get. I saw the remains of an old turf hut, barely visible in the grass. I walked the perimeter of the island twice, once clockwise and once counterclockwise. I think he was trying to avoid telling me that I couldn’t sleep there. I went to thank the man afterward, but he’d already closed up for the day. It was my first in over a week, and one of the best I’ve ever taken. They left their long hair in the shower drain and two inches of cold standing water in the stall. The last artists to live there were two women from North Carolina. The building had been recently renovated to function as a studio for artists. After a lot of bothering, he finally let me into the old cooperage to shower and shave. I took to pestering the quiet man managing the museum in the director’s absence. It was always a relief to rediscover feeling in my fingers and toes in the morning. I wore all of my clothes to bed every night. I cooked elaborate meals on my camping stove and drank whiskey to keep warm. I pitched my tent on a very high hill, near a giant satellite dish. I learned that it had shuttered, and that there wasn’t anywhere to eat, sleep, or warm up any longer. I walked around in a heavy fog, looking for the hotel-restaurant my guidebook promised. The cold, foggy hill where I pitched my tent
0 kommentar(er)
