#IGotBillsAndShit

What started off as a #Hashtag on Twitter by Culprit Entertainment CEO, Culprit, has now morphed into a full blown project entailing a song, its remix and videos for both.

Culprit , CEO of Culprit Entertainment.

The #IGotBillsAndShit Concept.

Culprit says that #IGotBillsAndShit became his common response to irrelevant Twitterratti and that's how the concept caught fire. Any responsible, grown human being knows that the thought of bills has a way of putting things into perspective by relegating into secondary minor topics such as the authenticity of Beyonce's derriere.

Culprit features Maggs and Towdee on the likely going to be summer banger, #IGotBillsAndShit.

Towdee and Maggz both deliver mean verses on this original song but its the latter's verse that hits straight home with me. As a grown woman in her late twenties, I know all about [please forgive my Zulu spelling in advance], "ugu tabalaza...ngifuna imali...nge mehlo a bomvu".

MaggzMaDouble.

"The #IGotBillsAndShit #Hashtag has become what it is because this is what we do, its our forte! It was only natural that it would turn out this way," says Culprit, who has been in the entertainment business for over a decade.

Hip Hop DJ and Producer Lemonka.

The #IGotBillsAndShit  video shoot

Enter Hip Hop producer and DJ extraordinaire, Lemonka, who was instrumental in coordinating the whole thing. It was raining bo m'rapper at Jonathan Andrews Studios at Stone Ridge Shopping Centre after he  reached out to them to show their support for Culprit's video through cameo appearances. Mawe2, Sean Pages, Jay Stash, Slikour, Subverse, his manager Modise, Blaklez and Ifani amongst others, all came through and turned the studio into a party scene.

On the remix, whose video is still to be shot, Culprit has roped in Stagga, Blaklez, Mawe2, Sean Pages, Lection and GingerBreadMan.

"We are going to do as much as we can for the songs: tours, press releases, launches, the works!" declared Culprit, who added that this is his bow out concept. He now wants to focus on other business interests that are not entertainment related. For him, it is meant to be a platform to showcase other upcoming talent as well as encourage unity in Hip Hop.

Culprit with artist manager Modise and upcoming m'rapper Sub verse who hails from Rusternburg.

Of unity in SA Hip Hop.

With Culprit's words in mind, I asked some of the guys that were there for their thoughts on the state of South African Hip Hop. The truth is, compared to genres like house, Hip Hop sales are dismal in this country. But why?

There are a lot of contributing factors, muses Blaklez. One of them is the presence of big egos in the industry which manifest themselves in various ways. He cited the clearly more successful Nigerians noting that "they all probably don't like each other, I'm sure. But we have never heard about any beef between this artist and the other". Despite claiming that he has now found his sweet spot post the Dineo Ranaka drama, Blaklez does not think that there can ever be a south African MC who will enjoy the double platinum sales figures that groups like Micasa enjoy.

Ifani echoes his sentiments observing that the problem is that most rappers quickly turn into bulls, "unlike with house and its collaborative approach, we are in a space where we feel we need to annihilate each other". He referred to K.O's line in AKA's Run Jozi song in which he says "I have annihilated all competition so there's no further challenges".

DJ Lemonka, Sean Pages, Real Empress and Blaklez talking the state of SA Hip Hop . Well, and fooling around!

"Typical!" he shrugged.

Slikour on the set of #IGotBillsAndShit, talking on the sidelines about his SA music digital store on www.37618.co.za.

Re-imagining the selling model.

Perhaps one of the solutions is to re-imagine the ways in which Hip Hop is sold to the South African target audience. Slikour, who also made an appearance at the  #IGotBillsAndShit video shoot, recently launched The 37618 Store: the first digital store to legally sell only South African music via mobile devices. Bo m'rapper be saying that their songs are available on i-Tunes but in the bigger scheme of things, the majority of their target audience doesn't have the up to R10 000 a piece i-Phone necessary to access that platform.

A turning point in the trajectory of South African Hip Hop sales? Probably only time has the answer.

The #IGotBillsAndShit video will be available on your Telly in two week's time and you can buy it on i-Tunes and Slikour's platform www.37618.co.za, at R7,50 per download.