STUDIO83

It’s Sunday night in Melville and we’re detoxing as usual. It’s December time so means that we’re getting drunk every weekend – it must be the holiday spirit. Over drinks, a couple of friends and I decide to take a road trip to Cape Town the following Wednesday. I know a person who’s willing to swap places with us during the last week of December. In Cape Town, we spend the last day of the year at Long Street Café. We’ve been dancing since 8pm and we can’t wait for the count down to the New Year when DJ Kenzhero comes on…and only plays for only thirty minutes. In my 24 years of existence,

I had never lost my voice but for the first time within these thirty minutes, I lose it. From that day I understand why they call him Kenzhero, my hero.

Back in Joburg, I track this Kenzhero guy down. He agrees to meet me in Rosebank Mall at an Internet café and tells me he likes the magazine (that kinda helps). At this point I’m still in love with Cape Town, right? Right! Before moving to Joburg, Kenzhero lived in Cape Town for three years – too mellow for my liking, he says. Three years is a long time man, I reply. He explains his love-hate relationship with the city. He started his deejaying career there at a club called Marvel where he was the first black DJ to play hip hop, even though in the beginning, he only played during the day, which meant there was no-one at the club, the sun only sets at 9pm during summer in Cape Town. Marvel’s manager at the time, would stream DJ Kenzhero’s playset to the Red Bull website as a podcast without his knowledge.

But after a while, the hate part of the relationship came into play. ‘Cape Town can be very tiring and it’s hard to make it as a black person there, ‘coz you see guys who have been doing the same thing that they’ve been doing for the past ten years. There’s no room for growth.’  So one day, he left everything behind. He didn’t take anything with him – only what he had on his back -  headed straight to Jo’burg and never looked back. Looking back though, everyone in Joburg should live in Cape Town for at least three years, because both cities have different perceptions from each other.

‘When Joburg celebrities go to Cape Town, they get culture shocked because no-one recognizes them like they do Johannesburg, and that messes with their minds.’

The day he knew he was doing something right, he says was when he heard a friend of his being told by another friend about this dope gig in Johannesburg, where the DJ played the dopest joints ever. He prefers those kind of confessions than when people come up to after a set and say that you are tight because most of the time they feel that they have to say something – so a compliment comes first to they minds. Finally, I ask him  why his set on the 31st of December was so short. He tells me he was too tired – he had done Party People (the title of his parties) in Jozi, had another gig the next day and had spend most of the last few days fetching and collecting people from the airport.