A crazy drug called "mediocrity". And unfortunately it's another culture in South Africa. It starts from a very early age. We are trained to do just enough to get by. In order to progress to the next grade you merely need to obtain 33.3%. And we grow up and become adults that only give 33.3% effort into anything we do. It just seems prevalent in the music industry because we have the likes of Outkast /Raekwan/Beyonce/Jigga to compare ourselves to.
We keep asking ourselves why it is that we are willing to pay R140 for international artists and not the same amount for our local artist, because it's simply not worth it.
You're paying R140 of your hard earned money for someone who only gives you 33.3% of what is due to you.
Look at the music video, look at the concerts. There's so much potential in S.A. We have international artists coming to S.A to record their vids, so the resources are there, we're just not willing to work hard enough. I was hoping not to go the colour root but it is more prevalent amongst black artists. How many times have you been to a concert and have the artist drunk on stage, if it's not that they are stoned, coked up or just plain tired cause they were out partying the night before. Look at the vids, very little conceptualising, low budgets and the girls I won't even go there.
In S.A an artist goes gold once and that's it, they are made, they are the shit. Any where else, an artist goes gold on their first album they work even harder on the second album cause they've tasted success and they just want more.
I was watching one of Jamie Foxx's old school stand up comedies and I was blown over not by how funny he was but how much he put into it and how much he has improved. The sound effect, the singing "HE PULLED STOPS". Then I watched David Kau. (no comment).
It's the same attitude everywhere, advertising, IT, everything.
It's the saddest thing. So unless we get out of this crazy mind set, we'll still be bopping our head to crap.
