Gavin Williams chats to Jack Parow.
From a Monster Hits CD his mom bought him to high school dial-up piracy and an apology from upper management at The Ford Motor Corporation, it’s been quite a ride for Jack Parow (formerly the artist known as Bong Scare, General Quickdraw McGraw and Muis Is Baas).
I remember hearing rap for the first time when DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s “Girls Of This World Ain’t Nothing But Trouble” got some airplay on national radio for some reason when I was 9. I became obsessed with rhyming. I memorised all the lyrics to the song and rapped it for friends (some of them even girls) at Arbor Primary School in Benoni. There was something so unconventional and vast about rapping. You could make up rhymes about absolutely anything and I found that feeling so liberating. Especially for a kid who had grown up on Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and Dr. Zeuss. You could put this to a beat? Whaaa?!
A few years later, in a bedroom somewhere in Belville a young Zander Tyler listened to a Monster Hits Volume 4 CD which fatefully (and thankfully) contained -nestled between Loft’s “Hold On” and Bitty McLean’s “Dedicated To The One I Love”- was Snoop Dogg’s “What’s My Name”. Like they had for me in 1986, the lights came on for the boy who would become Jack Parow. The original Afrikaans rap phenomenon, celebrating what he knew instead of posturing to be something he wasn’t, avoiding one of hip-hops myriad of pitfalls. While the light-switch moment was real, a rap career has to follow a path of discovery through various incarnations, sessions, crews and battles.
This rap revelation (much the same as my early discoveries) led Zander to discover things the hard way. Pre-internet you had to search for your rap fixes which made them sacred artefacts when discovered. Zander craftily used to frequent Paperweight (whatever happened to that chain of stores? They were so great!) and buy stacks of XL magazines: a hip-hop beat and rhyme bible. This led to discovering rap acts like Deltron 3000 (Del Tha Funky Homosapien’s evolutionary name), Public Enemy, NWA, Pharcyde, Nas, Bone Thugs ‘n Harmony, Wu-Tang etc. The beginning was near.
I first heard Jack Parow with a searing hangover courtesy of another Thursday night at the Camps Bay Bowling Club during its Golden Age. My flatmate at the time was blasting “Cooler As Ekke” on repeat from the lounge which woke me from my R12 brandy special slumbers. Turns out he was directing the video that day. When I heard “Ek drink Klipdrift, jy drink Peroni. Jy het vriende in Swede ek het vriende in Benoni” I announced that I was going along to the shoot. I ended up in the music video (briefly) during the Benoni part, obviously. More importantly, a friendship was struck up. Here was a normal guy rapping in Afrikaans about everyday things and making them sound like a revelation. A joyous disregard for what you could and couldn’t say, exactly what had attracted me to the artform in the first place.
Jack Parow sounded like he’d come out of nowhere, pre-packaged, but obviously, this wasn’t the case. He had started out in a rap crew called Famly (there’s no “I” in Family, you see) spitting rhymes with kids while everyone at his school was listening to fucking Live or Creed or something. However, his schoolmates’ tastes led to a mildly lucrative Napster then Livewire piracy business with his dial-up modem his mom had got him that was uncapped from 7 pm to 7 am. Zander would take requests at school for all sorts of shit, download through the night, wake at 5 am to create the artwork to be applied to the CD-R and then sell them to the kids back at school. Perhaps this teenage pirate spirit led to him deciding on the name Jack Parow. Mercifully, he’s far funnier than Johnny Depp’s capering in that endless Disney Theme Park Ride franchise nightmare.
“Cooler As Ekke” was written “outside Assembly” (the former nightclub) Zander tells me. He had left his job in advertising after studying Multimedia, left his cool city digs at the top of Kloof Street and moved back in with his mom to pursue his rap dreams. Things really clicked when he started writing and rapping in Afrikaans. En die res is basically geskiedenis.
One of the last times we hung out was on an Afrikaans quiz TV show called “Slim Vang Sy Baas” (which we won along with Rufio Vegas). Catching up, we conducted this “interview”, basically over a few beers at the new Kloof Street towny-scenester hangout spot, Blondie, we spoke about a lot. One of the things is about where Jack Parow ends and where Zander begins and vice-versa. Rap names are shields. As a shy, introverted person he reckons in certain situations he can summon Parow and say things he normally wouldn’t say. And Jack Parow has a lot to say, usually with a few beautifully placed expletives thrown in. You know exactly what you’re getting with a Jack Parow song, lyric and a Jagermesiter-doused live show. Apparently, not everyone was aware of that at The Ford Motor Corporation – essentially the automotive equivalent of America’s heartland bible belt. We started talking about his worst gig ever…
Ford had booked him for their end of year function in the isolated mountains of the Drakensberg. Upon entering the first people he encountered was an elderly gent with long grey hair and a matching snor. In my mind he was wearing one of those leather amulet things, cowboys favour around his neck and a stetson. His wife next to him was dolled up in chintz with a perm and a poodle under her arm. Undeterred, Parow took to the stage. About 4 songs in someone had handwritten a note and placed it on the monitor in front of him. It simply read, “take a break”.
Apparently, a small section of the true-blue Ford employees at various levels of management were outraged by his use of expletives and his whole general vibe probably. Who the fuck books Jack Parow without knowing Jack Parow loves to intelligently swear in his lyrics? He left the stage, went to his room -trapped in the Drakensburg- and got absolutely, justifiably hammered (with some Ford employees joining him for a skop in his room after their function ended). The annoying fact was that most of the crowd loved it except a handful of holier than thou corporate buffoons.
Young, wild, drunk and famous, Parow then (again justifiably) took to Social Media to tune Ford. This led to an apology from upper management, not from SA, but from global headquarters in Detroit, USA. Kit-Kat smartly jumped onto the story and because he was told to “take a break” they sent him a huge hamper. Nice one.
After quite a few Fokof Lager pints for me and a whiskey & water, couple of Jagers and a Paloma cocktail for Zander our conversation turned to our daughters and how wonderful they are and ultimately what’s next for this rap stallion from the CY plated creative hub of the Western Cape. His latest music video for “Pappa P” just came out and it’s an old school rap jol masterpiece. His new album is dropping in stages. One a month for the next 12 months. Like waiting to watch Thundercats but instead of every week it’s every 4 weeks. Worth the wait. The album is called Die Evangelie Van Goeie Tye (The Gospel Of Good Times). Each song will be a Psalm, I got a preview of Psalm 1: Demone. It’s demonically choral and bombastically beat laden, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I did catching up with a good friend and all round smart, humble guy.
By Gavin Williams, Contributor and Creative Director at North VCA
