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Phumlani S Langa has some serious questions regarding the passing of yet another local hip-hop star.
If there ever was a way to leave this earth, then the shocking passing of musician Costa Titch might be up there with the best of these scenarios. Bear with me, but he was on a stage performing for hordes of people and as the track he played ended, he received a resounding ovation, one hand raised to the sky the other clutching his mic and manhood, and then he fell from the stage and perished.
That is a rockstar’s death, but we can’t romanticise it for too long, especially after the year South Africa is having with the amount of talent we have lost. The details around Costa’s passing are murky, but the footage is rather difficult to watch even if you aren’t a fan of the man. His contributions were notable to the culture and his fusion of amapiano with vernacular-styled raps and dance was a cunning one. An artist like that has a team who aids him and who makes money off his artistic exploits. We’re talking about managers, agents, publicists, producers, stage managers… these people have armies that help keep aloft your favourite stars.
READ: Costa Titch: A young superstar gone too soon
Apparently, Costa has always suffered from epilepsy, which is not a great fit for someone who spent as much time as he did on stages and in the limelight. I’m just a little puzzled.
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The stage would be pre-approved and carefully examined by me-the manager/agent-as well as a doctor who would be in my artist’s rider, forget the chilled Fiji water and purple M&M’s. I would damn near have some kind of light meter while my artist was on stage to ensure things are safe and I’m doing all this even at awards shows should my artist care for these and perhaps want to compete. I’m not trying to make light of this at all as I believe this to be an absolute atrocity as far as artist management goes. And of course, it had to be a soldier of hip-hop who succumbs to this negligence.
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We’re still out here looking for answers around AKA, but this loss will need to be addressed quicker. Even the way he was carried off after he fell and was convulsing on the ground.
I’m not even going to talk about the Ultra Festival because firstly that was poor disaster management I’m not even sure what all y’all were doing there in the first place. I mean, how many different ways are there to either speed up or slow down beats per minute-but heads seem to have taken this with the usual sombre and docile nature of local hip-hop. A person who devoted their life to steering the thing we love to new and exciting avenues died at an EDM rave because the strobe lights affected his epilepsy, and nobody is going to say jack about the people who represented him? I mean geez, okay then. Rest in power, Titch.
