‘Just a moment’ – Did Big Zulu’s diss track ‘revive’ Hip Hop?

The attempt by Big Zulu to “revive” Hip Hop has had tongues wagging over the last few days. His diss track to local industry giants finally has them talking. 

During the weekend, Big Zulu released a track titled 150 Bars. In the 5-minute and 36-second audio, he takes aim at the likes of Cassper Nyovest, AKA, Emtee, Stogie T, Nasty C, K.O, Nota Baloyi and podcaster Silk Talk. 

In some of the lyrics, the Zulu rapper goes after Emtee’s Mercedes Benz, his tattoos and his “empty garage”. One of his punchlines for Stogie T is directed at his weight, repeatedly calling him isdudla (fat).

He also rapped that the last music hit “Mr Cashtime”, K.O, had was Caracara and AKA’s smash hit was Run Jozi in 2014. 

Big Zulu admits he’s trying to revive Hip Hop in the track and he can’t do so with the calibre of rappers currently as they are “spineless” and can’t compete with him.

He also went after his critics who said he doesn’t rap anymore, saying he has rapped for a long time as his song catalogue shows this. 

The Imali Eningi rapper said the diss track is “all fun” and games as he still respects the rappers he just dissed. 

Because of this, AKA didn’t take Big Zulu’s 150 Bars seriously. 

He tweeted: “You can’t make a diss track then big everyone up at the end. That’s not Hip Hop”.  AKA added there is no such thing as “an ubuntu diss track”. 

Big Zulu’s,150 Bars is trending on Youtube Music at number one locally, with nearly 900 000 views. 

Fans and celebrities reacted to the diss track, with K.O responding with his own track, sharing a short snippet, with several punchlines against Big Zulu. 

Local Hip Hop, over the last few years, has been deemed to be “dead” or not as popular as it was during its peak. The music genre hasn’t competed with the huge success of Amapiano, as seen in radio airwaves and streaming numbers.

Resulting in some Hip Hop artists switching to Amapiano, finding it more lucrative and much more successful.

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Hip Hop artist Reason, who now goes by the Amapiano artist name Sizwe Alakine, said the “moment” Big Zulu created is just that, a moment. He added it won’t “save” Hip Hop as it is on the artist to rebrand and work on making better Hip Hop music.