Eksie Ou

Quick, think of your favourite joke of all time. Right, it was pant-pissingly funny the first time. But it still makes you chuckle now. That’s what made it stand the test of time. For me it is like Bellville rapper Jack Parow’s eponymous debut that was released in 2010. With the never-ending floods of new music I get on an almost daily basis, there aren’t too many albums that I have the luxury to come back to that often – Jack’s is one of those. It is not only stacked with great tunes and beats, but it remains blerrie hilarious, even after repeated listens.

Parow has an amazing eye for seeing the quirkiness in life, he is a great observer of Sefrican life in a wonderfully self-deprecating way and his jokes simply don’t wear off. Best is, it wipes a kak day off your life in a few minutes’ time. He did all the hip-hop things too – collaborations and then, of course, the catchierthan- herpes hit single “Cooler As Ekke” that not only got playlisted on 5FM and YFM, but also launched a million cool T-shirts and (literally) YouTube hits. And there were the kief videos highlighting the likeable zef persona with the extra-long baseball cap and the moustache. But it wasn’t a novelty record – a best-seller, it was also one of my best albums of that year.

So where does this character come from? Born Zander Tyler about 30 years ago, Parow started rapping with crews from the Cape Flats. He studied to be a mechanic – according to his website – but had to take jobs like packing fish in Cape Town harbour and allocating graves for the Cemetery Division of the Cape Town municipality to support his rap habit. His name, he says, came from when “I was really drunk and was watching Pirates of the Caribbean and I said: ‘Fuck Jack Sparrow the pirate of the Caribbean, I’m Jack Parow, pirate of the caravan park’.”

So it was like watching a new Savanna “Dry But You Can Drink It” ad when I listened to the new Parow album Eksie Ou (I’m the Dude) album for the first time – ready to have my funny bone tickled, my finger ready to hit the repeat at the end again. So did it give me koeksister legs to avoid wetting my pants like his debut? No. Because there’s a hint of a formula: the sokkie-ish booze song, the lank serious song, the collab with Fokofpolisiekar are all here again. But is it a kak album? Nooit! The single “Hosh Tokolosh” with Gazelle is one of the best tunes released in South Africa for at least the last decade. His sense of observation and taking the piss, when he isn’t on auto-cruise, make you still go, “bliksem!” And there are some cracker tunes, so I can’t wait for his third album – I am sure that Parow will probably shake off the pressure that often comes with a fine artist’s second album and again prove that he is one of the best rappers South Africa has ever produced.