Planetary Assault



At the tender age of 11, KONFAB (then affectionately known as Sneez), received a thorough ass whipping from his old man. He had snuck out of the crib to perform at a dingy strip joint called Palace Hotel in Teyateyaneng, a good 30km outside of his home in Maseru, Lesotho with his crew By All Means. This is really where it all began... 15 years have since elapsed and KONFAB’s involvement in hip hop music, as well as his rhyme structure, remains nothing short of prolific, rebellious and defiant of accepted hip-hop game norms. An ironic and ill-known fact:- KONFAB perseveres through a conventional nine-to-five everyday, as a Civil Engineer in Cape Town. This, he argues, gives him more impetus to lambaste industry and establishment in his rhymes. And not withstanding KONFAB’s scientific professional background, he truly dismantles the formula in his rhymes. His quest is to stretch the barriers of language and syllabic metre to their artistic limits, whilst simultaneously delivering an impassioned message, often with a slightly crass sense of humour. “…Hussein and who’s looney? Group me with the UN / a hooligan humanitarian with too many skinny friends…” KONFAB’s journey through hip hop music and rap started in Maseru in the early ‘90s when the relatively new art form was thriving in his small home town. He entered an MC competition in school with a crew of homeys and came out tops, having never actually written a rhyme before! Following this event, he was invited to join a prominent local hip hop lifestyle movement called Black Mentality, and was placed in a 3-man crew, By All Means. Here KONFAB got an early education to the world of word-art-performance. This flow continued till 1995 when the problem child was eventually banished to a boarding school, far away in Johannesburg. Far from destabilizing KONFAB’s firm grounding in hip hop music, the change of environment only stratified his style, giving it a more pronounced urban, street feel. In 1999 KONFAB relocated to Cape Town. This is where he truly flourished as an MC and earned his stripes in the underground. He made solo moves for a number of years locking open mic sets and small gigs here and there, gradually infiltrating the tight knit Cape Town hip hop movement. Over the years, KONFAB has come to be affiliated with two crews, Blkmst Fxn and Writers Block (one of the most revered Cape Town crews), while at the same time pushing solo projects with Dplanet, Oracle Flo and Ben Sharpa under the Pioneer Unit banner. KONFAB has also graced mics and laced joints with the likes of Tha Hymphatic Thabs, Archetypes, King Daniel, Mpisi the Monolith and many other underground heavyweights at events such as Hip-Hop Connected and Drudge Dialect, culminating in the Tri-Continental Festival where he finished verses with the likes of Wordsworth. These days, KONFAB comes clad as three different characters: KONtraversealFABetiks, KONdom FABrik and KONscious FABulist; which reflect all the dimensions underlying Sense-Say, KONFAB’s day-time disguise. Each of these personas battle for spotlight attention in the forthcoming 21-track debut album ‘Swart Gevaar’. KONFAB’s style of rhyme remains grounded and devoid of any influence from the materialistic and flashy schools of thought so prevalent in the mainstream hip hop game of today. He projects the anti-establishment, presently disadvantaged, previously dissed and damaged, seriously p'd-off with anger mismanaged, half-foreign, urbanised darkie that he is. Leave your bling at the door then... CRUCIAL KONFAB LINKS KONFAB Myspace page KONFAB Pioneer Unit profile Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.