Words and photography by ROGER YOUNG
“Can you go to other countries if you have a criminal record?” Isaac Mutant leans toward me on the way back from a park jam in Paarl Valley. Depends on the crime, I shrug him off. I don't press for details because, over the last few weeks, while he's been upfront about everything else, Mutant has been non-committal on only two subjects: his relationship with his ex-wife and the mother of his daughter, and his ties with Flats gangs.
When I ask him straight up if he'd ever gone to prison he replies, “No comment,” and pauses. “I want you to put that in, that I said 'no comment' to that question.” I promise him that I will. “Duidelik,” he says, “Duidelik. Now, next question.” The information, I guess, would be easily obtainable. But what Isaac's real name is, I never think to ask; this is the one thing I keep losing sight of. Isaac Mutant is a fiction, yet he's the realest motherfucker I've ever met.
It's typical early summer weather in the PV ghetto. The pink and grey stacks of Magnolia Flats are vibrating in the heat and an old truck is pulled up as a stage. People are on the outside stairs, their lawn chairs, in the boots of their cars, drinking quarts, drinking hot nips, drinking in the ebb and flow of the levels of skill jumping up on the truck.
They're putting their fears out there — their hopes, their need to be seen, guided by the old heads and their clipboards, the Caravelle as the sound desk, as the backstage, as the place where the women sit. Children and dogs and rhymes running about — innocent, hungry, dissatisfied and proud.
In the middle of it all scowls Isaac Mutant, aka Ike Deny, aka DJ Brooke Squirter, formerly Rebel MC, formerly Yucky Stuff, formerly of Bad Influence and Trampled Multitude, one-time part of Plein Madness, once Planet Base B-boy, major contributor to the first Die Antwoord album, and all-around pissed-off and frustrated Kaapse rapper. He's tired of the boom-bap beats and the calls to consciousness. “For me personally, the hip-hop industry, the rap industry in South Africa is kak boring,” he tells me. “It's poes boring, nobody comes up with edgy fucken ideas and gets kakked out and get fucken thrown out of the club. I want to have bergies on stage with me and they must sommer just take a shit, right there, on the stage.”
But Mutant himself would be the last to diss the togetherness of the park jam scene. “Brasse are actually hooking up people from this side and that side. It's always gonna be this whole gang mentality; tribe mentality is always gonna be there. But people don't fight anymore. People are actually squashing beef,” he tells me. His frustration lies with the fact that dropping tracks hasn't, in the 20 years he's been a part of the scene, ever presented a viable way to survive — not really, and not for anyone he knows.
When he arrives here in the PV, he's greeted with acquiescence. Brasse in snap backs do the head dip, give him reverence, get him drinks, want to know what he's up to; will he perhaps drop a rhyme or two? The younger MCs standing off to the sides are just looking at him, just checking him the fuck out. Later in the afternoon, a young MC asks him what his rate is. “Why even ask me?” Mutant says to me later. “After Die Antwoord, he [the young MC] can't afford me. I tell him, 'rather tell me what you got and I'll see if I can do you a favour. But don't ask for my rate. You can't afford my rate.' “
Mutant is equal parts braggadocio and frustrated artist. He just doesn't want to work within the old parameters of hip-hop. At the moment, his greatest challenge is figuring out how to communicate his mythical post-Flats hip-hop land of freedom to his many collaborators (actual, potential or otherwise).
He's on the verge of recording his third album, or rather, Mutant is on the edge of discovery, lurching toward his third album. All he really knows is that he wants to piss people off and get paid. He's been working with SAMA-winning producer Ghalik Jacobs on a few tracks. Len Cockcroft of Tannhauser Gate has been laying down some beats for him. So has Dplanet of Pioneer Unit, as well as DJ Big Space. He's also mentioned a track with Soul Candi and a possible collaboration with Jay. How many of these will come to fruition is hard to say, for, combined with the usual trials of being a musician are Mutant's frequent black moods and occasional crippling bouts of ennui.
“These guys they call me and they want to offer me a deal.” Mutant is talking about trying to get this album made. “They say 'come, we'll give you sixty grand. We'll give it to you now.' They say 'come, forty grand today, just sign this. Twenty when the album is done.' For what? They think because I'm from the Flats I'm stupid? I tell them, buy me a fucking house! Then we can talk.” Mutant lives on a spare bed at his sister's place. He hustles every day — how tempting that sixty grand must have been… He's holding out for a bigger prize though. He doesn't tell me who “these guys” are.
But why has it taken so long to start recording again, just over six years now since he recorded The Unreleased Vol. 1? “Personally, I wrote my third album like fucking probably seven times, eight times, and I just never felt it. It was gonna be called 'A Freak New Evil', the subtitle would be 'Armageddon: The Musical'. I never felt it. Few tracks was dope. I was never satisfied with it. I refused to put something out that I don't feel, that's not good enough for the people… And my whole fucken book, my third album, I think got stolen, but let's just say I lost it a week before I was supposed to go into studio.”
In the darkness of a mid-morning bar in Plumstead, Isaac sits with DJ Roach, his sidekick and beat-dropper. They're here for some tattoo business at Kanasashi and because their dealer lives nearby. “You see, especially Afrikaans MCs have got this problem — we're too technical, lyrically. Jack Parow is easy, easy lyrics. How can I put this? I don't wanna rap for rappers. My lyrics are extremely coded and layered and whatnot, it's not easy enough, but now I'm tryna…” he searches, shrugs a bit. Roach interjects, “Dumb it down a bit.” Isaac jumps straight back in: “But still be clever. Catchy, catchy. That 'Doos Dronk' is a clever fucking track. You check 'Enter the Ninja', I dig that fucking track because it can compete with the world market according to the fucking formula.” It's the first time that Die Antwoord comes up, and it won't be the last. “Ja look, my first album was a concept album. It was very arty. I made it for me. The second album is where Cape Town hip-hop is today. It's too boom-bap, it's too hip-hop. You shouldn't have to stand still in a club and listen to the lyric … that's my problem. Because since I've been with him,” he motions to Roach, “I've been clubbing. So I kind of dig jolling, I dig the jol. I'm always on the dance floor my bru.”
Roach pulls out a bag of compacted marijuana and shows it to me. “We can break this up and double our money.” So this is the hustle? “You know who I appreciate?” asks Mutant. “Walter White [from Breaking Bad]. I got three tik recipes in case this rap thing doesn't work out.”
Two men with clipboards enter and start pointing out fire extinguishers and inspecting basins. Health inspectors. Roach, who looks like a hip-hop panda, leans back in his chair, rolling a joint on his stomach. “You won't believe the feedback that Isaac's been getting from the States, people asking him to translate his songs for them,” he says. “And this is the fucken thing with kak like Die Antwoord,” Mutant jumps in. “It's that no one here paid any attention to it until like someone picked up on it overseas. But it's cool because for me, like the whole world is now zoning on this.”
Roach puts the joint behind his ear. Isaac takes a swig of his beer. “Every night I have to learn this one American bra from Seattle Afrikaans. I have to teach him Afrikaans on Facebook. Like, what does 'poes' mean? 'Jou ma se poes', what does that mean? I have to teach him slang. Everybody says 'you the dude to speak to'. I googled it. 'You the bra, you the fucken rudest coloured bra.' This naai's from Seattle. OK cool, first thing you need to learn is 'jou ma se poes'. Then there's this white chick who actually studies Afrikaans as a subject in the States. She speaks Afrikaans to me; very clumsy though. Not even white South African clumsy, like black South African clumsy.” Roach interjects: “It's a lot of fun because she actually phoned Isaac one day and he usually gives out my number 'cos his phone is kak unreliable. So I answer the phone like, 'Yo, who is this?' and then she says, 'Baie dankie.' I was like, what the fuck … in a New York accent, my bru!” Isaac busts out laughing, covering his mouth in the loose hip-hop fist of disbelief.
“The idea was … to make fun of this whole bling thing, while at the same time trying to sound bling or glamorous.”
Open mic night at Purple Turtle, the everlasting dodgy alternative bar near Greenmarket Square, has become the only fixed regular inner city hip-hop hangout since DJ Real Rozzano's iBuyambo (an arts centre in Cape Town) burnt down a few months back. Roach and Mutant are just hanging out, checking out the new blood, the new talent. A couple of mini-skirted girls come out of the Grandslots area, loaded with cheap bling. They flirt with Mutant and then vanish out the front door. The crowd here is a curious mix of young hip-hoppers and bar trash. A trickle of battle-weary sex workers pass through from some back stairs. “Prostitutes,” Mutant says to me, the glow of the UV trance décor highlighting his creasing forehead. “Prostitutes are the answer to everything.”
A young girl gets on stage. “Check out this chick, bra, this girl is the future.” Her name is Andy Leigh and she's self-effacing with an off-beat flow, a mix of Uhuru smarts and the excitement of youth. “We need more females to do their shit,” Mutant nods his head enthusiastically in agreement with himself. “Men need to be put in their place, ou bra, because it's becoming an egotistical thing, opposing to merit. And who's got the biggest dick and the thickest voice. Now, if a small little girl, chick or woman, whatever, if a female come up with the maddest, like, you know, Lady of Rage fucking skills and blow everybody the fuck up, then it will change the game.”
A young dude jumps up and raps in a mixture of vernac and American phrasing, liberally peppered with “yo-yo-yo”s. Mutant's mood changes in a flash. “Brasse like these are the ones that are always saying, 'Keep it real'. How can you keep it real with an American accent? It's like that Youngsta guy; he's not good, he just drops a fuckload of mixtapes, quantity not quality. Ag, man, hip-hop is dead. Globally. And I've watched it die.”
He seems weary of it all, but then climbs on stage and rips hip-hop a new asshole. Full of fire and dexterity, he delivers one of his new tracks, “Mapuza”. The tiny crowd goes apeshit as he spits, “Ek is moeg van praat van revolution man/Fok die revolution/Ons maak soos Saddam Hussein/Elke woord, elke letter, soos'ie lood van Baretta/Idioot, hardheaded/Ek is daai soort wat sal quit, voor ek quit.”
He's on and then off-stage in an instant, but the energy in the room has been electrified. “The blacks like me because I sing 'fuck the cops',” he says, wiping his forehead as the whores from upstairs waddle past, leaving pools of cheap perfume in the air, dirty stares at our pants, a wake of disdain.
Mutant often refers to himself as “Third Generation Base Scene”. He's talking about a golden era in Cape hip-hop, the tail-end of the '80s where the heads revolved around Planet Base (also known as The Base) in Shortmarket Street in Cape Town. This was the place where Ready D cut his teeth, where Public Enemy albums that had been sneaked into the country were first dropped, where Black Noise and Prophets of Da City (POC) rose to prominence, where the seeds of African Hip-Hop Movement and King Jamo's Zulu Hip Hop Movement were sown; where young kids hung around in high-tops, full of rage and idealism and hope, flexing the first muscles of graf and B-boying in South Africa.
DJ Real Rozzano puts it thus: “Heads were connected, had beefs but still partied together because of the common interest in hip-hop. It was apartheid years and hip-hop united black, brown and white youths. We were moving between the townships of Mitchells Plain, Gugulethu, the Strand, Sea Point and Tamboerskloof. Songs were big at The Base on the dance floor, but emptied the dance floors in other clubs!”
Mutant was part of this scene, B-boying, beatboxing, laying down graf and, by 1988, rapping at The Base and the community events organised by Ready D and Rozzano. On “Mixtapes”, off his first album, you can practically feel the afterglow. “'Mixtapes' was actually influenced by a track that POC did back in the day. They had a track about the same thing. How it used to be back in the day: 'Oupa Jimmy, Oupa Jimmy kom oor die brug,' so I'm like, 'Yoh, fucking yarre, ou pel.' “ You can sense the longing while he talks, the frustration melted away by nostalgia. “It was closely-knit, number one,” Mutant tells me.
“We didn't even have all those luxuries [they had]. I wouldn't even blame those things but we kind of had a goal at that time. That time was a beautiful time. It was a brilliant time for people that was in hip-hop, because it was apartheid, bra. You know, fucking apartheid was a moerse fucking … it was a battle to fight, my bru. You didn't have time to think about ego and bullshit, it's like make or break. It's a war, bru.
“And what we were aiming at was fighting this war peacefully — that was the core of hip-hop that time. Gandhi-type of a principle. And this generation was there, they didn't belong anywhere, you know. Either you gonna be a gangsta or you gonna be this or you gonna be that. Then what happened was — I don't know if you know about this — but then the punk nation was in at that time. I was a punk at that time, also. People were rebelling against stuff. It was an anti-establishment thing. So I think majority of the hip-hoppers of that time became punk rockers just for that thing. It was gangster without being gangster. At the same time we used other vehicles like comradeship fighting apartheid, but with that came other shit … fighting gangsterism, or negativity rather, and camaraderie and that kind of a thing. And those codes are disappearing today.”
When Mutant considers, he looks at the ground, thinking, his brow knotting, puzzling it through. “That's actually one of the reasons why I wrote that track, because something fucking went wrong. I personally think the ouens didn't have anything to fight for anymore. I don't know, the old school, the old brasse grew up, reality kicked in, a majority of the brasse went to go work, not hip-hoppers anymore, but they went on with their lives. So they kind of lost that thing … reality kicked in. We kind of lack purpose right now.”
So does hip-hop need a power to fight? “People are realising something. I don't know what, whatever it is. I think it is getting there again. Every empire have to fall. People are looking at each other like 'Who's gonna say shit first? Who's gonna say this first.' Look man, it's like a kettle that boils, bra. People are getting more angry now; we are identifying an enemy or fighting towards something.”
We're walking to a shebeen just down the road from where Mutant lives. As we get to a crossroads, he hesitates and then we make a right. He doesn't want to go down that road, he tells me. It's a long story … something to do with his sister's nephew, something to do with him not wanting to get involved, something about it not being his place. Something about not wanting to get gemung for fucking some brasse up. We walk past a school. A kid on a BMX rides past and drops a small package through the window of a parked car. “Just like the movies,” says Mutant.
Back up in his sister's apartment, above a spares shop on Belgravia Road in Athlone, the beers are cracked open. “This is what you hear in the ghetto the whole time: 'Yoh Isaac, djy rap so kwaai, djy moet vorentoe gan.' What the fuck does that mean? Basically, they trying to say, I think, 'Bru, you must just get up and you will be successful.' Then my next question is: 'Define success.' People actually fucking listen to what the fuck I'm saying. So for me, I'm successful.”
But when it comes down to it, Mutant is a realist. “I'm a moerse fan of Bob Marley, you know, the greats: Jimmy Hendrix, Kurt Cobain. Bob Marley, that bra fucking touches, he converts, he makes Rastas still today and he's dead how many years, you check? You leave a mark that fucking big on the world, ou bra, nobody can ever touch that kak. I still do have those kind of principles but then the reality kicks in. Look man, it's cool, but you need to eat.”
I ask Mutant if he's got a message, if he's talking to a flock. “Nobody likes to be preached to. The moment you try become a hero or a preacher, it leaves too much open spaces.” He takes a long draw on his beer, pours another glass. “So, what do you do? You become a villain. Everyone loves a villain in a movie. That's why everyone remembers Castor Troy [a character in Face/Off]. Satan in a movie. I'm not in a position to preach to anybody. I'm fucked up. I've been a gangster, you know. Currently, I'm a Satanist apparently, but it's cool. Never be fucking boring.”
For Isaac, it's all part of the same connected story. “Those brasse taught me respect and disipline. You have to go back to the ghetto to see how these brasse hustle for something small. These brasse hustle for potatoes, my bru. You don't have time to sleep late because you fucking hungry — where the fuck is your lunch gonna come from? You don't even need lunch; lunch is a fucking luxury. Plus I do deal in some shit, time and again when I'm kak broke so I do need those brasse as well.”
While getting a gatsby somewhere in the ghetto, an old man (possibly handicapped) hovers near us, anxious for scraps. Roach collects all our unfinished chips while Mutant goes outside to smoke. Across the road is a derelict second-storey nightclub called The Point. He points it out. “I always thought that would be a kwaai name for a band, because The Point is Sabela [a word he describes as 'an extremely secretive language, or supposed to be, from jail']. So most people will just think it's just another name but brasse that know, will know. And all the other dwankies will be in the dark.”
“Dwankie” is a word I've only encountered on Die Antwoord's Tension album. “Ja, dwankie,” says Mutant shaking his head. “Ninja must have got that from Kim. My ex-wife. She's Ninja's assistant now.”
So, does Mutant think Ninja used him? “Kykie, Ninja is my bra, my tjommie. He helped me, I helped him.” But people have said that Die Antwoord should have taken you with them. “I'm not a sidekick. People who say that are actually being disrespectful of me. Die Antwoord raised the game, and because hip-hop is in a sensitive spot, people don't know what to do. So Die Antwoord really fuck people's idea of what is hip-hop; they've shown what you can do. So obviously people feel they have to try break them down and make out that they've done something kak because all those brasse been doing is sitting at home complaining.” He wrestles the last drag out of his cigarette and throws it to the kerb. “I shouldn't even tell you this, but me and Ninja have a project. I was going to change my name to Kaffir. Maybe we'll still do it one day.”
Out in Grassy Park, Mutant is playing Nas to Ghalik Jacobs. Ghalik responds with Little Dragon and something “from West Africa”. Ghalik is an old gent in a fading cardigan, whose garden is overflowing with the detritus of a DIY hoarder: rusted bathtubs, fucked aquariums, fucked cars, dog shit and other landmines. The studio itself is in construction, or deconstruction. The mic room is an old bedroom replete with open empty cupboards. “It gives the sound of the room a nice feel.” Ghalik is clearly a pro of the old-school variety. He's discussing the intricacies of recording a live band instead of laying down beats, his giant mixing desk covered in felt. Roach takes care of the joint and soon the room is filled with a lazy smoke while Ghalik talks about slow jazz. Mutant is getting edgy, he just wants to lay down a track. Finally when it happens, Ike blazing down a track that centres around the line “You mustn't push me”, but pronounced “Jou ma se poes, me”. Ghalik just shakes his head. “Isaac, man, the things you say, man.” It's an unlikely combination, these two working together, and you have to wonder if Mutant has chosen to work with Ghalik out of want or need. Listening to the playback, Ghalik says: “Isaac, you must understand, we have to do this slowly. It might take a year or so, just work on it track by track. I'm thinking this one would be nice with some piano.”
Driving back to Plumstead, Mutant is tired, not even pissed off. “It's kak frustrating. I'm kak intense when I work, when I record and when I write and I'm kak fast about shit. I'm the asshole in the industry, that kind of personality.” Is he difficult to work with? “Personally for me, no, I don't think I'm difficult to work with. People tend to think that I'm difficult to work with because I just wanna be right.” He's in a listless space. “Whatever happens, happens. If it takes six months it's cool. I'll allow it, it's cool. Ghalik is the most professional sound engineer I've ever worked with. His know-how and my know-how. Die Antwoord and Jack Parow raised the bar, so I need to raise my bar. To answer your question, is it frustrating? Everything is frustrating to me, and it's cool. I feed off frustration. I'm fucking angry all the time.”
It feels like the response of someone who has long since given up on any of his dreams coming true, but has been fighting for his place in the sun so long he doesn't know any other way of being.
“I hear a lot, like on the street you know, or Facebook. Facebook is now the newspaper. So I hear a lot about 'Yoh, they bumped your tracks last night, they bumped this, they bumped that'. Bush Radio, they bump my shit all the time. The Cipher Session; Ready D's doing that kinda thing right now. And then it's mos now internet radio; Hemelbesem's got a thing, RickLo got a thing so they bumping our shit all the time. I realised – jy my bru, people are digging this track.”
Back in his sister's flat, Mutant is talking about his underground hit, “Sorry Girl”. “What I did was, I made CDs, almost like mixtapes of my shit, then I went to taxi ranks, shebeens, smokkelhuise. I just distributed there for free.”
He takes in the scope of the song's reach. “So, I travel a lot, right, so I go to PV, to Paarl, I go to Ocean View, everywhere. I went to Vredendal. Me and Scally went to perform there and those people were fucking 'Yoh Isaac, “Sorry Girl”, “Sorry Girl” '. I fucking hate that song, but everybody's just raving about it. People mail me right over South Africa about that song. I recorded that track in 2005, I think. Since then till now, 2012, everybody's just fucking talking about that.”
It's clear that the track's popularity is a bit of a mystery to him, as well as a source of pride: “So Antjie Krog hired me for some poetry besigheid a few years back.”
We're down to the last of the beer.
“She wanted me specifically to do that track 'Sorry Girl' and another song, I think ''n Hoender wat nie kekkel nie' (a chicken that doesn't cackle) or some bullshit. Ja, fuck my bru — whaaat? I used to be a moerse Antjie Krog fan but I'm not gonna go into the politics of that day.”
I'm taken by surprise by this, but getting any detail about the Antjie Krog beef proves useless.
“The funny thing about that track is I wrote it for this chick, not for marketing or sales purposes and whatnot. I just gave it to somebody after I recorded it, two or three people, 'What do you think about this song?' Because I wanted to send it to this chick. But then it leaked from there.”
He leans back, and kinda shrugs it off: “I didn't write it as an MC. I know how to rhyme in any case. Just tell the story my bru, just maak toe jou oë (close your eyes). Just tell the story, not rap. That's kind of how I do mixtapes and I didn't care whether it was successful or not. I don't dig being too technical about MC-ing. Just fucking tell the story. The story is an extension of you.”
Mutant mixes languages and slangs when he raps, and the result is hard on the ears to those who don't speak Afrikaans.
“I'm just naturally a fucken aggressive person. I'm loud and I look like I look all the time. To answer your question: no. It's just another language. It is extremely aggressive, but it's just another language. Like, Cape Flats slang is just another tool. Language, words are just tools you need to bring this story across. Because the background and the language that I speak and express myself in don't define Isaac Mutant.”
But, as he has said, there are so many things to balance off each other; it's not just about teaching Afrikaans to Americans. Mutant is really more concerned with speaking to his own people. “The coloured culture is extremely unique and Sabela – the way we talk – is extremely unique. Only a few people know how to Sabela properly,” he explains. “Not everybody back in the day could've said 'Hosh!' and 'Aweh!'. It's not as secretive as it used to be. I just need to understand what is allowed and what is not allowed and why. What was the point of the Nommer [the “Number” refers to rival prison gangs] in the first place? So I can respect their shit.”
It comes back to the message, to the medium. The way Mutant communicates is what he is communicating. The combination of languages, slangs and styles is actually greater than the content of the individual tracks. Isaac Mutant is an old-school head, but he's futuristic as fuck.
“There was this one incident,” he recalls. “My crew is called Koloured Ass Krooks — KAK. But now, when Afrikaans hip-hop was starting to bud and more crews were being born, people misunderstand what this Koloured Ass thing and Isaac Mutant stand for. Especially Afrikaans coloured brasse, rappers.”
He sees I'm not quite understanding.
“Let me put it to you like this,” he says. “It was on Myspace, that was before Facebook. I got this one email: 'Isaac Mutant, you're the Moses of the coloureds.' I'm like, 'Thanks man.' And the vraag comes straight back: 'Yo bru, what are these darkies about … “new South Africa”.' So I'm like, 'Hold the fuck up, bra!' And then I got a vrag emails after that from different people: 'Yo, what is these whities about – hulle kan sien onse Chappies [tattoos] en wat-wat [and what-what],' and I'm like, 'Bra, it's not even like that.'
“That kind of changed my perception for shit. I'm just proudly coloured. I'm not anti-anything. So I'm like, 'Kykie man, you need to understand something. I come from an era where hip-hop knows no colour. We never saw colour, we never saw religion. It wasn't like that. We saw entities. The moment you call yourself a “head”, you're different from society.' That's the core of things.”
So where's the land of milk and honey? I joke with him. But it's no laughing matter.
“I watched Tupac's documentary, my bru,” says Mutant. “He said when he went to jail, everybody in jail was like 'So, Pac what's your orders?' He's like, 'Fuck, what you mean what's my order? I'm just another nigger from the ghetto doing my thing.' These naaiers also want orders from me. 'Isaac, my bru, we need to strengthen this whole coloured nation. What's your orders?'
“It's a scary thing. It's fucking hectic, bru. That's like Jesus and everybody now expects some fucking miracles from you.” He's not happy with this; it's a heavy load. It's a load he doesn't know whether he should pick up at all. “Look, I'm a freak amongst freaks … millions, gazillions. There's one thing I am. I might've been a bad son, a bad dad, even a bad colleague to my brasse [but] I know this for a fact – I am good where hip-hop is concerned. I just have to watch this movie, finish this movie, take this journey out.”
What's clear above everything else is that Isaac Mutant thinks too fucking much and he isn't making enough music. What's staring him in the face is the fact that all the songs he's known for – “Coloured Affairs”, “Sorry Girl” and “None Nwattas” – are the tracks he tossed off without thinking. He needs to get this shit out, but it's all blocked up. It could be because he's under-resourced, or just so fucking nihilistic that it doesn't matter anymore, but Mutant has discovered himself at a very specific place in hip-hop, a place only he could have arrived at, and now he's uncertain whether he wants to be there.
On “Str8 Talk” from 2006's The Unreleased Album, Mutant is the Sméagol of Rap, pointing fingers and laughing. Besides “Sorry Girl”, it's the track he's most Flats-famous for. It reveals his cynical yet loving eye on his own culture. This duality, this distance and closeness surfaces again on “Double Story”, the title track of his collab album with Hemelbesem.
“The idea was basically to make fun of this whole bling thing, while at the same time trying to sound bling or glamorous,” he explains. “The position I'm taking on that nommer is, you know these stalltjie brasse, that fruit-and-veg-on-the-corner type of brasse? I wanna take gam Cape Flats (coloured stereotype) to the world, but dudes in Sweden must still understand what I'm saying. We South Africans, we need to be proud of who the fuck we are. But I love challenges. It actually shouldn't be difficult. I'm a coloured.”
What tracks like “Str8 Talk”, “Double Story”, and even “Rymklets” show off most of all is Mutant's left-field sense of humour, his Lenny Bruce-like ability to make fun of himself while invoking real empathy; he's kak gevaarlik but he's also a sweetheart. One day Mutant wants to kill the world, the next, he just wants to kill himself.
“One moment I'm depressed, one moment I'm trying not to be depressed. I'm always depressed, I'm depressed all the fucking time. Even to the point of suicidal.” If you follow Mutant on Facebook, you'll know he's not kidding; when he gets into a bad space, the suicide jokes and references flow.
“Me and my ex, we lost everything at one stage. All that we had was the clothes that we were wearing. Shit like that happens to me all the time. So at one stage I was like, what the fuck? I'm always depressed right now, sometimes I'm more depressed than other times. I never used to be like that before my moms died. I'm just more emotional after that kak.” He realises that he's going down a black hole here, and he tries to dismiss it.
“All these fucking things in the pot. You realise you've got a lot of emotions you didn't know you had. From an artist's point of view, that kind of emotion is cool because you can tap into that easy, you know, tap into emotion befok. All these fucking classic brasse are all emotional brasse. Ups and downs, the erratic brasse.
“I kind of dig what Kurt Cobain did. I read his suicide note, kak hectic. He said he looked at his daughter's face. It kind of reminded him of who he used to be as an artist, no ego or something of this affect, very untainted and just like love for anybody that's willing to accept that love.
“And he used to be as an artist like that and he's not like that anymore, that's why he killed himself. That kind of brought me back. I want to make an entertaining album, educational music, but like powerful music that fucking touches people.”
Is this why he sticks with it? Is this why Isaac Mutant is in this game? To touch people? Is he not the hard case he makes himself out to be?
“Look now,” he corrects me. “It's like this: I know every dad think his daughter's the shit or son is the shit. Lyric, my daughter, is an MC. She's an artist's fucking dream laaitie. She's kak clever, poes clever. She thinks like me, like out of the box, and I know she's gonna get kak in this society for the way she thinks as well; she's like the Super Saiyan version of me. I see myself in her; the only reason I want to be there for her is like just for guidance, even if I'm a bad guy or a bad dad. Just to let her know there is somebody that understands you. Nobody out of the box, that thinks differently, was there for me.”
He doesn't quite say it, but because Mutant doesn't have access to his daughter, he's left with leaving her messages in his music, and it weighs heavy on his soul. As we're leaving the park jam, Mutant gets into a conversation with some full-on Rastas. “Ike,” they tell him. “We really dig you, man, but you got to keep it real. What's with all the swearing and the perversion?”
“Keep it real?” says Mutant, confused. “What's keeping it real ever got me?”
In the car later, approaching Cape Town after a long silence, he says: “Sorry bra, I'm just depressed at the moment. There's all this other shit going on. I just found out Kim's got another laaitie off me, just now. My laaitie was born last month. I don't know what gender it is, I don't know what its name is. And that kinda fucks with me. I got another laaitie and I don't know their name. And I got a restraining order against me so I can't find out. This is why we had to take another way when we went for those beers. I just can't afford to go mung right now. I'm being a pussy, but it's cool.”
He slumps back in his seat, looking out of the window as we pass the Castle. He changes the subject: “That's one place I've never been.” I tell him I don't believe him. “I'm scared of soldiers, man. Anyway, there's three places I'd like to go in my life: that place, Robben Island and the pyramids.”
We arrive where Isaac is working that night as a stage hand for comedienne Simmi Issacs. But he doesn't make a move, still and contemplating for a second. He wants to clarify something. “The thing about those Rastas is they were drinking. They want me to keep it real, but they were gesyp. I was born into Rasta. My dad and them was all Rastas, so I grew up as one of them. The aunt that is actually a Rasta right now was the one who first took me to The Base. The truth is Rastas are not holy anymore, black people are not black anymore and coloureds are out of excuses.” With that, he gets out the car.
Rolling Stone South Africa — January 2013