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was dearly a separation in class, but every
body was content with what they had. There
wasn't the pressure of trying to get more.
Don't get me wrong; that does exist. You just
don't feel it as much. They own and live off
the land." Ishues felt at home here, sharing
laughs, stories and food.
If the Pan-African movement could be sum
marized in three words, it would be "Africa as
home." While Ishues understood this intellec
tually, he always felt like an outsider looking
in. In Zimbabwe, "I was able to see the world
through the eyes of Africa." It was always
important for Ishues to visit his homeland. He
knew this. Now he could feel it.
Ishues had the schedule of an overnight
celebrity in Africa. He went over with a TV
appearance and a New Year's concert planned.
The love he received after his first TV appear
ance led to more TV and radio gigs, collabo
rations with top local hip-hop acts, and a
handful of additional stage - shows. The first
impromptu appearance was the highlight of
his trip, one song in front of 5,000 people
during the nationally televised Miss Zimbabwe
Beauty Pageant. "I don't know what came over
me at that pageant," he recalls. He jumped
over a table, off the stage, and ran into the
audience. The crowd was electrified; "I might
as well have been Lil' Wayne." He exited the
stage with the natural high of a rock star who
has connected with his audience. Breathing
heavily, he wanted more.
When asked by African media what the pur
pose of his trip was, Ishues stated, "to get out
T his story ends with Ishues dining
with the richest man in Zimbabwe
then jumping offstage at the Miss
Zimbabwe Beauty Pageant. It begins
with him taking the train from Jersey City to
Philadelphia to rob people and then going
back home to rap about it. This story ends
with Ishues trading verses onstage with KRS-
One and Black Thought of The Roots. It begins
with being shot at on Halloween night, a
wake-up call that turned his life around.
With the barrel of a gun aimed at his
temple, Ishues was thinking one thing: "Ain't
karma a bitch?" It was Halloween 2000. A few
nights earlier, Ishues was on the other side of
this type of transaction. This night, however,
he handed over S300, paying close attention *
to the hold-up man's shoes. The perpetrator
home with the boom box and a pad of paper,
writing response verses to his favorite under
ground battle rapper, Canibus. Eventually he
gained the confidence to take his rhymes to
the streets, finding lyrical sparring partners
by asking people who nodded their heads with
a hip-hop swagger, "Yo, you rhyme?" If they
responded affirmatively, he would challenge:
"So rhyme."
Ishues and his cousin earned a name for
themselves battling and defeating the best
MCs in the Tri-State area. During this time,
Ishues not only rhymed about robbing and
glorifying violence, he lived it. But after that
fateful Halloween night in 2000, he could no
longer put his family at risk. Ishues moved to
Atlanta and reinvented himself, both as an
artist and as an individual.
a show in Philadelphia, Ishues and KRS-One
were joined by a surprise guest. "The DJ told
us Black Thought was backstage and wanted
to know if he could come out. Before we could
answer, he came out with a mic in his hand
and started going off. I went next."
After the tour ended, Ishues continued to
perform in Athens and Atlanta, headlining
smaller venues as well as opening up for big
names like Kanye West, 50 Cent, Ludacris and
Talib Kweli. In September 2007 he released his
second album, Civil Unrest, on his own label,
Spoken roar.
In December of 2008 Ishues got a call
from his manager, who told him of a possible
New Year's gig in Zimbabwe. Not only would
this fulfill Ishues' lifelong dream of going to
Africa, he would be the first American hip-hop
artist to perform in Zimbabwe.
Two days after Christmas, Ishues
arrived at Harare International Airport
in Zimbabwe and was picked up by a
Mercedes C-Class. Chauffeured from
place to place, he saw the reality of
Zimbabwe, a flourishing consumer
culture with a thriving market for
hip-hop. On the road, all he saw were
high-end luxury cars, and he hung out
with people who owned 10 to 12 of
them. These high rollers would lend
Ishues one of their cars, as long as
he came back the next day to trade
it in for another one. "I had never
been around so much money in my
life," Ishues observed, "and this is in
Ishues (far right) with manager Life (center) at a radio station in South Africa.
stuffed the money in his pocket and ran after
Ishues' friend, who had darted off as soon as
he sensed danger.
Ishues collected himself, got with his
crew, and "strapped up." They drove around
the block looking for a guy wearing similar
clothes. They stopped to intimidate suspects, .
holding them up until they could get a good
look at their sneakers. If it wasn't a match,
they let the guy go with a simple, "OK, you
good." After an hour of this, they gave up.
Back on the front porch, Ishues was still
simmering over the night's turn of events.
While retelling the story to a friend, a shad
owy figure stepped out of a car and stood
under a nearby tree. Ishues looked at the
shadow; the shadow looked back. Ishues
noticed that only one arm of the shadow
was visible; the other was hiding something
behind his back. Ishues immediately jumped
for cover. As the shadow opened fire, Ishues
could only think about his girlfriend, who was
pregnant with their first child. "I could've
been sitting on the porch with my daughter."
Eight years later, Ishues shows friends
these bullet holes when he visits his old house
in Jersey City. He moved there at 18, when his
cousin promised him music industry connec
tions. Ishues started rapping while sitting at
In Georgia, he was able to focus on his
music while raising a family»He was still
battle rapping, but his topical and now pro
fanity-free lyrics focused on his struggles as
a father raising a daughter. He also embraced
Pan-Africanism, the movement promoting the
unification of all people with African ancestry.
From 2001 to 2004 Ishues went from being
an overly ambitious new kid on the block to
the top battle MC in Atlanta. He won all the
important battle titles, which cumulated in his
induction to the World Famous Mic Club's Hall
of Champions. He parlayed this momentum
into an album, 2004's Reality Flow, which won
multiple Flagpole awards as well as earned him
the title of Underground Hip-Hop Artist of the
Year by Atlanta's Creative Loafing.
With more confidence than ever, Ishues
jumped onstage at a KRS-One show and took
over the microphone for a few minutes. Rather
than getting booted off by security, he was
taken in. Ishues demonstrated an ability to
captivate an audience, and KRS-One asked
him to join the tour as his hype man. After
every show, KRS-One would encourage Ishues
to get on the mic and rhyme whenever he felt
inspired. Ishues took this advice and ran with
it. "I got to the point where I would just cut
him [KRS-One] off," Ishues remembers. During
A crowd of music fans gather to hear Ishues play in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe, where everybody is supposed to be
starving."
But then he went to the hood, where "it
was like a war zone. Buildings were blown out
and... I don't know how else to describe it
except that it looked like something that sur
vived a war." Despite the landscape, he didn't
see anyone who was starving or unhappy.
Everybody knew each other and kids were
more likely to hold hands with one another
than threaten each other. Cars pulled over
so the neighbors could dance to the music
thumping out of the speakers. It was the type
of poverty where people didn't have luxuries,
but they still enjoyed the simple life. "There
here and rock." Using hip-hop, his goal was to
bring people together and forget about their
differences. Besides the class divide, there is
a strong racial divide between whites, dark-
skinned blacks and lighter-skinned blacks in
Africa. Ishues rocked the stage for all of them.
From a life of violence to bringing people
together in the name of musk, Ishues has
come a long way. When asked, "What's next?"
he doesn't hesitate to respond: 'I'm going
back to Africa." After that, his plans include
Australia and Japan. With Ishues, you never
know what's next.
Michael J. Gerber
MARCH 11, 2009 • FLAGP0LE.COM 15