Mzansi Wednesdayz – Remembering _ Cashless Society

Cashless Society

Profile:

Formed in 1999 and originally consisting of Snazz D (Julian Du Plessis), Draztik (Dave Balsher), X-Amount (Kwezi Ngcakani), Black Intellect (Jerry Kai Lewis), Fat Free (Salim Mosidinyane) & DJ IQ (who left the crew, when he moved back to Queens, NY), the group made later acquisitions of other like minded MC’s Criminal (Alfred Chirwa), Tizeye (Tyrone Phillips) & Gemini (Thabiso Mofokeng) (the later is also a member of the Groundworks Crew), to form the group well known as Cashless Society.

Signed to Unreleased Records and based out of Johannesburg, South Africa, the original members hail from both South Africa and Botswana. Their musical influence grew with the groups expansion to include members from both Malawi and Sierra Leone. The name Cashless Society sums up the crew via a double meaning: cashless, as in the plastic economic future of the modern world and cashless as in Africa, currently the poorest of the poor. But rather than focus on the gloom of that reality,
cashless chooses to perpetuate hope and progressiveness. With such high-concept maxims, Cashless asserts their social responsibility of educating the public on how knowledge acquisition is spiritually empowering and absolutely vital in creating
consciousness of the world we live in.
With such inherently diverse backgrounds commonly rooted in Johannesburg but stemming
from South Africa, Malawi, Sierra Leon and
Botswana, their intent to promote “street-hop
rather than regular rap music,” as X Amount
insists, is hardly a long shot. In fact, in 2000 the
inner-city outfit added New York to their urban
repertoire.

Upon Bobbito’s visit to South Africa, the group released their first internationally distributed single “Blazetha Breaks” which was licensed through Fondle ‘Em Records as the A-Side to a split 12″ which featured Mizchif’s “Place For A Wife” on the B-Side. It sold over 3000 units
worldwide. Since then Cashless Society has collected major tour kudos, billing on monumental shows such as Dead Prez and Blak Twang’s tour of Southern Africa, Black August
and Blackalicious’ tour of South Africa,
Blackalicious.

In 2001 they released their follow up EP “Blaze Tha Breaks” which featured the video to the underground cult-classic.

2003 saw the release of Cashless Society’s first full-length album “African Raw Material Vol. 1” on Unreleased Records, which was distributed by BMG Records Africa and featured guest appearences by Tumi, Mizchif and Masauko of Blk Sonshine.

Currently the members of Cashless Society are concentrating on their solo efforts and other group projects.

Sites:
unreleasedrecords.com, MySpace

Members:

Black Intellect, Criminal (5), DJ IQ (3), Draztik, Fat Free, Gemini (20), Snazz D, Tizeye, X-Amount

Red Everything Movement