In April of 2012, Sprite went on a three month search for undiscovered, talented and uncontainable hip-hop artists across all major cities in the country. The competition was divided into the three elements of hip-hop: B-boyz (dance), MC’s and Graffiti artists, with the sickest, dopest, and illest finalists in each category having a chance to fly to the Big Apple for a Hip-Hop talent mentorship under the legendary hip-hop icon, Talib Kweli.
When the 1st of September came, six artists, two in each category, who were chosen, led the roads to Newtown, Johannesburg. This was to be the place and timewhen all six hopefuls were to battle it out for a dream trip to NYC. The artists were to be judged by Reason (MC), Simba (Dance), Falco (Graffiti) and the Brooklyn born Talib Kweli. The show finale was hosted by the MTV Base VJ, Sizwe Dlhomo, and supported by performances of local talented hip-hopacts of Tumi (from The Volume), Ben Sharpa, Prokid, and Dj X, with extra appearances by Zeus, Red Button, and Reason. The show was thoroughly closed by a breath taking performance of the legend himself, Mr Talib Kweli.
Emcees
The two hopefuls in the MC category were the former Cashtime Fam member and Jo’burg resident, AbyFab and Durban’s sensation, Hydrochloric.The two artists where given three rounds each to impress the judges. On the first round, each artist was given an opportunity to perform his own song. AbyFab’s energy and stage dominance gained him a better response from the crowd,while Hydrochloric didn’t get the response he had hoped for.
The second round was a freestyle show, where each rapper had to throw 8 bars on a selected instrument. Although AbyFab held his own, it was Hydrochloric’s skills of an MC that came through for him as he got a better response from the crowd this time around. This looked to be a change in the balance between the two aspirants.
The best show was the last round, the ‘lyrical battle’,where one rapper was to throw 4 bars and the other rapper continue from there. Things got out of control when Hydrochloric took shots with lines like “I don’t know what Cashtime has with AB’s”, dissing AbyFab’s departure from Cashtime Fam. This got the attention of the crowd and everyone went wild because of it. AbyFab started choking and lacked the proper counter bars, and that seemed to fire up the crowd even more. Reason had to cut the battle in between as it got too personal claiming that“it is supposed to be lyrical battle and not get personal”. He also claimed that it is unfair as “Hydrochloric knows more about AbyFab than AbyFab know about Hydrochloric”
The crowd meanwhile supported the battle in getting personal, even though Reason seemed largely against the idea. The intervention seemed fruitless as the crowd, supported by Sizwe Dlhomo, got what they wanted and with such Hydrochloric brutally dismantled and corroded AbyFab with ease. The latter started chocking more and lacked comebackpunchlines, it was like pouring hydrochloric acid on a metal piece as AbyFab fell off in the battle. This, according to Reason, bared too much influence on the outcome of the decision in naming Hydrochloric the Uncontainable MC.
Dance
Dancing their way to NYC was the youngest b-boy to enter the competition, the 17 year old Costa from Nelspruit, and the only female artist at the finals, in all categories, Sham Rock from Cape Town. Like the MC category, this section was divided into three rounds. On the first round, each dancer produced a song and had to dance to it while on the second round a song was chosen by the judges and both dancers had to move to the same beat. On the third and last round, Sham Rock had to dance to Costa’s song and Costa also had dance to Sham Rock’s song. During these rounds, Sham Rock appeared to be more of a versatile dancer than her counterpart. At the end, Simba and his colleagues adjudged Sham Rock as the eventual winner of the most Uncontainable Dancer.
Graffiti
Battling it for the Graffiti Artists category was the Durban duo of Stops-Dane and Dokter. Having given five hours to paint their pieces, the uncontainable graffiti artist adjudged to be Stops-Dane
