X is for...

"X Girlfriend" by Zola


If you don't know what he's saying, no worries, because neither do I.  Zola is a South African Kwaito artist, and I guess he's speaking some combination of Zulu and tsotsi slang?  I really don't know.  I just like it.

I first heard about Zola from the movie Tsotsi.  If you haven't seen it, you should, it's pretty good.  You know, Academy Award-winning.  Whatever.  Anyway, Zola plays a role in Tsotsi (the gang leader, for those who have seen it).  He also performs a great deal of the music in the film.  Throughout the whole movie I just kept thinking "I hope there's a soundtrack I can get my hands on."  And there was.  Once I had the soundtrack and knew who I was listening to, I wanted to have more.

Turns out it's kind of hard to get a hold of South African music, because I couldn't find it anywhere.  I ended up getting a couple albums from this kind of shady looking website, but it turns out they were legit, and went out of their way to make sure I ended up with the product.  It came all the way from South Africa, and I kept the envelope because it had some cool stamps on it, but that was back when I lived in my own place, and now that I'm back home it's buried in a box somewhere so I can't put up a picture.

Anyway, Zola is an interesting person.  On one hand, he's a Kwaito superstar and humanitarian, but on the other hand, there's all these allegations swirling around that he abused some of his former girlfriends.  Since it's all so far away, I don't really have my own frame of reference.  All I can do is Google him and let the Internet barf up what it can.  I hope he's an ok guy, because he has some of my money.

And that's it, really.  X was a hard letter to pick a song for.