by Contributor

Friday night at the Arque restaurant in Sandton’s upmarket Diamond Walk was not exactly what you would expect for a Hip Hop single launch. The Diamond Walk- an elite upmarket section of Sandton City that houses brands like Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Louis Vuitton and Gucci is a world apart from Newtown’s Bassline, a venue that has played an influential role in Tumi’s career.. The upmarket stores are all located along quarter mile long walk that bridges Sandton City and the 5 Star Sandton Sun Hotel.

[pullquote]“A Stogie is a cigar…. and cigars have come to represent you know a certain elegance and growth for me”

It was all glamour with a generous drizzle of Hip-Hop. The hip-hop aficionado Tumi Molekane graced us among the crystal champagne flutes and lights for his debut as an artist performing under the new moniker, Stogie-T. Traditionally, artists adopt different stage names as a guise to experiment with new sounds or styles without doing away with their individual musical identity. Tumi (Molekane) is an accomplished rapper who has reinvented himself a few times over as a solo artist, then the lead of the now defunct Tumi And The Volume then once again as a solo artist. Sandwiched in between those career reincarnations are his collaborations with the French Outfit Chinese Man.

There is always a great deal of unpredictability surrounding an artist’s change of stage name. Will the reincarnation follow the line of those of David Bowie or the abject mess that was Snoop Lion?

With Stogie T we already has few hints before the event via the singles which he dropped earlier that day and a brief statement which read

Tumi represented an idealistic young black male emphasizing the nest of human nature and yearning for a better world, Stogie T simply represents the world as it is whilst retaining peerless lyricism”

Stogie T was very much still like Tumi, the wordplay and delivery remained a constant, the shift seemed to lie in his sound and subject matter. The shift was also evident in Tumi’s styling on the night. Stogie opted to wear designer loafers on the night, where Tumi might have opted to don a pair of Jordan’s from his vast collection of sneakers. As he summed up in a speech

“A Stogie is a cigar…. and cigars have come to represent you know a certain elegance and growth for me”

Initially the launch was a gathering to Diamond Walk and Big Dreams and Stogie-T insisted on only giving us brief introductions as opposed to a performance because “I’m cold, that’s what the old Tumi would do!” but staying true to his inner Tumi he gave the crowd an unexpected (even to himself) performance of his trap banger Everybody Clean (which caused a great deal of discussion on social media when he performed it on Urban Sessions thanks to a certain line that address Riky Rick and Reason) a moment that was ultimately breath-taking. He engaged the crowd with such ferocity and reminded us what magic big talent can really pull off in the heat of the moment. The music is hip, fresh, lyrically smart and the musicality is unmatched as far as I have heard. It’s not just another day in Hip Hop for this new artist.