Cashless Society (band)

Cashless Society also known as The Hard Cashless Society or THC Society are a southern African hip hop crew from Gaborone, Botswana and Johannesburg, South Africa. The group consists 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 group, when he moved back to Queens, NY), the group made later acquisitions of other like minded artists with Criminal (Alfred Chirwa), Tizeye (Tyrone Phillips) & Gemini (Thabiso Mofokeng) (the later is also a member of Groundworks) joining to form the group well known as Cashless Society.

History

Early years

In 1999 the independent label Unreleased Records was formed by CEO's Draztik and DJ IQ from Gaborone, Botswana, and X-Amount from Johannesburg, South Africa. The idea was to create a platform for the emerging hip-hop talent in southern Africa which they felt was being secluded from the musical landscape by the industry. Cashless Society were amongst the first groups to sign with Unreleased Records in 1999. The group was made up of Draztik, X-Amount, Snazz D, Black Intellect, Slim a.k.a. Fat Free and DJ IQ. Other groups originally signed to the label were Organik Interfaze (Draztik, Slim and DJ IQ) and Nativity (Fifth Light, L biz, Carnage and Swarthy) both groups from Gaborone, Botswana. 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.

Draztik, Slim and DJ IQ were the hosts of the weekly live radio show Strictly Hip-Hop on radio station RBII in Botswana. They were also the members of the group Organik Interfaze, The three had spent considerable time abroad, with Draztik growing up in Sacramento, California, Slim being born and raised in New York City and DJ IQ growing up in Queens, New York, before they all returned to Botswana.