One man’s icon is another man’s rookie of the year.

Black Coffee is a highly-respected DJ in Africa, his storied career spans over two decades. But when the South African took home a BET award for the Best International Act ahead of Wizkid, Nigerians gave the BET Awards a collective side eye. But, as with most ecosystems that are self-sustaining, we are often ignorant of the greatness that goes on outside Nigeria.

It’s 2016 folks, ignorance is no longer an excuse. It turns out DJ Obi is one of Black Coffee’s biggest admirers, the South African DJ attempted to break a world record for DJ’ing some 6 years ago and in a new interview with Rubbin’ Minds, DJ Obi disclosed that Black Coffees’ success inspired him to do what no DJ had done before him and DJ for 230 hours.

There was a Wild Flower PR Conference last year in August and the head of Channel O at that time Leslie mentioned that a certain South African DJ did it for 4 days. And that guy is like my idol, Black Coffee. I was like wow, he did that?

Right there, I put on my phone and started googling. But apparently he talked about doing it, he didn’t actually do it.  So I was like, let’s do it, since he didn’t do it.

Well, Black Coffee did do it, kinda. In 2010, the DJ, who lost the use of his left arm in an accident at age 13, attempted to set a world record by DJing for 60 hours with just one hand and according to multiple reports in South Africa, he actually did. Unfortunately, according to the Guinness Book of Records in South Africa, his achievement wasn’t ratified and didn’t go into the books and that’s what counts.

Listen to Thando Nkosi, marketing co-ordinator for Pan Macmillan which publishes the Guinness Book of Records in South Africa –

Unfortunately we didn’t get any news about this record attempt. This is a first for us.

Source

This is identical to the predicament Kaffy found herself 10 years ago, when her attempt to break the world dance record wasn’t ratified by the Guinness Book of Records either. Hopefully DJ Obi and company dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s.

However, the main reason DJ Obi embarked on this feat wasn’t because of Black Coffee, it was all part of a PR campaign to increase the Syndik8 DJ’s profile in the local and global space. Black Coffee’s reputation got a huge boost after his world record attempt, and look at where he is now. After breaking the world record for the longest DJ set, DJ Obi could benefit from the same level of publicity and exposure in the coming years.