The 2016 South African Music Awards (Samas): Who Won & Who Lost

The 2016 South African Music Awards just wrapped up at the Durban ICC and it was an incredibly eventful night; some might say for the wrong reasons.  From the number of red carpet outfit faux pas to the teleprompter that none of the presenters could seem to read, the night certainly had its fair share of cringe worthy moments. Like that time Phat Joe aired Nathi’s business on live TV and told us all about how the 5 time SAMA winner once escaped from prison only to turn himself in again. Or when Somizi kept shading the winners while he did his best to adlib and fill in award moments of silence. The most hilarious , moment on the night belongs to Shane & Douglas from Desmond And The Tutus who gave the best acceptance speech ever.

The Awards were live streamed on YouTube and can be viewed below

Before we got lost in the woods discussing the evening’s happenings let’s get back to the Hip Hop shall we?  The biggest (and only) Hip Hop wins on the night went to Emtee, Jack Parrow and DJ Slique. Emtee won the biggest award of the night –Record Of The Year as well as Best Rap Album. Parrow won Best Video for his Army Of One video featuring Freshly Ground, while Slique won Best Remix for the Do Like I Do Remix.

The performances on the night were marred with poor audio and inconsistent lighting, despite that AKA & Da L.E.S managed to get the crowd hype during their opening performance of Real Stuff. Kid X got the crowd hype as he performed in an outfit reminiscent of Blade’s trench coat while Khuli Chana proved he still had it with his performance of No Lie. Fifi Cooper delivered a solid performance sans a backing track while her label mate Emtee and Kwesta closed out the show. Emtee’s choice to use a vocal backtrack took away from his set while Kwesta could do no wrong performing the biggest song in South Africa right now – Ngud‘.  The best Hip Hop performance on the night was undoubtedly Riky Rick as the he came on stage in his controversial Gucci fur loafers and a full mink coat flanked by a posse dancers and performers all dressed like extravagant cheese boys.

All in all the awards weren’t bad, they just failed to meet the standards you would expect from a show now well into its second decade when compared to other events that have been held at that very venue in recent times.

Congratulations to all the winners here is breakdown of the biggest winners of multiple awards. Nathi cleaned house with 5 gongs.  Black Coffee walked away with 4, 1 of which was an International Achiever Award. You can see the full list of winners below.

<a class=”twitter-timeline” href=”https://twitter.com/PhilChard/timelines/739205216092999680″ data-widget-id=”739398380993011712″>SAMA Winners</a>
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