"This terrifying picture of the starving artist was reinforced in early May 2023 when a video showed rapper Colonel Mustafa, the former superstar, carrying bricks as he worked on a construction site — caught in the carnage of capitalism and the unforgiving forces of demand and supply, money seems to have deserted him.
Life is a fragile proposition that could go up or down, this way or that. For Mustafa, it went down in a shocking twist completely overrun by a tragedy that swirled into a category 5 hurricane, with dire consequences.
In the video, he was away from TikTok and the scented air of shopping malls, away from the clubs he had performed in his heyday when, at night and in the city lights, the horizon probably looked rimmed with fire and the clubs washed in flashing, artificial blue lights.
Mustafa was in faded clothes — his gaze careworn, looking wounded and subdued. His former exuberant, self-assured braggadocio was gone — already feeling like long ago. He is probably still haunted in his sleep, some nights, by the great platforms he had graced with his dancers — vixens with fine, chiselled features — moving through his dreams with light steps, their artificial hair thick and rich and lustrous, sometimes tumbling loose over their shoulders.
Fate had put him on the weighing scale, found him guilty of misconduct and rendered swift judgement: end of his celebrity enterprise — with no appeal. He used to look wild, unbridled, and unstoppable. But the defiant cap, the colourful clothes, and the glorious necklace around his neck from his better days are all gone…"
Ah, well… life.