In the early 2000s Flo Mokale was a Jozi youth culture pioneer: a founder member of the seminal spoken-word collective Likwid Tongue, and a regular hip-hop photographer. Today, he's 36 years old and his focus is The Flo Foundation, a solo community effort in Katlehong where he walks children to school, teaches them how to take photographs and feeds them books."I feel our art is dead," he says. "We've got a beat and a chorus, but no verse. Listen to poets - there's the Saul Williams style, but no content. Ask photographers to interpret kasi stories. You'll get the same fashion sense, as if every township is the same. It's always the same poverty look. You go to exhibitions and someone says this is the story of my kasi, but we've been seeing these stories forever. Cut and paste is what pays. I feel the kids must do it now. I do studio work, I shoot weddings and functions. That's my bread and butter."A writer, photographer and videographer, Tseliso Monaheng's byline is prominent in mainstream and underground, youth-focused media. Of the tyranny of getting paid, he says: "I think three or four times a day about whether I still want to do this. The answer is yes. But I think about it a lot."We young storytellers do not own the narrative. Videos about our lives, for example, are still being directed by people like you," he laughs semi-ironically, referring to the ever-hovering editorial presence of the white South African male. "The challenge is, how do I run in the mainstream, and get paid, while capturing the stories of my time? I feel we have to capture them, and tell them. There's this guy, Prince, a pantsula dancer who was on the Shell Road to Fame in the nineties. Speak to the pantsula cats and they'll tell you all about this guy, who has passed away. But really, his story is gone. Why? Because no one wrote it down.""Local conversations around all this can be self-defeating," Monaheng adds. "Vice will come out with a gqom [South Africa's east coast, ecstasy-fuelled dance music scene] documentary soon that will take more terrain, while we're all still talking about it."Aviwe Damane has been immersed in the Jozi urban cultural scene since the early 2000s as a poet, radio broadcaster and event MC. "Things are different now from 10 years ago," she says. "The youth are more daring. They use different channels and mediums, and are breaking away from stereotypes. Look at Nakhane Touré. He's gay and proud. He writes and makes music. Young people are stronger and bolder than before."While relishing the new spirit of South African youth culture, Damane - like Flo and Monaheng - is sensitive to the reductionist force of mass-media youth reporting."In the media it's as if youth culture is just nightlife and entertainment, then protests. But there are many more stories," she says. "Our youth do a lot socially. Like the Flo Foundation, for example. I work with Grade 12s doing creative writing. I know young people in Jozi who are out there planting things. Literally, they run permaculture projects. This side of youth culture doesn't get much media coverage."Look, there is no youth. Where is this youth? The youth exists when people need votes!"Flo downs his drink and runs, carrying four shopping bags filled with stuff for the kids. He has no more time for stories about stories. The man has a lot to do...