Meet Brad Mahon. Brad is a white kid who aspires to be a rapper, but nobody takes him seriously. While applying for financial aid, Brad is denied because it turns out that he is heir to a fortune in Africa. Even more shocking is that he’s a descendant of a white Zulu chief. Soon he finds himself trying to win back his inheritance by arranging a different sort of warfare: a rap contest to settle things. While this is the premise for the graphic novel White Shaka Boy, it isn’t far removed from reality. For Alan Brody, who grew up in the Zululand section of South Africa, the idea was born from an unlikely source: marketing.