Despite many economic and political hurdles, the desire to tell stories about the complex realities of a postcolonial African society is unstoppable. Young Kenyan auteur cinema is striving for international screens.
Although hailed as an astute Luo rumba artiste by music reviewers in newspapers and magazines, few are aware of the musician’s first compositions that were in pure paced benga and why he chose to do almost all his songs again with tunes of rumba.
In 1998 DMX released two albums in the same calendar year — both debuting at No.1 on the Billboard 2000, marking the start of a two-decade iconic career beset by struggles with drug addiction, legal troubles, and family troubles.
Kenya’s hip hop scene has been nothing but a graveyard of mixtapes which – while offering a glimpse at the spirit and experimentation – deny listeners the beauty of intention, coherence, and completeness.
The hip hop group bequeathed Kenya a unique and identifiable hip hop soundscape, and their oeuvre remains the only most studied by urban music archaeologists, but what happened?
Four names: Zoro, Phyno, Flavour, KCee. Four installations on YouTube: Ogene, Achikolo, Gbo Gan Gbom, Ijele. These songs have garnered a mere 10 million...
