The Tale of a Lonely Hip-hop Island

Once upon a time there lived three white boys, one of them was called Jorma “Jorm” Taccone (pronounced Yorma Tuh-cone-nee), while the other two were named Akiva Scaffer and Andy Samberg. The three boys came together in 2001 to form the comic rap group The Lonely Island, and later on in 2005 they started a series of online short skits titled Saturday Night Live, which has a pulling of millions in terms of YouTube views, and now features on NBC as SNL Digital Short.  Amongst their popular tracks are Jack Sparrow, On the Boat ft T-Pain and the weirdo, I just had Sex ft. Akon. 

The latter song must had captured the attention of AFAR- a travel magazine ,  and so one day Jorm got a call from them, asking him to take part in a journey to a random destination and then write about his experience. The project was dubbed Spin the globe. Jorm agreed to it, and his random location happened to be Kenya. The  New-yorker later packed up his bags, and booked February 2011 as his month of travel. While here, Jorm thought of collaborating with a local rapper, and through a hotel clerk, he got introduced the ultimate story teller-cum-rapper Rabbit. Jorma met up with Rabbit after listening to ‘Jam Na Kam’ which was the lead single for Kenyan rapper’s debut album Tales of Kaka Sungura. The two formed a musical bond and it was only natural for them to hit the studio and do a track together titled ‘Simba’.

 

YOUTUBE VIDEO

‘Simba’ (lion) got featured on Rabbit’s 3^rd mixtape King, and a video that had been done for it was uploaded on TheLonelyIsland YouTube Channel, about four months later. With the massive online following that The Lonely Island enjoys, this video became the 1^st music video  featuring a Kenyan artist, to hit  close to a million views in just 3 months-a status that not even Kenya’s first viral video makmende by  Just-a-band, or the now rated #1 Kenyan Music video on YouTube ‘Kigeugeu’ by Jaguar could reach.

However, despite the video's wide view from across the globe, one fact that is rather disturbing became apparent through it. Most of the viewers were for the first time seeing and listening to a rap song done by a Kenyan and in Sheng for that matter. Even more shocking are the comments they've been making on the YouTube video. To a number of them; Kenya exists as a Stone Age third world nation, where rap civilization is yet to reach. For instance one of the viewers quips;

“So I’m Christian and my youth group (is) going to Kenya, and I didn’t know there was a rapper there, this is wired O_O” while another comment reads “I thought ghetto posers were just hear in America. I thought Africans were just homeless cloth wearing zebra hunters”. 

Nonetheless, viewers with such opinion were not the only ones posting comments. There were others who liked the song, and really admire the rap skills rabbit has to offer.  As much as they can't understand the language, they can’t get enough of the flow and delivery coming out of Rabbit’s mouth.  About a month ago lordfinchington , stated about the video “I honestly  do not know what this (Rabbit’s rhymes) translates to, but it sounds f*cking amazing.”  While hickelbobbing  wrote “dis nigga (Rabbit) went H.A.M, nd i couldnt even understand him!” (sic).

Despite these positive comments, the negative ones cannot just be ignored, if anything, they are the reason for this post. The comments have gone ahead to prove that whereas Hip-hop is a global phenomenon, with emcees from other nations mostly, United States causing lyrical waves-the wider world has remained oblivious to Kenyan Hip-hop.

With over ten years of active Hip-hop in the country, it would be absurd for anyone to imagine that existence of a Kenyan rapper is weird, more so with the upsurge of online technology that has seen Kenyan music being shared on sites such as Reverbnation, sound cloud and YouTube (that now has a Kenyan page), alongside the online live streaming of local fm stations. 

AFRICAN COUNTERPARTS

Whereas this is the current global perception of Kenyan hiphop, Emcees from other African nations are causing ripples internationally, amongst them is HHP from South Africa who has done collabos with the heavyweights Nas and Talib Kweli, and his videos have become a common feature on MTV Base.   The other one is D-Black a Ghanian emcee whose sophomore album scheduled for January 2012 release features guest appearances from Keri Hilson. Others on D-Black’s The Revelation album are…(wait for this)….Cory Gunz (the 24 year 0ld who goes toe-to-toe with Weezy on 6 foot 7 foot), veteran Twista, and the great emcee from D-Block-  Sheek Louch. Thank God our very own Stella Mwangi aka STL will also be on the album’s track #12 ‘Freaky wit U’. 

DBlack/ photo courtesy of xfmnewscenter.com

Bring it closer home to East Africa, and you find the ever humble South Sudanese Emmanuel Jal doing it big. Tanzania’s Bongo Flava star AY is still riding high on his collabo with Romeo (Master P’s) son, for the song ‘Speak With Your Body’, while bordering Kenya to the East is Somalia who’s son K’naan is an international rapstar in every sense of that word.

MISSED CHANCES

It became a popular belief amongst Kenyan Hip-hop lovers, that when Bamboo relocated to America and did a remix to The Game’s ‘One Blood’, someone would finally take note of what we Kenyans have to offer on the hip-hop spheres. Another one of those moments came when the Kenyan Hip-hop pioneers Kalamashaka did ‘Red, Black, and Green’ with Umi and M1 (of Dead Prez) back in 2007. Once again it became a dream deferred, like seeing Kenyan football team Harambee Stars qualifying for a World Cup event.

When the Hip-hop journalist and emcee Mwafrika, attended the prestigious Rock the Bells Festival in New York back in the 2009, expectations amongst Hip-hop heads in Kenya were elevated. Many had hoped that besides the numerous photos he took with Hip-hop giants such as DJ Premier, Common, KRS One and Immortal Technique, Mwafrika would bring back something more-perhaps news that attendees and participants at the Rock the Bells were interested in Kenyan Hip-hop-regrettably this was not the case. It was yet another missed opportunity for Mwafrika, who has done more for Kenyan Hip-hop, than Kenyan Hip-hop has done for him, to put this East African nation on the map. 

Mwafrika and DJ Primiere at the 2009 Rock the Bells Festivals in New York (Image courtesy of Mwafrika Mwaf)

BLNRB-NRBLN and Translating Hip-hop are two brilliant initiatives by Goethe-Institut Nairobi in partnership with Teichemann Brothers and The House of World Cultures respectively-The projects have made an attempt to expose Kenyan Hip-hop to broader and beyond the boarder audience, (particularly Colombia, Germany, Philippines and Lebanon). The former project has already resulted to veteran Kenyan rappers Abbas, Nazizi and Ukoo Flani, teaming up with a range of German artistes, while a 7 track EP featuring Moroko(Nairobi) and Anne Khan(Berlin) is in the making-thanks for the latter. These are definitely positive indications, and we can only hope for more follow ups of such. 

FINALLY

Jorma’s idea of collaborating with a local rapper as opposed to an Afro-fusion artist doing “Yousou N’Dour/Angelique Kidjo “ type of music (no disrespect to afro fusion), was perhaps the angel’s call we’ve for much too long been waiting for. With all strong indications, that Rabbit might be heading to New York in two months time, for more music projects with  Jorma, and the rest of The Lonely Island. Those who thought that Kenya was just a land of Zebras, Maasais and long distant athletes, will finally get the chance to take note of the country, from the urban culture perspective. 

While in New York the talented 24-year-old rapper Rabbit, is expected to work on a track with the complete set of The Lonely Island, shoot a video for a track from his upcoming second album Orutu ya Masudi, and feature on the highly rated NBC’s Saturday Night Live which has in the past hosted Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Eminem, and Nicki Minaj. The show also hosted the Canadian born rapper Drake a fortnight ago.

Attention Hip-hop: Africa feels you, but it demands some respect!

 

By Nasta

A graphic representation of Africa courtesy of Blingee

For long Hip-hop and rap as its key element has been under strong criticism for being disrespectful; disrespectful to authority, disrespectful to social norms and behavior, and disrespectful to women. While these criticisms may be and have for long been challenged, sometimes in the words of Chris Rock, it get’s hard to defend rap, especially when it shows its arrogant side where it is not supposed to.

Recently, a Hiphop agent stirred waters of controversy by taking his unwarranted cockiness to the motherland.

LL Cool J at 2011 BET Hiphop Awards

During his acceptance speech for the ‘I Am Hip-hop Iconic ’ award at the 2011 B.E.T Hip-hop award which was aired on 11/10/2011 (a week after the event), Veteran Def Jam rapper LL Cool J doing a spoken word speech stated “…Did I mention, Life ain’t a sprint it’s a marathon, really stressful on your tendons, and with the shape the economy is today, you better run to the polls like skinny Kenyans; 26 miles in two hours and three minutes...”, of course his reference to Kenyans as an analogy was in relation to our athletes, who continue to set new records at the international stages. But the phrase “Skinny Kenyans” is what has raffled feathers, and brought back memories of instances when Hip-hop heads have acted in a manner perceived as being rude to Africa, and the African people.

Hiphop is a culture that has one of its prolific originators Afrika Bambata, named after the continent. Since its origin to date, Hip-hop has widely been considered as a black man’s music-a black man who draws his ancestry from the African people. Back in Africa, arguably in all of the 54 sovereign states, kids and the youth continue to draw inspiration from this art and culture, which has been in existence for slightly under 40 years. 

We relate to the portraits of struggle and triumphs, painted by Hip-hop. How then could it be that this culture that we have so much in common with, and that we have come to embrace in totality as Africans, tends to forget the connection that we share with it? Would it be the case of a grown kid mocking the sagging breasts it once suckled?

Besides LL Cool J’s speech, B.E.T is under fire for the way it treated African nominees prior and during the ceremony. Just like in 2010 award ceremony, which saw the inauguration of BET Best International Act, African Category, African nominees were only given a few minutes coverage on 106 & Park. Ms. Uduak Oduok ­­-A New York based entertainment lawyer and writer-whose company Ladybrille magazine covered last year’s ceremony, writes of how African nominees received a maximum of 2-3 minutes on the hourly B.E.T 106 & Park, and how the show’s host Nick canon, ridiculed Africa.

(Below is The Cipher at 2011 BET by Ghanaian MCs, that never aired on the final cut) 

“The  host acted with nothing short of “oshiness’ (foolishness) with his remarks of what kind of entertainment content Africans were exposed to in the continent”  Uduak precedes to lament about the lack of interest in Africa’s acts by the media at the event, supposedly due to lack of media briefing regarding these artists by the B.E.T Network.

Away from B.E.T, Chinua Achebe the great Nigerian novelist who is revered all over Africa, recently made a polite request to Mr. Curtis Jackson aka 50 Cent, to drop ‘Things Fall Apart’ as the title of his upcoming film. This request was an attempt to protect the identity of Prof. Achebe’s 1958 novel which has the same title. As if to show his financial might, 50 offered Achebe one million dollars in exchange of the title. How shameful was it to see Chinua Achebe now 81, having to pull off his gloves to battle rapper 50 Cent, 45 years his junior through a court battle. 50 cent who is also an author, must had either been genuinely ignorant of just how important Chinua Achebe- who is regarded as the father of modern African literature is, or just arrogant towards Africans.

While such arrogance would be expected from the ‘Get Rich, or Die Tryin’' rapper, it would be totally unexpected for the living Hip-hop Legend, Nas, to be mentioned on the same breath with fidy, yet he gets to feature on this post. 

Chris, a long time Hip-hop enthusiast and a member of the Kenyan hiphop duo Mujahidin, has over the years maintained that on the song ‘Revolutionary warfare’ off God’s son album, Nas was wrong to say “we are the lost children of Israel, in this western world region” when he is from African ancestral lineage. Chris still feels uneasy with the lines of the song, even after Nas paid homage to Africa on the single I Can’s third verse, and on his collaborative album with Bob Marley’s last born son, and even alluded in the song ‘Africa Must Wake Up’ that Africa is the mother of humanity.

Speaking of the collaborative album, it is said that South African emcee Hip-hop Pantsula aka HHP, paid Nas in excess of USD 10,000 for a verse by the Queens bridge emcee on HHP’s track Keledimo, only for Nas to later use the same verse on the Distant Relatives album. Although HHP played cool, sighting that using same verse in multiple songs was a common practice in rap, he still felt disrespected by his childhood idol, who has for long expressed his intense passion for the continent. 

However Jay Z’s reference of ‘his African chick’ on the song ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ has to be one of the most annoying things to ever been done by a hiphop artist. On the 2001 Blueprint’s single Jay Z states “I got this African chick with Eddie Murphy on her skull/ she like “Jigga Man why you treat me like an animal?”/ I am like excuse Ms. Fufu, but when I met your ass, you was dead broke and naked, and now you want half”

Jay Z at 'Girl, Girls, Girls' video shoot set

Regardless of the cojones; just how low can one stoop to hit below the belt? With these lines, Jay Z, a metaphorical emcee displayed what his perception of Africa at the time was. Forget about him kissing the ground when he landed at Dar es salaam a few years ago, Jigga showed just how primitive he thought his motherland was, or rather how primitive his thought was.

Despite the continuous genuine love that the likes of Talib kweli, Common, Lupe Fiasco , Ludacris, and Dead Prez show to Africa, the occasional “slip-of–the-tongue” and other times outright foolish utterances and actions by Hip-hop crusaders, must be kept on constant check – if not for anything,  to ensure that this Hip-hop connection with mama Africa is persistent. AFRICA STAND UP

Africa Stand Up by Nekolah

REVIEW OF TUSKER ALLSTARS: THE CONCERT By BARAK

It was 1st of October, Saturday in the evening. I was en route to meet Nasta who had a plan on standby to attend the TUSKER ALL STARS: THE CONCERT at Carnivore Restaurant , which was featuring Tusker All Stars namely Alpha, Msechu and Davies among other Kenyan musicians. It was also headlined by Angolan superstar Cabo Snoop, dancehall artist Shaggy from Jamaica and hip hop artist from Philadelphia, USA Eve.

We arrived at Carnivore at about 9pm and sadly the Kenyan acts had already performed. Cabo Snoop was already on stage after an intro by MC DNG and ShaffieWeru. As we entered, he was already performing one of his songs, which we had no idea because it was in Portuguese, as all his songs are, LOL, however,it was very energetic. He was wearing his usual tight pants and a red t-shirt, an interesting character in deed. He was his usual, as seen from his music videos, a skinny man with a very deep voice that was rather dungeon sounding and very intriguing, a quality that has made him the musician he is. After hits such as “Ababababababa” and many more Portuguese titled ones that fans had no idea of but entertained by.Cabo wrapped up his stage presence with the infectious, rambunctious tune that has accorded him worldwide fame, “Windeck”. The fans went raving wild like monkeys in a banana factory!,as did I. After exiting the stage, the fans were still clamoring for Cabo Snoop to come back, and he did, performing the remix to his biggest hit “Windeck” featuring a verse from Bronx, NY hip hop superstar Fat Joe. After that, he exited.

Next on stage was Eve. After an intro by The Number One Hypeman, DNG Top Shotta, which was coupled with heavy Hiphop tunes mostly from DMX, Eve waltzed on stage soaking in the applause of her loyal Nairobi fans and Hiphop fans alike. The jubilation was immense, even from me, as the fans beheld seeing EVE eye to flesh, live in person. She performed her old songs like ‘’Gotta man” , “Gangsta loving” featuring Alicia Keys and the anti-gender violence track “Love Is Blind” of which before singing it said that , “any man who beats on a woman is a punk”, to the concurrence of all her fans, especially the females. She then went on to freestyle over Lil Wayne’s mega hit beat “A Milli”, and tore it up! Her freestyle screamed, ‘’I CAN STILL RAP,CRITICS” ,(peals of laughter) , and all the fans agreed judging from the applause! After that, she asked Cabo Snoop to come back on stage , and a couple of ladies too, to help her dance to the Kasseem Dean (Swizz Beatz) produced “Tambourine”, and got the crowd moving along with bringing them up to speed with her modern hits. She also performed “Give It To Me” featuring Dancehall artist Sean Paul. She also performed an exclusive song, world premiering it for her fans in Kenya called “Gimmie Here”, a raunchy song about getting it on with your prospective partner. The fans loved it! She wrapped up with “Who’s That Girl” from her double platinum selling album SCORPION, leaving the fans satisfied.

After Eve left the stage,DNG and Shafffie introduced the next performer from Kingston, Jamaica , Shaggy, who walked on stage donning Khaki shorts, a maroon v-neck muscle shirt and converse sneakers. Shaggy also performed his old hits first, and three songs, in, he called out ‘’Ray Ray” on stage, his best friend and longtime collaborator that always make compatible hit songs, known to all the fans as Rayvon. The fans received Rayvon with mad love and excitement. Shaggy and Rayvon then proceeded to perform all their collaborative records/hit songs from way back starting with “Summertime” , then to “Angel ‘’ and the mischievous “It Wasn’t Me” though it originally featured RikRok, who was absent but Rayvon sang RikRok’s part so beautifully!

Shaggy was full of humorous antics as he performed “it wasn’t me” , stopping in the middle to tell his endeared fans that men always get caught but women never do because they are smarter than men. The fans concurred while laughing as he spotted a serious face, eluding more laughter from the fans. He then went on to tell every man that, if they ever get caught, they ought to do what the world’s best womanizer, Bill Clinton, did. And that is to quote the phrase, ”I did not have sexual relations with that woman” , or in short, “it wasn’t me” , LOL. His fans all burst into laughter, and Shaggy went on with his performance with the fans braving the rain like warriors on a mission. Shaggy went on to encourage the fans in the rain by asking the ones pulling out umbrellas to get them off the way because everyone was wet. He further went ahead to tell the ladies not to mind if they were wet because he likes them wet anyway,LOL, to the fans jubilation. He also told the ladies not to mind if their hair was “f*cked up” because they still looked good, again to the fans jubilation.


By and large,Shaggy’s performance was the longest and the best, surpassing every other entertainer’s who had hit the stage before him. This was compounded by the fact that Shaggy brought out two members of Morgan Heritage, the lead singer Peetah Morgan at that, and Gramps Morgan, a pleasant surprise to the fans that escalated their euphoria. So sad Gramp Morgan had to lose his Camera at JKIA. Shaggy’s performance was also the longest, lasting two hours straight and all the while steady in terms of keeping the fans engaged. He brought the fans up to date by performing “sugar cane” before which he told’em that, that should be the only reason they should go to Jamaica on vacation. He wrapped up his performance by asking the fans to put heir hands up and took a picture for twitter, to show to the world that he has the best fans ever! He also shot a video for youtube! And exited the stage upon an earned applause. A great show indeed, worthed every cent of those who attended.