By Bongani Ndlovu
The stage is set for tomorrow’s Zim hip hop awards and artistes in the genre will be eagerly waiting to see if they can land the various accolades in nominated categories.
The awards ceremony will be held in Harare at the upmarket bar, Pablo’z and the who’s who in the hip hop scene will be expected to grace the event.
The night will belong to rappers such as Takura with seven nominations, Asaph and Mariachi with six nominations.
They have been nominated in the People’s Choice, Best Verse, Video of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Collaboration and Best Male categories with Takura’s seventh nomination being the Best Hip Hop Hustle.
One of them might leave empty-handed such as what happened to Cal_Vin who had seven nominations and left with no accolade. Takura has been breaking boundaries this year as his music has been great on the ear and his music videos were of international standard.
Asaph at the beginning of the year, declared that 2018 would be a great year, and so far it has been. He released a track called Mambo after winning the Bulawayo Art Awards Best hip hop gong.
That track has been at number one for six weeks on ZiFM Stereo’s top 20 chart show, representing the genre well. Winning in these aforementioned categories will cap a great year for Asaph.
For Mariachi who is a member of the trailblazing hip hop ensemble MMT of Zvidhori fame, it has been a comeback year and he has put in the work to get him noticed for awards.
This year the awards are running under the theme, “Take it to the Streets”, which is something that is very important for the genre that has for long failed to have a meaningful foothold in the country.
The theme is an open admission by the industry that the genre is not in the streets and it’s high time they prioritise getting the genre to the people.
Like one of the biggest genres Zim dancehall, the artistes, producers and promoters created a market for the genre and then fed it with music. It’s a clarion call by these stakeholders in the Zim hip hop industry to follow suit or even have the same approach in getting the music to everyone. The Chronicle
