Rwanda: Hip-Hop With a Message

Focus Media (Kigali)

Timothy Kisambira

In choosing their musical style, they made a bold decision by going for hip-hop.

"I began by miming songs when I lived in Mombasa in 1996," says Gaston Rurangwa a.k.a. Mr. Skizzy, who works as a radio presenter at Flash. "The next year I went to Nairobi where I began writing my own lyrics. When I came back to Rwanda in 2001, I was quite disappointed with the music scene I found here.

"This to me was an extra motivation to make my music dream come true, and when I joined school at APAPE I met these other two guys who had the same idea. So we teamed up and began singing," Gaston explains.

In choosing their musical style, they made a bold decision by going for hip-hop.

"It was not easy, because this kind of music was new in the country, so we had few fans," Mr. Skizzy remembers. "This forced us to change to dance-hall, and things seemed to work out. Yet, given that we all loved hip-hop, we switched back to it, and this is what we are doing now."

And it seems to have worked. Their first two track, Abakobwa b'i Kigali (Kigali Girls) and Ubuzima (Life) released in 2004, were instant hits which led to the recording of their first album Ubuzima by the Burundian super producer Robert R-Kay Kamanzi.

In 2005, KGB secured its name and position at the top of the Rwandan hip-hop scene with song like Muri Club (In Da Club) and Rumuri Rwanjye (My Sunshine). The next year, they were nominated for a PAM award and the Pearl of Africa music award as the best group from Rwanda.

Early this year, they released Iwacu ni Heza (Home is best) which is still rocking the airwaves. Moreover, the boys are preparing a new album.

Looking at the regional hip-hop scene, Gaston Rurangwa thinks that Rwanda stand head and shoulders above the rest. "When you listen to the hip-hop in the region, our stuff is hot; we have got it right here," says Gaston

If this is not translated in regional success, Mr. Skizzy blames it on a lack of promoters, concerts, and media coverage, which according to him are killing music in the country. "In the region, I think it's only in Rwanda that nearly no concerts are organized. And even if they are staged, few people attend them. In Kenya, for instance, it's hot; artists there have big shows before big crowds."

Ivan Manzi, or MYP, agrees with his band-mate that Rwandan hip-hop is doing well, but that the music is often misunderstood. "Hip-hop originates from America, where the musicians doing this stuff are gangsters. They sing of things related to killing, dirty stuff, many are involved in drugs dealing, ... So they have a bad image.


"Because of this, every hip-hop artist is seen as a gangster, but that's not true at all. For us, we sing hip-hop with a message," Ivan says, although he admits that he himself is inspired by the American rapper Eminem, who is not really known as a softy.

Another problem, he points out, is that because of the Rwandan culture people are often hesitant to embrace new music styles. "Old people want us to play the music of the 60s, like the Kimeras or Mahone. But this music is out-dated, you can't compete with it on the international scene.

"Every generation has its music; for instance, what we are doing now might not be appreciated by the next generations, so we will have to move on and adapt," MYP says.