Music Archives - Fired Rock

Gemma Griffiths’ 10-Country Album-Writing Trip

24Oct

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Music, Urban Grooves

Gemma Griffiths’ 10-Country Album-Writing Trip

Gemma Griffiths’ 10-Country Album-Writing Trip The Zimbabwean pop singer went off-grid and drove open-air through 10 African countries over 500 days to sponge inspiration for her debut EP, Pamwe (2020). Roughly translated “window of possibility,” Pamwe exploits the sunlit, breezy possibilities of Gemma’s 24 000-kilometer writing trip. By Mukoma Onai | October 24, 2025 When covid-19 turned musicians into internet personalities, Gemma Griffiths did not need a WiFi budget for her lockdown playbook. The Zimbabwean pop singer went off-grid and drove open-air through 10 African countries over 500 days to sponge inspiration for her debut EP, Pamwe (2020). Roughly translated “window of possibility,” Pamwe exploits the sunlit, breezy possibilities of Gemma’s 24 000-kilometer writing...

Syndicated Loverboy – Oliver Mtukudzi in Kwekwe

8Oct

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Mbaqanga, Music

Syndicated Loverboy – Oliver Mtukudzi in Kwekwe

Syndicated Loverboy – Oliver Mtukudzi in Kwekwe Recent damning revelations about Zimbabwean superstar, Oliver Mtukudzi’s paternal negligence divided public opinion. This piece revisits the songs Tuku wrote in the heat of his family controversies and libertine adventures. What influence did Kwekwe have on his career over his decade there with his new family and an abused daughter from his first marriage. By Mukoma Onai | October 8, 2024 Oliver Mtukudzi slept with life and death in the same bed. A syndicated loverboy who can be credited with lifting his music to higher truth rather than bending it down to personal weakness. Maybe the most convincing preachers are not the ones who embody their message but those who preach the loudest bit to themselves. Artists are, after all, i...

Kendrick Lamar in Africa – Big Stepper’s Heritage Plug

2Feb

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Music, Politics

Kendrick Lamar in Africa – Big Stepper’s Heritage Plug

Kendrick Lamar in Africa – Big Stepper’s Heritage Plug Mr. Morale kicked off his Rwanda performance to the full-throated African drums of his 2022 album opener, “United in Grief.” The crowd ecstatically sang along to “N95,” performed second in order of the tracklist. Making good on its rejection of digital civilization, the song was greeted with the life-size fabric placing Compton at the center of Africa, complemented with stage lighting, filtered overhead through multi-colored Agaseke baskets by Nyamirambo Women’s Centre and Kitenge fabrics by Dolf Benza and Stufish. By Mukoma Onai | February 2, 2024 Kendrick Lamar’s hip hop career is a never-ending attempt to go back home. Despite American novelist Thomas Wolfe’s singular warning, “You can’t go back home to your family, ...

27Sep

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Books, Music

Onai Mushava, God and Hip Hop

Onai Mushava, God and Hip Hop Onai Mushava is a Zimbabwean poet and journalist, noted for his intertextuality and pro-poor themes. In 2018, he won a National Arts Merit Award (NAMA) for Outstanding Fiction Book. He has also been nominated in the poetry and journalism categories. Mushava's debut book, Survivors Cafe (2016), combines themes of love, politics and religion, while Rhyme and Resistance (2019) falls within the protest category, as well as exploring the poet's psyche. In this interview, poet Tafadzwa Chiwanza (TC), whose debut book is due for release next month, interviews Mushava (OM) on the role of religion in his work. By Tafadzwa Chiwanza, September 26, 2020 TC: Your early writings were mainly Christian in context, I observed. Why the change? ...

3Sep

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Music, Urban Grooves

Inside Holy Ten’s Creative Process

Inside Holy Ten's Creative Process Holy Ten’s latest single, “Ndaremerwa” is all things austerity and lockdown precarity. Sung with resigned vulnerability and spiraling bars, “Ndaremererwa” is a message and a moment. By Onai Mushava | September 29, 2020 Kendrick Lamar once said he writes songs with prisoners in mind. These poor souls, unlike party animals waiting to hop onto the next wave, got all the time under the sun to process every layer and message dumped at their doorstep. Now that the whole world is in prison, with the covid-19 lockdown, the Lamartian doctrine holds truer than ever and conscious artists are coming for everything. Poptain has emerged out of five years of unrewarded grind to take over Zimdancehall. At 22, Zim hip hop’s Holy Ten (born Mukudzei Chits...

13Jul

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Mbaqanga, Music, Urban Grooves

Is Tocky Vibes the Next Tuku?

Is Tocky Vibes the Next Tuku? Most gatekeepers will jump at any parallel between Tocky and Tuku as blasphemy, so we may well oppose a little mathematics and history to their piety. By Onai Mushava | July 13, 2020 If Van Choga is a drunken dragon on the stage, then Tocky Vibes is an ecological event in the studio. During the "New Dispensation" alone, Mr Vibes has already released seven projects – five studio albums, an acoustic compilation and a singles collection – besides uploading videos more often than your crush’s photoshoots. But – though we could place Tocky Vibes against Van Choga’s energy or against Van Gogh’s authenticity – one question makes more overall sense: Is Tocky Vibes the next Oliver Mtukudzi? On his latest album, Dhongi neWaya, Tocky Vibes pays his...

25May

By Onai Mushava1 Comment

Music

Hokoyo Is a Great Zimbabwean Album

By Onai Mushava Jah Prayzah’s continental wars are well-known but after every battle is fought, an artist’s never-ending conflicts are against himself. Think of a musician as different splinter personalities in one room, each fighting for creative control. That is Jah Prayzah, the stage monster, the business strategist, the regional crusader, the cultural revivalist, and the vulnerable underdog. The best of these splinters have just won the latest round and recorded a great Zimbabwean album. Hokoyo, the new fifteen-track album, is Jah Prayzah’s tenth. It is not just a comeback from the uninspired Chitubu, but one of his most ambitious yet, alongside Tsviriyo, Jerusarema and Kutonga Kwaro. There are songs to make you feel and sounds that are as grounded in the Zimbabwean tradition as they...

17May

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Music

Zim Hip Hop Rises As Bodies Drop

By Onai Mushava If there is no spoon in the Matrix, there is equally no belt in a rap beef. It is a blood sport where a fabrication is not a foul as long as it stings, just like they say in philosophy: “Got a dope theory? Then forget about reality.” Ultimately, rapper fitness is decided bar for bar and it looks good on hip hop that the trending feud eclipses the most recent dancehall disses for sophistication and savagery. First, the scoreline at a glance. In the first round, GZE (Resilience Chakare) savaged Noble Stylz (Prince Butawo) from crown prince of culture to clown prince of clout. Whereas “Fatality” was 6 minutes of cold calculus, Noble Stylz’s “GZE Lecture” was more emotion than precision. In the second round, the former 3rinity rapper was still in form with “Dhaf” but Noble re...

6Mar

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Music

The Solo Years of Biggie Tembo

By Onai Mushava When a music career underwhelms, artists are known to lean into religion, exile, retirement, isolation or drugs to wash away the torment. Biggie Tembo picked every life-affirming choice on the table and retooled for an artistic comeback but depression, partly traceable to the back-to-back failure of his two solo albums, cruelly ended his legendary career. While mental health issues in the arts are becoming more openly talked about – not without stigma, even in 2018 – in the 1990s’ Zimbabwe, depression was not topical. The greatest Zimbabwean to ever hold a microphone sought calm for his dark days in music but lack of support tossed him over to the bottle, the ancestors, the church and, tragically, suicide. I had the privilege of listening to Biggie’s last two albums, Out...

6Mar

By Onai MushavaNo Comments

Music

Tocky Back with the Right Vibes

By Onai Mushava Tocky Vibes returns to form with his latest album, Chamakuvangu, this time not as the long-form lyricist who wove proverbs into riddims, but as a distinctive musical innovator who will not be disappearing anytime soon. Chamakuvangu has a strong case for album of the year, thanks to its replay value, internal variety, catchy melodies and social relevance. The 23-track album, which drops barely eight months after the 19-track February release, Tsamba, is not just a throwback but an improvement on Tocky Vibes’ shortlived glory days. Seamlessly merging dancehall, reggae, Afropop and even jiti, the 24-year old artiste’s fourth studio album is hard to pin down to a genre. Frequent and recent collaborators, Tman, Cymplex, Munya Vialy, Samcris, Marcelo and Moze give the product...