Hip Hop Archives - Fired Rock

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, ...

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? ...

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...